I recently attended virtual training on reporting from Workday. While you get a high level overview of reporting in the HCM Fundamentals class and run one report, Report Writer is the first reporting class that you can take to learn how to create your own reports. It's a virtual class, 10 hours spread over two days.
At first glance, the WD reporting product is not the easiest to learn on your own with no instruction (believe me, I tried!), especially if you're used to a relational database model. In WD you can access the reporting tool from within a page, so you can click the 'related actions' from a hyperlinked field and choose to 'create report from here' or to view related reports. However, if you don't have the report basics, you will soon be lost.
I'm happy to say that the two day WD training cleared that right up for me. The class starts with some background about the WD database structure and some high level details about how the reporting works. Then, you start to run delivered reports, then you build basic reports (on one object such as the Worker object), and finally advanced reports where you combine objects and then some simple matrix ones where you run counts, similar to an Excel pivot table.
This class was probably helpful to me at this point, because I now understand the structure of Workday, and how there are various objects such as the Worker, Location, Company, etc. and how the data is clustered around these objects. There were some people in the class who have never seen WD beyond attending the HCM Fundamentals class (a required pre-requisite for this course) and they were lost before the end of the first day. If you are at least in the implementation stage and have some idea of how to navigate around the WD system on your own and hire someone, for example, you'll be fine.
WD offers Report Writer as an introduction to reporting, then you can follow it up with Advanced Reporting and Analytics (15 hours over 3 days) and/or Calculated fields (15 hours/3 days). These are all virtual options, with Report Writer being the pre-req to the other two. There is also the option to do the reporting suite in a classroom setting by taking Workday Reporting: Basic to Analytics.
That being said, assuming that you have a test tenant to use and can get a hold of the manual, you could probably walk yourself through the training quite easily.
Some of the things that confused me at face value, before taking the course:
1. The overwhelming plethoria of fields with the same name. Every instance of a field is its own reporting field. This differs greatly from a relational database, where if you have something like 'jobcode description', you'll have one jobcode table with a description and you tie your code on your secondary table back to your foundation table.
If you type 'Name' into Workday to find the field 'Name', you'll quickly get confused as you'll get all sorts of Names (descriptions) for things.
2. The icons used in the reporting tool. The icons are meant to give you short-cut details about a field without having to look into the details, but until you know what they mean, it's a bit confusing. Sure 'T' stands for text and '#' is a number field, but what's the thing that looks like a spoon? Or the fireworks? Once you know that the spoon is the base table and the fireworks represents a one-to-many relationship, it becomes a little more clear.
Once you get a handle on those basics, it becomes easier to navigate through the tool.
The one odd thing to me--and granted I come from a mix of HRIS systems from basic homegrown MS access applications to more sophisticated tools like PeopleSoft--is that WD locks down reporting from the join perspective. So if you're doing a 'basic' report, then you're only working on one object--say 'Worker'. If you change your mind and need other data that is not on Worker, you need to convert to an advanced report (which is possible). However, if you start your report on an object and discover that it does not have all of your fields, if a join does not exist, you cannot 'force' a join the way you can in other databases. You basically have to begin again, this time using the 'right' datasource. I can imagine that one causing some frustration at the user level.
To view my other posts on training, click here.
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Saturday, 18 May 2013
Customization in Workday - Custom Objects
As a SaaS solution, customer customization of the Workday application is limited to the delivered customization options that you as a customer can configure, and mainly that involves the use of 'Custom Objects'.
Custom Objects can be considered as 'free fields' which you set up to use however you want. They are attached to the various WD objects such as the Worker object, Location, Company, etc.
An example:
We have a manufacturing location in Europe that is required by law to issue safety clothing to the employee on a certain schedule, so every 6 months they receive a new set of trousers, every 12 months a new set of safety boots, etc. This clock starts as of the employee's start date, so every employee would have a different date to get new clothing. (Workday has some business asset/company property functionality so we might put it there, but we're just using this as an example.) Our goal is to put all of this data into the system, to avoid the need to have any data in Excel, etc.
