Workday Boomerang Integrations: An Overview
Have you seen posts around boomerang integrations but don’t know what they are, how to get started, or how on earth to build them? Don’t worry Stormloop is here to help!
Can you tell me what a boomerang integration is?
As the name implies, a boomerang integration is Workday-to-Workday integration. In this integration design pattern, you are leveraging Workday data to automate work tasks. The source of data can be from audit reports you run on a regular frequency, tasks that are performed exactly the same way during a business process, or even leveraging Prism or Extend data.
Okay, boomerang integrations sound cool, but do we need them at my company?
Do you come in every Monday morning or the day before payroll and have to perform repeatable cleanup based on audit reports? Do you wish you could get that time back in your day? Do you dread creating or cleaning up supervisory organizations? These are all prime candidates for boomerang integrations. If there is a repeatable data-based process that you have to perform, this is a perfect place to start. We can help you review your current manual processes and determine if a boomerang makes sense for you.
How are boomerangs built?
Depending on the complexity of the task/business process you are trying to automate, there are two types of boomerang integrations: Simple or Complex.
Simple boomerangs consist of data that can be pulled in via a single report and require a single web service to be called. These can leverage an EIB + code-less studio that allows development without having to build a studio integration. You only need to format your report output using XSLT and pass it to the studio. This is where a large amount of scalable value is found. Most boomerangs are in this category.
Complex boomerangs consist of several data sources, all still from Workday, and more than one web service call. These boomerangs will be custom studios most of the time and require an integration developer to complete.
What are some examples of boomerang integrations?
Boomerangs are not limited to specific functional areas. Below, we’ve listed some common integrations in both HCM and Financials. Feel free to send us other boomerang ideas to share on this page!
Common HCM Boomerang Integrations
Create Supervisory Organizations - Complex. One task that all businesses have to perform is the creation of supervisory organizations for positions that are people leaders. We can help you do this with a boomerang. You can have this integration run at position creation and leverage data on the position to create the supervisory organization. This saves time during the hiring process and eliminates the mistakes of using the wrong naming convention, forgetting to assign a superior organization, and using the wrong date.
Fix Misaligned Supervisory Organizations - Complex. There are times when your supervisory organizations may get out of sync with the true manager/worker relationship. We can leverage a boomerang to help keep these in sync
Create/Update/Delete Other IDs - Simple. You can use a boomerang to help you maintain Other IDs. Other IDs can be used as a way to hold some custom data for each customer. Instead of having to use a to-do task to go and update the other ids based on certain transactions, we can leverage a boomerang. You can put this type of boomerang on a business process and have condition rules to fire them at exactly the right moment. Examples:
a. Loading of 401k eligible Other ID. A custom boomerang runs at hire to update this other id that is used in benefit group eligibility
b. Loading of Vaccination status Other ID. This was used prior to leveraging the delivered Vaccination tracking application. The employees would fill out a questionnaire around vaccination status and if we built a boomerang to manage the status in this Other ID.
Create/Update/Delete Custom Object / Custom List Values - Complex. The custom object boomerang will 95% of the time be a complex boomerang. This is simply because the web service call needed is a REST API for non-effective data Custom Objects. This is best handled in Studio. You can leverage data in Workday to help maintain the values of custom objects.
a. Loading a custom object indicating the worker had been approved to go into phased retirement. This custom object data was then subsequently used in another boomerang to perform edit position and edit position restrictions.
b. Update custom list for content creator in Workday learning based on members of a specific supervisory org. This field was used to drive a custom object on the learning course for the learning administrator to populate and send downstream. The boomerang will keep the content creator field populated with appropriate workers to pick from.
Completing transactions based on request framework requests - Simple. You can add boomerang integrations to request framework business processes and help automate backend tasks based on responses from your request.
a. Adding workers to committees based on them requesting access via a Request to join employee networks in Workday.
b. We had another boomerang that would load a custom object for a worker indicating they wanted to go into Phased Retirement. A second part of that boomerang would run based on the data in the custom object, to update the worker’s job on the effective date to have a reduced FTE indicating they had started the Phased Retirement Program.
