Workday

I have been having a close look at Workday.

UPDATE: This webcast is a bit waffly but is a good primer on Workday. There is a discussion around the absence of customization at the 35 minute mark. And doing no customization at 40 minute mark (experience and outcomes) and integration tools, role of IT dept. and governance at 51 min.

UPDATE: There are Workday services in the government CloudStore.

Some detailed information about the product set is available on the internet but these are the questions I have not found answers to. Anyone know the answers?

• What degree of ‘personalisation/configuration’ is possible - I'm guessing that page fields can be hidden, re-labelled, calculated etc. What else is possible?
  Answer - some columns can be added (reporting issues),
• How do you migrate changes between instances (meta data/config/master data/other setup)?
• What is the toolset like? Fat like PStools/jDeveloper? How do you debug or is it a ‘blackbox’?
   Answer - All Web apart from the integration tools.
• How is reporting facilitated. At the pre-defined object level?
• How are local legal changes catered for, i.e. VAT and Payroll?
• As there is no on-premise option how do you ‘order up’ a test/dev instance? Is it Vanilla? Can you automate a migration process from, say, another dev instance?
Answer - It appears you get one test/dev instance: http://www.kloud-consulting.com/your-organisations-workday-deployment-how-to-build-an-enduring-relationship/
• How do you integrate local or 3rd party solutions, such as say Bottomline payments solutions, just how far does the ‘Cloud integration platform’ go. Do you need another SOA system?
Answer - The Cape Clear base tools are good and getting better
• How do you keep integration's in sync with WDs twice yearly upgrade cycle. What breaks? How do you control the cut-over (other than version-ed web services)?
• How do you\can you set-up multi-currency, multi-language, multi-book, multi-BU etc?
• Can you get down and ‘see’ the data in the noSQL value pair DB? What is the lowest level of interrogation? Do you only look at what comes out of the web services or can you dig deeper.?


After watching a technical webcast it appears that

• There is no access to the underlying database from the applications.

• All data held in the memory. Data saved to persistence store and DR site. No access to the store.

• SaaS updates x2 year. Not x2 a decade.

• Native iPad application – zero cashing

• Looks like the config is done on the browser. No customisations only configurations.

• Enterprise integration builder – For simple single entity integrations ,simple manipulations.

• Workday Studio – Eclipse based framework (fat) developer level tool – to roll your own integrations rather than use the delivered ones or other pre built examples. Workday Studio provides full SOA tool orchestration etc.

• Modern search based UI – like Windows 8 or Ubuntu Unity

• DR sites are full replica's.

References

http://aboutworkday.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/moving-from-peoplesoft-to-workday.html http://www.hrlab.com/workday-technology-review.php https://community.workday.com/node/3539#hcm-ldap https://community.workday.com/book/export/html/117
https://forms.workday.com/uk/landing_page/webinar_the_register_simplifying_it_with_cloud_lp.php?camp=70180000000poPY&campid=ukhm_fma_no_de_14.1123