So your Custom Objects need to be applied to the Worker Object. We need 3 fields:
Date Received:
Uniform Type:
Date Received:
They're quite easy to set up and configure, once you make the decision of how your fields should be defined. You only need to define things like: Field Label, Field Type, Prompts, Validation, Status, etc.
The above example took about 5 minutes to set up. The key is knowing your business requirements.
So in thinking further about Custom Objects:
Advantages:
Custom Objects can be considered as 'free fields' which you set up to use however you want. They are attached to the various WD objects such as the Worker object, Location, Company, etc.
An example:
We have a manufacturing location in Europe that is required by law to issue safety clothing to the employee on a certain schedule, so every 6 months they receive a new set of trousers, every 12 months a new set of safety boots, etc. This clock starts as of the employee's start date, so every employee would have a different date to get new clothing. (Workday has some business asset/company property functionality so we might put it there, but we're just using this as an example.) Our goal is to put all of this data into the system, to avoid the need to have any data in Excel, etc.
So your Custom Objects need to be applied to the Worker Object. We need 3 fields:
- Type of Clothing (boots, shirt, trousers, etc. choosing from a dropdown/validated list)
- Size of Clothing - needed for HR purposes, so that we know how many size 40 trousers to order for next year
- Date received - this is important, so that HR can run reports in advance, to see when they need to provide the employee with new items. In particular, we have a night shift and while HR rotates to try and provide a presence during some of these hours on some days, they need to ensure that the supervisor receives the clothing in advance, to avoid any issues with the union that contractual obligations are not being met.
Date Received:
Uniform Type:
Date Received:
The above example took about 5 minutes to set up. The key is knowing your business requirements.
So in thinking further about Custom Objects:
Advantages:
- You can set them up to meet your business needs. For example, if you need to track something which is not typically found in an HR database, this is the place to do so.
- There is some flexibility in how you set up these custom fields. For example, you can choose to set them up with some validation values, or you can make them formatted as a date, etc.
- It's 'easy' customization that doesn't involve any development--it's merely 'configuration'.
- You can do EIB loads into these Custom Objects, if you'd like, to be able to load data.
- You can only apply custom fields where they are delivered at the object level. For example, you can apply custom fields to the Worker object, so associate custom fields at the employee level. Or you can apply custom fields to the Location object, so for any custom fields you may need to associate with a location.
- However, if you have a custom field that is not associated with Applicant, Company, Customer, Job Profile, Supervisory Organization, or any of the other objects available. but instead a different object that does not have Custom Fields associated with it, you will not be able to use it.
- There is a limit of 20 custom fields per custom object! This is a big one. It means that you may only store up to 20 custom fields at the Worker level. In my above example, this would use up 3 of 20 custom Worker fields, leaving 17. At a global organization, this is insufficient for our HR needs.
- You can store up to 100 instances of a custom object in each instance. In my example then, let's say that we are storing 5 types of clothing for a worker, and that each worker gets a new set of 5 rows every 6 months. At 10 rows per year, we'll be out of space in 10 years. Of course we can archive the data to Excel after a certain time to make room for more, but it would be nicer if we didn't have this concern.
- The data entry for the user isn't so nice. The user does data entry on custom objects in a stand-alone area for each object. The fields are not able to be integrated into the 'core' object in a logical fashion. In our Uniform example, we need to count on the data entry operator to go to the Custom Object area for the Worker to enter the needed data. This is a different menu item from Job or Personal Data, so easy for the entry operator to forget.
- I like the functionality, and how easy it is to 'customize' the system. In our old ERP such new fields would involve a customer request, request approval, a functional spec, development effort, testing, test documentation, and a production turnover. Creating these fields in WD is a much smaller effort.
- We need the option for a lot more custom fields, or we need WD to better enable the application with more regulatory reporting and global fields. In our implementation we are not able to use the fields for 'business needs' because we need to utilize them to hold regulatory data which is not addressed by WD. It would be great if WD would increase the limit to say--40 per object.
