Basic Workday Studio Navigation
Our intention with this In The Loop edition is to provide basic Workday Studio navigation guidance. If you have not yet downloaded the Workday Studio application or require additional assistance, please contact Stormloop for support with Workday Studio.
If you’re new to Studio, the user interface may be intimidating when first opened. You may have an integration developed during the initial implementation using Studio, and the developer has moved on to their next project. The business has requested a change to this Studio. Your team is responsible.
Our goal is to streamline and simplify the Workday Studio application, making it less intimidating and enabling you to utilize Workday Studio for projects.
By the end of this blog, you will know the most commonly used icons, and how to connect your Workday tenant.
Key Icons
New Project - This will open a new project and is where every new project starts!
Save - Standard, but essential! We recommend saving your projects often to avoid lost work.
Import CLARs - The Mason jar icons at the top of the tool bar allow you to import files locally, export files or import from Workday Community. To import, simply download the .clar file from your Workday tenant and select that downloaded .clar file when prompted after selecting this icon. (Reminder CLAR stands for Cloud Archive file.)
Deploy - This button on the toolbar will send your projects into Workday. You must have a project selected and be logged into a tenant to deploy successfully. Note: Workday does not have version control. If you deploy a Studio to a tenant, the current version will be overwritten and cannot be extracted. We always recommend saving a local copy or using a tool like GitHub.
Studio Tabs
Project Explorer: The project explorer is where you can see your imported CLARs or Projects. This is also known as the workstation and is used for local development in Studio. To open up a Studio assembly, expand the collection in the Project Explorer and double click assembly:
Cloud Explorer: The cloud explorer displays Studio collections in each authenticated environment. Here, you can import a Studio collection directly from a tenant rather than manually downloading and importing the .clar file.
Connecting Studio to Your Workday Tenant
Navigate to the Cloud Explore box in Workday Studio. This is the icon resembling a business card and is visible here:
Once clicked, you'll see a screen that has Sandbox and Production.
These are not yet linked to your environments. You will have to link the tenants, and if you are working in an Implementation or Preview tenant you will need to choose “Add” to add an additional environment.
You must first inform the Studio application of your tenant by providing the URL and tenant name. Identifying these can be tricky!
Your Workday Data Center: In your Production tenant link, you will see either wd5, wd3, or neither (wd1). This denotes your data center and should be used when selecting the URL for the Workday Studio connection. Please note that the WD1 tenant center uses WD2 for test environments.
Your Workday tenant Name: In your production URL, the tenant name is the key that uniquely identifies your business. For example, our tenant name would like me something like “stormloop” to represent our business. Note that this is case sensitive.
Your Workday Security: Your account must have sufficient security to connect to Workday, and your authentication method must comply with your team’s requirements.
Check back for a future blog on using Oauth 2.0 with Workday Studio or external vendors, and reach out to Stormloop if you have any specific questions or asks.
Palette:
When you first open Studio, the palette area is blank, but as you open projects or build your own you will use this area to navigate and build the different components, elements, and variables.
Studio offers 14 different element categories you can use to build out your integration. In a future blog, we plan to demonstrate a use case for each category.
Within the platte, can toggle between the Design view and Source view. Design is a diagram visualization of your Studio code, and Source is the underlying XML.
The two key areas for Studio beginners are:
Problems - Displays any errors on configuration issues with the Studio.
Properties - Displays configuration details for the assembly element currently selected in the assembly diagram. Edit properties and parameters using the tabs that display along the left-hand side of the view. This will be your most commonly used tab.
Studio Navigation
Once your .clar file is opened in the Palette and you’ve double-clicked the assembly, what can you see? Well, remember that Studios are custom, and different developers may have different styles to achieve the same goal. Hopefully, the Studio is labeled and can be intuitively followed as the process flows.
Here are some basic examples:
Calling a custom report and bringing the response fields into Studio variables:
Pushing a custom web service to an external vendor:
Notice how the process follows arrows. If done correctly, you should be able to download a Studio, open the assembly, and clearly follow the data flows and communication with your Workday tenant. You can see how complexities in Studio development require significant development time, and, for this reason, we also recommend strong design documentation when working on a Workday Studio for easy maintenance later.
We hope this helps! In future blogs, look for a high-detail walkthrough of Studio’s various tools such as API calls to Workday & external vendors, adding maps and attributes, and custom error handling for better reporting.
For more information on Studio from Workday, check out the below Community Links:
Contact us at info@stormlooptech.com to learn more.
Follow Stormloop here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stormloop-technologies-llc
Written by: Scott Rushton
Follow Scott on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-rushton-3aa945a3/