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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/workday-jdbc-sisense.rst

⇱ Visualize Workday Data in Sisense

Visualize Workday Data in Sisense

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create an ElastiCube in Sisense app with access to Workday data.

Sisense lets you join, analyze, and picture data to make more intelligent business decisions and craft effective strategies. The CData JDBC Driver for Workday makes it easy to integrate with Workday data in Sisense. This article shows how to create an ElastiCube that connects to Workday data and use the ElastiCube to visualize Workday data in Sisense.

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 the Connection to Workday

Before creating the ElastiCube, note the installation location for the JAR file for the JDBC Driver (typically C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for Workday 20XX\lib) or copy the jar file (cdata.jdbc.workday.Workday.jar) to a new folder in the Sisense JDBC driver directory (typically C:\ProgramData\Sisense\DataConnectors\jdbcdrivers).

  1. In the Data page of the Sisense application, create a new ElastiCube (or open an existing one).
  2. In the Model Editor, click "+ Data" to open the Add Data dialog box.
  3. Click Generic JDBC to open the JDBC settings. 👁 Connecting via JDBC
  4. Set the connection string property to the JDBC URL for Workday, adding required properties.

    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.

    Built-in Connection String Designer

    For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Workday JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

    java -jar cdata.jdbc.workday.jar

    Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

    👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

    When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

    A typical example follows:

    jdbc:workday:User=myuser;Password=mypassword;Tenant=mycompany_gm1;BaseURL=https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com;ConnectionType=WQL;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;
  5. Set the JDBC JARs folder property to the location of the CData JDBC Driver JAR file (see above).
  6. Set the driver's class name to the class name for the JDBC Driver: cdata.jdbc.workday.WorkdayDriver
  7. Leave the username and password properties blank.
  8. Click Next. 👁 A configured connection in Sisense (HubSpot is shown).

Add Workday Data to an ElastiCube

Once you are connected to Workday, you can add tables and views to your ElastiCubes.

  1. From the Tables list, select the tables and/or views you wish to work with.
  2. (Optional) Click "+" to customize the data you want to import with SQL.
  3. Click Done. 👁 Selected tables to add to the ElastiCube
  4. Click Build to build the ElastiCube for analytics.

Visualize Workday Data

With Workday tables added to your ElastiCube, you can perform analytics on your Workday data.

  1. Navigate to the Analytics page of the Sisense application
  2. Select a Dashboard (or create a new one)
  3. Select your Data Source and click Create 👁 Selecting the newly created ElastiCube
  4. Click "+ Select Data" and choose fields to add to your visualization. 👁 Visualizing data in Sisense (HubSpot is shown).

With the CData JDBC Driver for Workday, you can access Workday data right in Sisense for powerful visualization and analytics. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working with Workday data in Sisense today!