Monday, 22 April 2013
Workday's merit process
We were recently reviewing some setup in our test Workday tenant, done by our consultants. As a large, global company we have everyone on a year end merit process, with increases effective as of January 1st. In order to accomplish this process, we need to start in Sept/Oct, as there are various approval chains and roll-up reporting. As well, we then need to deliver files to payroll systems in time for them to process these updates too.
The consultants were suprised that we start this process prior to January 1. As well, WD appears to want you to only think about merits AFTER the period has closed...so in our case, as of January 1. When you are running the various processes within WD and automatically selecting your employees, we seem to be running the risk that someone terminating in November will get caught up in the process in WD and we cannot get them out of the pool. (As opposed to our current process where they will get manually removed when it's still in Excel or excluded via PSoft functionality).
In WD it's not smart enough to exclude them along the way, but instead the manager will need to allocate a 0% increase to the person. It's not the end of the world, but the functionality could do with being a little more flexible as to how companies have structured these processes. My guess is that we are one of WD's largest customers so it's the first time they are seeing such large-scale processes. Smaller companies surely have a more lean and nimble timescale when having fewer employees to process and maybe do more things closer in to the actual effective date.
The consultants were suprised that we start this process prior to January 1. As well, WD appears to want you to only think about merits AFTER the period has closed...so in our case, as of January 1. When you are running the various processes within WD and automatically selecting your employees, we seem to be running the risk that someone terminating in November will get caught up in the process in WD and we cannot get them out of the pool. (As opposed to our current process where they will get manually removed when it's still in Excel or excluded via PSoft functionality).
In WD it's not smart enough to exclude them along the way, but instead the manager will need to allocate a 0% increase to the person. It's not the end of the world, but the functionality could do with being a little more flexible as to how companies have structured these processes. My guess is that we are one of WD's largest customers so it's the first time they are seeing such large-scale processes. Smaller companies surely have a more lean and nimble timescale when having fewer employees to process and maybe do more things closer in to the actual effective date.
Monday, 15 April 2013
Workday's Compensation functionality
While I can see many echoes and/or improvements in the various pages of Workday when compared to PeopleSoft, from a front end functionality perspective, Compensation appears to be an entirely different kettle of fish. The whole structure and setup of comp plans, bonuses, etc. in WD seems to have been created from scratch, or based on a totally different system or model.
From a user perspective, it looks quite nice, especially when they do the demos showing a manager with international employees, with all the bells and whistles of currency conversions and comparisons enabled.
From a setup/maintenance perspective, I'm not yet sure if it will be a major upkeep effort or an improvement.
From a user perspective, it looks quite nice, especially when they do the demos showing a manager with international employees, with all the bells and whistles of currency conversions and comparisons enabled.
From a setup/maintenance perspective, I'm not yet sure if it will be a major upkeep effort or an improvement.
Monday, 8 April 2013
Workday field lengths
One of the most interesting features that I’ve noticed so far in Workday is the fact that fields allow the user to enter unlimited content. There are no ‘field lengths’ like you might see in a traditional database. Name, Position Title, Org Title–doesn’t matter–unlimited text.
Coming from a traditional relational database environment, this is fascinating! However, I am struggling to see the advantages of this feature. In particular, if you are interfacing to any downstream system, most will have field lengths. Then, your interface is either truncating the field and losing data, or it’s blowing up the downstream system by sending data that is too big to insert. Or worse–you’re truncating to downstream systems but having a longer value in WD reporting, so a ‘mismatch’ of data, leading to distrust in HR data. Or you’re stuck with having to run audit reports to find incorrectly entered data after the fact in order to have it shortened…rather than just being able to impose data lengths on the field in the first place.
