The Wonders of Workday

Introduction

How awesome is it that we get to work with a fantastic system like Workday? Not everyone has this kind of luck. I've been knee-deep in HR systems for almost 15 years, configuring, supporting, and managing them. I spent most of that time not using Workday®, and it only entered my world about 14 months ago. Having dealt with the shortcomings of various HR systems throughout my career, I appreciate Workday even more.

Here are a few reasons why I think Workday rocks!

Multiple Tenants

Workday’s standard setup comes with both a Sandbox and a Sandbox Preview tenant. Sandbox refreshes every Friday night, and Sandbox Preview refreshes twice a year before each major release. This is incredibly valuable, especially since it's included at no extra cost.

Other vendors charge a hefty fee for a test environment and limit the number of refreshes. I've been at organizations where there was no budget for a test environment, leaving us to create test employees and sometimes even test companies in production. With Workday, if Sandbox and Sandbox Preview aren't enough, you can pay extra for an additional on-demand refresh test tenant.

The Power of Proxy

This is easily one of my favorite Workday features. In any test tenant, Workday offers a simple task: Start Proxy, which lets you become someone else and see exactly what they see. This is a game-changer for testing, troubleshooting, and understanding the impact of changes. Believe it or not, many HR systems don't have this! I’ve lost count of the hours spent setting up test accounts, juggling usernames and passwords, and constantly logging in and out as different users. Testing a long business process used to be a real headache.

Integration Magic

Workday offers a ton of cool integration options and they're always adding more features like Orchestration. Rather than getting bogged down in all the integration possibilities, let’s highlight what makes Workday the standout in HR system for integrations.

For example, setting up an SFTP connection with Workday is not only straightforward but also something you can do yourself! With other HR vendors, setting up the report part of a Reports as a Service (RaaS) integration might be possible, but you'd have to shell out extra cash for them to create the connection. Yep, that's an additional fee for each new connection. And if you need a complex integration, you can build it yourself in Workday Studio. With other HR systems, you'd have to pay for this service and be stuck waiting for their resources to become available.

To BP or not to BP

Workflows and business processes are at the heart of every HR system. With Workday, you get unmatched flexibility to mix condition rules with calculated fields, tackling even the quirkiest requirements.

Plus, you can set business process steps to kick off reports, services, to-do reminders, and even other integrations. The sky's the limit, and we're just scratching the surface of what's possible with business processes in Workday.

Conclusion

So, that's my take on why I love Workday, from someone who stumbled upon it later in their career.

Don't get me wrong, no system is perfect, and there's always room for improvement. Folks often say there are many ways to do the same thing in Workday, and I couldn't agree more.

But that's the magic of Workday—it’s flexible and empowers you to tackle things on your own. In case you haven't noticed, I'm definitely a fan!

Author: Christian from Maryland