Kerry - HCM, Comp, Security, Reporting and more

Workday® Inbound EIB Integrations (Part 2)

The next part of my series on Inbound EIB Integrations will focus on creation, security, and templates. Building an EIB is started with the Create EIB task. This task displays an initial dialogue page for naming the EIB and selecting an option of Inbound or Outbound. Developing a naming convention is a good idea, especially if many EIBs will be used in the system. Some clients simply use the Web Service label, such as Put Supervisory Organization, while others create more descriptive names, e.g. Inbound Sup Orgs EIB.

After this first step, the functional details of the Inbound EIB are input in four (4) steps and a final Summary page. I will focus on a commonly used EIB with available Web Service using a Template. Inputs are as follows:

General Settings – This page allows alteration of Name and Reference ID, and also a section to add comments.
Get Data – This page defines Data Source and Data Format.

The Data Source panel accepts the various types of sources (Retrieval Method) including Attach a File at Launch, FTP/SSL, and Google® Drive among others. There is also a Details section where the EIB can be restricted to specified tenants.
The Data Format panel is used to specify File Type and Web Service Operation. The default File Type is Web Service Spreadsheet Template which is commonly used. Web Service Operations are categorized into the available public areas such as Compensation or Human Resources. This input also acts as a search, where the intended function can be input to retrieve a result, for example searching for “Job Profile” returns Put Job Profile (Web Service). Custom Objects and Custom Templates are other Data Format options.

Transform – This section configures how the source data will be transformed to permit loading. Using an available Web Service in step 2, Get Data, pre-populates inputs of Transformation Type and Template Model from Web Service Operation.
Deliver – This panel defines Delivery Method, in this case Workday® Web Service Operation.
Summary – This last section displays the previous 4 all together to review the configuration and edit if necessary. The OK button finalizes the Create EIB task. There’s also a Save for Later button to retain the inputs.

Security is an important aspect of using Inbound EIBs. It is a good idea to get the Integration Administrator assigned. For Inbound EIB integrations, the security prerequisites are:

Integration Build domain which gives access to Create EIB.
Get and Put access to the Integration Process domain permits loading data (Put).
Put access to the domain that secures the web service operation or custom object which allows access to Web Service Operations used in building an Inbound EIB.

A secondary security issue relates to a common practice with using Inbound EIBs - Edit Templates. These domains in the Integration functional area need to be addressed:

Integrations: EIBs
Integration Configure
Integration Event

Business Process (BP) security is still another area to consider with Inbound EIBs. Inbound EIBs can be used to initiate BPs, for example Request One-Time Payment. To configure this security, use the related actions on the BP and edit the Business Process Security Policy. Here inputs would include Who Can Launch the BP, Rescind, and Cancel web services.

EIB Templates should look familiar to many users and they can be tricky. The templates are often referred to as “spreadsheets” in Workday® documentation and most users use Microsoft®’s Excel application to edit templates. A good overview can be found in Community here.

Generating EIB Templates is done from the related actions in the EIB. From the Actions menu, select Template Model, which displays 3 options – View, Edit, and Generate Spreadsheet Template. The Generate Spreadsheet Template option displays a dialogue with a format option (XML or XLSX) to produce a template. The template can then be used to populate data in a spreadsheet application, like Excel. Be careful when saving a template in Excel. Saving an XML format template as an XLS format results in an unusable file. The Edit option is only for template metadata, not actually editing the template format. The View option is used to configure the format of the template e.g. hiding columns, reordering worksheets, or relabeling columns. Once in the View Template Model page, each template worksheet provides various configuration options. Here in View is where the template format is edited, it is NOT for populating data. And it should be noted that some, but not all, templates can be generated with existing Workday® data.