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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/workday-cloud-nintex-workflow-cloud.rst

⇱ Create Workday-Connected Nintex Workflows

Create Workday-Connected Nintex Workflows

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Workday Data from Nintex Workflow Cloud and build custom workflows using live Workday data.

Nintex Workflow Cloud is a cloud-based platform where you can design workflows to automate simple or complex processes using drag-and-drop interactions — without writing any code. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Workday data for business applications. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Workday in Connect AI and build a simple workflow from Workday data in Nintex.

CData Connect AI provides a pure, cloud-to-cloud interface for Workday, allowing you to build workflows from live Workday data in Nintex Workflow Cloud — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Nintex allows you to access data directly using SQL queries. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Workday, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Workday data.

About Workday Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Workday. Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Access the tables and datasets you create in Prism Analytics Data Catalog, working with the native Workday data hub without compromising the fidelity of your Workday system.
  • Access Workday Reports-as-a-Service to surface data from departmental datasets not available from Prism and datasets larger than Prism allows.
  • Access base data objects with WQL, REST, or SOAP, getting more granular, detailed access but with the potential need for Workday admins or IT to help craft queries.

Users frequently integrate Workday with analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and Excel, and leverage our tools to replicate Workday data to databases or data warehouses. Access is secured at the user level, based on the authenticated user's identity and role.

For more information on configuring Workday to work with CData, refer to our Knowledge Base articles: Comprehensive Workday Connectivity through Workday WQL and Reports-as-a-Service & Workday + CData: Connection & Integration Best Practices.


Getting Started


Configure Workday Connectivity for Nintex

Connectivity to Workday from Nintex is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Workday data from Nintex, we start by creating and configuring a Workday connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Workday" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Workday.

    To connect to Workday, users need to find the Tenant and BaseURL and then select their API type.

    Obtaining the BaseURL and Tenant

    To obtain the BaseURL and Tenant properties, log into Workday and search for "View API Clients." On this screen, you'll find the Workday REST API Endpoint, a URL that includes both the BaseURL and Tenant.

    The format of the REST API Endpoint is: https://domain.com/subdirectories/mycompany, where:

    • https://domain.com/subdirectories/ is the BaseURL.
    • mycompany (the portion of the url after the very last slash) is the Tenant.
    For example, in the REST API endpoint https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com/ccx/api/v1/mycompany, the BaseURL is https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com and the Tenant is mycompany.

    Using ConnectionType to Select the API

    The value you use for the ConnectionType property determines which Workday API you use. See our Community Article for more information on Workday connectivity options and best practices.

    APIConnectionType Value
    WQLWQL
    Reports as a ServiceReports
    RESTREST
    SOAPSOAP

    Authentication

    Your method of authentication depends on which API you are using.

    • WQL, Reports as a Service, REST: Use OAuth authentication.
    • SOAP: Use Basic or OAuth authentication.

    See the Help documentation for more information on configuring OAuth with Workday.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Workday Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Workday data from Nintex Workflow Cloud.

Connect to Workday from Nintex

The steps below outline creating a new connection to Workday data from Nintex (via Connect AI).

  1. Log into Nintex Workflow Cloud
  2. In the Connections tab, click "Add new"
  3. Select "Microsoft SQL Server" as the connector and click "Connect" 👁 Adding a new SQL Server Connection
  4. In the SQL Server connection wizard, set the following properties:
    • Connection Name: Connect AI
    • Username: a Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected])
    • Password: the Connect AI user's PAT
    • Database Host: tds.cdata.com:14333
    • Database Name: the Workday connection (a.g., Workday1)
    👁 Configuring the Connection to Connect AI
  5. Click "Connect"
  6. Configure the connection permissions and click "Save permissions" 👁 Configuring permissions and saving the Connection

Create a Simple Workday Workflow

With the connection to CData Connect AI configured, we are ready to build a simple workflow to access Workday data. Start by clicking the "Create workflow" button.

Configure the Start Event Action

  1. Click the start event task and select the "Form" event
  2. Click "Design form"
  3. Drag a "Text - Long" element onto the Form and click the element to configure it
    • Set "Title" to "Enter SQL query"
    • Set "Required" to true
  4. Drag a "Text - Short" element onto the Form and click the element to configure it
    • Set "Title" to "Enter desired result column"
    • Set "Required" to true
👁 Designing the Start event Form

Configure an "Execute a Query" Action

  1. Add an "Execute a query" action after the "Start event: Form" action and click to configure the action
  2. Set "SQL Script" to the "Enter SQL Query" variable from the "Start event" action
  3. Set "Column to retrieve" to the "Enter desired result column" variable from the "Start event" action
  4. Set "Retrieved column" to a new variable (a.g., "values")
👁 Configuring the SQL Server query action

Configure a "Send an Email" Action

  1. Add a "Send an email" action after the "Execute a query" action and click to configure the action
  2. Set the "Recipient email address"
  3. Set the "Subject"
  4. Set the "Message body" to the variable created for the retrieved column
👁 Configuring the email action

Once you configure the actions, click "Save," name the Workflow, and click "Save" again. You now have a simple workflow that will query Workday using SQL and sand an email with the results.

To learn more about live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, check out the CData Connect AI page. Sign up for a free trial and reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.