I am struggling to see the advantage of this feature…
Coming from a traditional relational database environment, this is fascinating! However, I am struggling to see the advantages of this feature. In particular, if you are interfacing to any downstream system, most will have field lengths. Then, your interface is either truncating the field and losing data, or it’s blowing up the downstream system by sending data that is too big to insert. Or worse–you’re truncating to downstream systems but having a longer value in WD reporting, so a ‘mismatch’ of data, leading to distrust in HR data. Or you’re stuck with having to run audit reports to find incorrectly entered data after the fact in order to have it shortened…rather than just being able to impose data lengths on the field in the first place.
I am struggling to see the advantage of this feature…
Monday, 1 April 2013
Thoughts on Workday training – a few months later & Configurable Security Fundamentals
It’s been a few months since I’ve had time to write here, but time to change that. :-)
I had put some thoughts together back when I was first taking the Workday training courses, here and here. I’ve since taken a few more courses and am now sending my staff to the HCM Fundamentals course that I took, so a good time for a look back. I’ll start with the courses I’ve taken in the meantime…
The Configurable Security Fundamentals class
This is an ‘online only’ course, like a few of Workday’s offerings which are not offered in a classroom setting. As always, you can find more details about Workday courses here. It’s 10 hours spread over two days, so five hours each day. It explains everything about setting up Workday user security: configuration, security groups, domains, business process security, etc. The agenda was full and the class kept moving.
Sidenote: the format/structure for online courses appears to be the same. You receive a pdf manual a day or two before the course, along with log-in details to *your* tenant, as well as technical details of logging in so that you can test your computer in advance. On course day, you can log in via the pc for both the online course plus voice, or you can log in to view the presentation and dial in separately to the call via phone. I’d say 90-95% of the people used the pc for audio. Overall, there were around 20 or 22 people attending normally.
The structure of the online courses is similar to the classroom training, the instructor walks through a powerpoint, explains the concepts and then you get to work through the exercises in the manual in your tenant.
The good
Taking a short look today (Apr 25, 2013), Workday is offering three security sessions in the coming weeks, two in May and one in June. All three of them are on Pacific time, 9 AM-2 PM, although at least on a Mon/Tues or Tues/Wed. Looking at my handy timezone calculator, that looks like the following around the world:
If you are a US-based company, with only US customers, then that is perfectly fine. But considering that Workday keeps claiming that they are global in nature, I find this to be appalling, in particular when you consider that these are online classes, so they could occasionally put one in a European or Asian timezone, even though that might mean that the instructor is doing odd hours for the two days. For whatever reason, Workday insists on putting everything into the California timezone. OK, timezone rant now over…
Overall though, I’d say the security class was quite good. I’m not sure if you’d need to send your entire team there, or rather, send one person who will bring back the manual. If you have that plus access to a test tenant, you can start to play around with security to understand how it works, while reviewing the manual. In addition, I’d recommend that you check out the Workday Community, a lot of people post questions/issues related to security, and often through reading those, you can get some ideas of pitfalls and how certain setups may make your security maintenance more difficult.
I had put some thoughts together back when I was first taking the Workday training courses, here and here. I’ve since taken a few more courses and am now sending my staff to the HCM Fundamentals course that I took, so a good time for a look back. I’ll start with the courses I’ve taken in the meantime…
The Configurable Security Fundamentals class
This is an ‘online only’ course, like a few of Workday’s offerings which are not offered in a classroom setting. As always, you can find more details about Workday courses here. It’s 10 hours spread over two days, so five hours each day. It explains everything about setting up Workday user security: configuration, security groups, domains, business process security, etc. The agenda was full and the class kept moving.
Sidenote: the format/structure for online courses appears to be the same. You receive a pdf manual a day or two before the course, along with log-in details to *your* tenant, as well as technical details of logging in so that you can test your computer in advance. On course day, you can log in via the pc for both the online course plus voice, or you can log in to view the presentation and dial in separately to the call via phone. I’d say 90-95% of the people used the pc for audio. Overall, there were around 20 or 22 people attending normally.
