Workday Reporting Explained: Reports, Types And How To Create Them?
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Learn Workday Reporting with a clear overview of report types, key features, and step-by-step guidance on how to create reports easily.
Introduction:
Workday Reporting is one of the pillars of the new data-driven organisations that aim at turning raw information into actionable strategic decisions. Workday Reporting enables functional users to make informed decisions without necessarily relying on in-depth technical coding by enabling them to gain a single view across the Human Capital Management (HCM), Financial Management, and Payroll. The Workday Report Writer is becoming critical in the modern world because as companies move to the cloud, more makes them nimbler, and the real-time data is always right at the fingertips of key stakeholders.
What do you Mean by a Workday Report?
Workday Report is a live data retrieval tool that is directly incorporated into the Workday application. Workday Reports are dynamic objects, unlike legacy ERP systems, which, in most cases, require an independent data warehouse to run reports, using the core security model of the system. This implies that reports will automatically obey the user permissions, in case a manager does not have access to the salary of a particular employee in the system, that information will not be reflected in the report output. To further know about it, one can visit Workday Training. It is important to follow certain structural requirements to have a high-performing reporting environment:
Uniformity: Naming conventions and headers should be standardised so that the users can understand data in various departments at a glance.
Accuracy: The use of the right "Business Object" will guarantee the figures that are used are the one version of truth in the tenant.
Relevance: The scope of an effective report is defined to the audience it is intended to reach, and it does not contain any data bloat to disclose significant information.
Compliance: Reports should be made in such a way that they comply with the International data privacy requirements (such as GDPR) and sensitive PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is secured.
Clarity: Considering that there are complex codes, the translation of code into a human-readable label by use of calculated fields helps the report to be more useful to the executive stakeholders.
Efficiency: Efficient filters and data sources save slow run times and eliminate the workload of computations on the Workday tenant.
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Types of Workday Reports:
Workday divides its reporting functions depending on the complexity and tools required. These differences are the initial step to understanding what type of data framework is the best choice.
Standard Reports:
These are canned reports supplied by Workday. They include standard business requirements, including "Headcount" or "Trial Balance."
Report Writer Reports: These are standard reports that can be duplicated and altered to give custom versions.
XpressO Reports: They are specialised, high-performance reports developed in the proprietary code of Workday. They are user-run, but they cannot be copied or modified.
Custom Reports:
Creating custom reports entails the development of custom reports by authorised users to fulfil a given need within an organisation. Custom reports can be of the eight major types:
Basic Reports: Simple format; employed to list, simple sorting and filter a single business object.
Advanced Reports: The most popular one; supports many objects of the business, grouping, subtotals, and external integration (EIB).
Matrix Reports: Analytical summaries; a pivot table type of view that can be expanded to drill down to specific measures.
Composite Reports: Advanced or Matrix reports, which are high-level reports that consolidate the data of several sub-reports into a single report.
To do a Trending Report: This is designed to analyse data on a time spanning scenario, like attrition or an increase in the headcount across month to months.
Transposed Reports: This simply swaps rows and columns; this is handy when you need to make a side-by-side comparison of business objects or compensation plans.
Search Reports: Programmed to offer a Google-like searching experience to its end-users, it uses facet filters to filter down the search results.
nBox Reports: A grid in two dimensions that is common in Talent Management to graph the employees (e.g., Performance vs. Potential).
Workday Reporting and Analytics Tools:
Workday also provides a set of tools that are relevant to various degrees of data complexity and visual needs. Preparing for the Workday Finance Training can help you start a promising career in this domain.
Workday Report Writer:
The main instrument for making tailor-made reports. It has a drag-and-drop interface in which the user chooses a Data Source (i.e. fields) and filters. It is very flexible, and it contains calculated fields to provide complicated logic.
Workday Dashboards:
Dashboards provide a centralised visual analytics location. They contain several Report Orgs or Worklets that present executives with the real-time picture of KPIs in charts and graphs.
Workday Discovery Boards:
An analytical canvas that is a drag-and-drop canvas, enabling the user to visualise data in real-time. It is designed to do exploratory analysis, which allows a user to identify trends without the creation of a formal report initially.
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Workday Prism Analytics:
The high-quality data-blending device. Prism enables organisations to import external data (such as historical data of a legacy system or market benchmarks) and merge it with the native Workday data to model it further.
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Best Practices to Build a Workday Report:
To make sure that your reporting strategy will be robust and scalable, you should adhere to these industry-best practices:
Setting Objectives Beforehand: Determine precisely what business question the report should address and to whom will be accessing the data.
Choose the Right Data Source: When deciding on whether to use all employees or active employees. It is possible that the choice of data source can radically affect the report output and performance.
Limit the Number of Columns: It is only the fields that need to be used in a particular objective that ensure that reports remain fast and easy to read.
Calculated Fields Leverage: The ability to convert raw data into something actionable during the build using logic such as True/False or Lookup Related Value.
Test in Sandbox: You should always test your report logic in a non-production setting using a range of test cases to obtain the correct results.
Keep the Report Safe: It is recommended to change the settings of Report Sharing so that only the relevant security groups can access the data.
Document Calculations: Have a technical design document that describes how complex calculated fields will work for subsequent administrators.
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Conclusion:
However, it is not only a data extraction tool, but also a strategic asset, because Workday Reporting allows companies to perform with accuracy. By learning and controlling the peculiarities of report types, Advanced to Composite, and applying the maximum capabilities of the Report Writer, companies will be able to realise the real value of their investment in the cloud. Preparing for the Workday Certification can help you start a promising career in this domain. Proper reporting will make sure that all the organisational changes are supported by information and help to create a culture of honesty and active management.
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