In the fast-evolving digital era, the ability for business systems to communicate seamlessly is not just an advantage but a necessity for operational efficiency and competitive edge. Workday Orchestrate for Integrations emerges as a transformative tool, enabling both tech enthusiasts and novices to craft complex, real-time integrations effortlessly. This blog post explores how Workday Orchestrate for Integrations revolutionizes integration processes, allowing users to navigate and master the digital realm with simplicity and power.
What is Workday Orchestrate for Integrations?
Based off Workday Cloud Platform technology that has been live for Workday Extend customers since 2021, Workday Orchestrate for Integrations (Workday Orchestrate) is a new addition to Workday’s integration cloud and is designed to foster real-time, event-driven processes across Workday and external systems. It stands out by offering an intuitive, web-based platform that simplifies the creation of custom integrations through a drag-and-drop interface, making advanced integration accessible to all users regardless of their technical background.
Unlike Workday Extend, this product will be available to all customers as part of their Workday subscription at no additional cost. The product is currently in Limited General Availability. To request early access, complete the form found on this Workday Community post. General release is tentatively scheduled for 1st half of 2024 (Safe Harbor applies).
Core Features and Benefits
Drag-and-Drop Simplicity with no installation required
At the core of Workday Orchestrate is the Orchestration Builder, which features a user-friendly interface allowing users to easily drag and drop components to construct their integrations. This simplifies the development process, making it accessible and quick. Fully browser-based, Workday Orchestrate eliminates the need for software installations. Users can access it directly from the Workday Developer Site.
Low Code Development
The platform is designed for those without a background in programming. Users can leverage tools like the Expression Builder, which provides extensive functions for data manipulation and transformation without the need to write code.
Enhanced Data Management
Employing strong data types, Workday Orchestrate improves accuracy, validation, and efficiency in data handling. These types are equipped with rich APIs for detailed data analysis and transformation, ensuring type safety and minimizing errors.
Scalable and Secure
Data security is paramount with encryption both in transit and at rest. The platform is robust, designed to handle large volumes of data and complex integration patterns, scaling effortlessly to meet organizational growth.
What types of integrations can you build with Workday Orchestrate for Integrations?
Outbound Integrations
Create outbound integrations that iterate over datasets from Workday APIs and export these to various formats. This function is essential for automating the transfer of data across systems or to external stakeholders.
Inbound Integrations
For inbound data, Workday Orchestrate can manage integrations that merge and format data from diverse sources like XML and CSV files, ensuring the data uploaded to Workday APIs is synchronized and accurate. Eliminating the requirement to use Workday Studio for inbound integrations will likely be a welcome change to Workday customers.
Boomerang Integrations
Boomerang integrations are type of integration that pulls data from Workday using a custom report, iterates through the report data and calls Workday web services to update Workday data elements based on specific use case requirements. This type of integration can be built using Workday Orchestration for Integrations easily and without the need for Workday Studio.
Real World Results from Early Adopters
During a session delivered at Workday Rising in San Francisco in September 2023, representatives from two of the top retailers in the United States shared their experience using the tool since April 2023 as Early Adopters. Each provided a handful of use cases that they have implemented and installed to Production.
A boomerang integration that averaged between four and five seconds using the standard Workday Studio design pattern saw a nearly 50% reduction in processing time using Workday Orchestrate to perform the same task.
One customer was able to reduce the percentage of Workday Studio integration events from 50% to 39% of the organization’s overall integration total.
According to Joe Lee, Senior Product Manager, Platform Technology for Workday, consultants who assisted Early Adopter customers implement solutions with the new toolset saw a 30-50% reduction in implementation time using Workday Orchestrate over traditional integration development.
If these stats prove reliable for a wide range of use cases, the expectation is a very rapid adoption by the Workday customer community once in General Availability.
Conclusion
Workday’s newest addition to its Integration Cloud environment, Workday Orchestrate for Integrations, is a revolutionary new toolset which allows those with varying levels of technical knowledge to build real-time, highly performant integrations in less time than traditional integrations using a browser-based application with no additional software to download or learn. The ability to develop inbound integrations without the use of Workday Studio, call Workday orchestrations using APIs from external systems, and replace boomerang integrations with relatively low effort and increased performance combine to make a meaningful difference and constitute a large step forward for Workday integrations development.
Resources:
Integrations 2024R1 Feature Release Review (includes enablement request form)
Image Credit:
Workday Rising 2023 session “The Future of Integrations: Target and Lowe's on Workday Orchestrate, the Newest Integration Tool from Workday [ITLP1223]”
Author: Joel from Arkansas