The structure of the online courses is similar to the classroom training, the instructor walks through a powerpoint, explains the concepts and then you get to work through the exercises in the manual in your tenant.
The good
- no travel costs
- even though it’s online, it’s still a full schedule, similar to what you’d get in a classroom environment. The pricing structure reflects this as well: it’s the same 600 USD per unit, whether it is in-person or online. Sidenote: I noticed that when I took the course in October 2012, it was 8 hours total, they’ve since increased it to 10 hours, so perhaps others found it to be too quick.
- the instructor will stay on an extra 30 min beyond the end of the class on day 1, in case you have questions. As well, this is offered for 30 min before/30 min after on day 2.
- the instructor can log into *your* tenant, so if you have messed up an exercise, they can try and sort you out while people are working on the next one or on a break.
- there is 30 min at the beginning of day 1 of ‘meet and greet’, similar to if you were in a classroom session. With 20 people saying what their role is, it began to drag a big.
- the instructor has pre-set expectations of how quickly the class should move. Not having the face to face contact perhaps can be an impediment to ‘reading’ if people really understand things.
- In this course, the instructor in addition walked through the exercise before you were unleashed to do the exercise. As an occasional instructor myself, I found that a little odd, to be shown the concepts, an example and then the actual exercise itself, she did it. We then replicated the exact same exercise. So in the back of my head, I wonder if it’s too difficult, the exercises ‘as is’ to be in an online course, as the HCM course I took did not follow this heavy hand-holding.
- scheduling - this one deserves more of a read-out…
Taking a short look today (Apr 25, 2013), Workday is offering three security sessions in the coming weeks, two in May and one in June. All three of them are on Pacific time, 9 AM-2 PM, although at least on a Mon/Tues or Tues/Wed. Looking at my handy timezone calculator, that looks like the following around the world:
| Location | Date | Start | Date | Finish |
| San Francisco | Thurs Apr 25 | 9:00 AM | Thurs Apr 25 | 2:00 PM |
| London | Thurs Apr 25 | 5:00 PM | Thurs Apr 25 | 10:00 PM |
| Paris | Thurs Apr 25 | 6:00 PM | Thurs Apr 25 | 11:00 PM |
| Singapore | Fri Apr 26 | midnight | Fri Apr 26 | 5:00 AM |
| Tokyo | Fri Apr 26 | 1:00 AM | Fri Apr 26 | 6:00 AM |
Overall though, I’d say the security class was quite good. I’m not sure if you’d need to send your entire team there, or rather, send one person who will bring back the manual. If you have that plus access to a test tenant, you can start to play around with security to understand how it works, while reviewing the manual. In addition, I’d recommend that you check out the Workday Community, a lot of people post questions/issues related to security, and often through reading those, you can get some ideas of pitfalls and how certain setups may make your security maintenance more difficult.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
Workday training schedules
As we’re a global company, there are people being trained around the globe…or attempting to be trained anyway. Workday is still a young company, although they claim to offer an HCM product that meets the needs of global companies. However, they have no trainers in Asia and only one for Europe. No really, just one. So what happens when that one is pre-booked for a customer course, etc.? They fly another one over from the US. My Asia colleague requires a few Workday courses, so he’s travelling to Pleasanton, California, along with other US cities, to be able to take them one after another.
That being said, Workday does offer online courses, to avoid the travel. However, they offer them during US timezones, so either Eastern or Pacific time. I’m not especially looking forward to taking an online course that starts at 5 PM Friday my time, however, that is the only option, so therefore it will be done.
Longer term, WD needs to step up the game a little in this regard, or stop claiming to be a global player.
That being said, Workday does offer online courses, to avoid the travel. However, they offer them during US timezones, so either Eastern or Pacific time. I’m not especially looking forward to taking an online course that starts at 5 PM Friday my time, however, that is the only option, so therefore it will be done.
Longer term, WD needs to step up the game a little in this regard, or stop claiming to be a global player.
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