Auto Complete Request Framework Requests - Complex. Do you leverage the request framework, but find the need to ‘close’ these requests annoying? Yes, there are ways to skip the step and have it complete on its own, but you lose the ability to report from the object versus all requests. Do your requests run through an entire approval process yet you still have to ‘close the requests’. Don’t worry we’ve got you covered. The auto-close request boomerang can be used in these situations. We’ve built a boomerang that can be deployed to your tenant and used for any request. You simply need to create a new report for each request, pass it into the studio and you no longer have to close these requests manually.
Common Financial Boomerang Integrations
Journal Entry - Simple. This boomerang will take all journal activity from an operating company and import it to a shadow company used to produce statutory books for international audits.
Role Assignment Removal - Simple. Removing assigned roles from organizations once inactivated to avoid inadvertent access or failed audits.
Credit Card Assignment Boomerang- Simple. Ressaigns credit card transactions to specific employees per company based on custom logic for card fees and transactions in error.
Updating Workday Reference ID to match Object ID - Simple. This boomerang is used to keep the Reference ID and the Workday ID matching for improved reporting. For example, the Supplier ID and Supplier Reference ID. At Go Live, this boomerang looks at existing records to match the number assigned by the sequence generator across both values. Post Go-Live all records, upon creation, are given the Workday assigned Reference ID. If you have any integrations that rely on Supplier ID, Customer ID, Project ID, etc. to sync with other systems, you need a boomerang to make these updates daily. This automation reduces manual maintenance across the team and keeps data integrity at a high level.
Payment Election Boomerang - Simple. This is for global clients that have USD currency on all companies but employ workers in countries outside the US. Runs every five minutes, looks for a mismatch between the Location country and default payment election currency and makes the update on the worker record. It's a must-have if you are global and live on Expenses.
Ad-Hoc Payment Creation for Taxes - Simple. We’ve built a boomerang that is based on payroll settlements that generates AD-Hoc payments. This was used by a customer that wanted a way to record these journals without having to manually create them when ADP pulled funds from their account. Now at time of payroll settlement AD-HOC payments are generated for specific accounts/deductions and sent to their treasury department. They then settle the ad-hoc payments and have an automated process to track back against.
Workday Customer Success Stories
At one, customer, the HR technology team had a to-do step in every create position bp to create supervisory orgs. This was a real nightmare if they used an EIB to create 10,20,30 positions at once. They would have to manually go back and create the supervisory organization, assign a superior, and populate all the data necessary. We were able to completely remove this manual work using a boomerang integration. The customer used specific criteria on the positions to create supervisory organizations and we were able to leverage that same logic in a boomerang to create the supervisory org AS PART OF the create position bp. Eliminating extra inbox noise in the HR Technology inbox and the possibility of duplicative work across multiple HR Technology representatives.
At another, customer, the HR Technology team heavily relied on request framework requests for things like requesting badges, employee network registration, and remote work arrangements just to name a few of the over 20 requests they had. In most of these requests, the close step was redundant and was just skipped. This caused a reporting nightmare as you couldn’t report on the requests from the worker or object associated with them. To alleviate this pain a custom boomerang was developed that could be used to perform the close step automatically leveraging a custom report to pull back the appropriate status, and object. This drastically improved the reporting ability for the requests and removed any manual effort when the company NEEDED to perform the close step. This customer found this highly helpful and the reduction in manual processes and bad data were key wins.
The same customer as #2 above also needed to perform an action based on some of the request responses. For example: When they rolled out the request committee membership request, they needed a way to add approved workers to the committees they requested access to. We were able to build a boomerang integration that runs after the approval and automated close step to add workers to the committee. This reduced the need for manual additions via committee leaders in Workday, thus improving the overall committee management experience for all.
As you can see, the opportunities are there to get Workday to be a much more automated system with some care, evaluation, and experience. We can help you get your Workday tenant running like a well-oiled machine to reduce the hours spent manually maintaining the system.
If you have ideas for boomerangs, have boomerangs that aren’t performing how you expected, or just want to learn, reach out to Stormloop. We’ll gladly listen to your ideas/concerns/problems and provide you with solutions based on our experience with integrations….and specifically boomerangs!
Contact us at info@stormlooptech.com to learn more.
Follow Stormloop here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stormloop-technologies-llc
Written by: Anthony Drew
Follow Anthony here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-drew-4ab44b31/
