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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/workday-cloud-powerbi-service.rst

⇱ Import Workday Data into the Power BI Service for Visualizations

Import Workday Data into the Power BI Service for Visualizations

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Workday Data and provide access to live Workday data for custom reports in the Power BI Service.

Power BI transforms your company's data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get access to Workday data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Workday in CData Connect AI, publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI Service and then create reports on Workday data in the Power BI service.

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 Power BI Service

Connectivity to Workday from Power BI Service is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Workday data from Power BI Service, 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

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Workday data from the Power BI service.

Publish a Dataset from Power BI Desktop

Once you connect to Workday in Connect AI, you can create a dataset in Power BI desktop and publish the dataset to the Power BI service.

  1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> Online Services -> CData Connect AI and click "Connect"
  2. Click "Sign in" and authenticate with your CData Connect AI account 👁 Authenticating with Connect AI
  3. After signing in, click "Connect" 👁 Connecting to Connect AI
  4. Select tables in the Navigator dialog 👁 The available tables. (Salesforce tables are shown)
  5. Click Load to establish the connection to your Workday data from Power BI
  6. Define any relationships between the selected entities on the Relationships tab.
  7. Click Publish (from the Home menu) and select a Workspace.

Build Reports and Dashboards on Workday Data in the Power BI Service

Now that you have published a dataset to the Power BI service, you can create new reports and dashboards based on the published data:

  1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
  2. Click Workspaces and select a workspace.
  3. Click Create and select Report.
  4. Select the published dataset for the report. 👁 Select a dataset
  5. Choose fields and visualizations to add to your report. 👁 Visualizing Workday data in the Power BI service

Live Access to Workday Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Workday data from the Power BI service. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Workday data.

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.