Create Workday-Connected Visualizations in Klipfolio



Use CData Connect Cloud to connect to Workday Data from Klipfolio and build custom visualizations using live Workday data.

Klipfolio is an online dashboard platform designed to create real-time business dashboards, whether for your team or clients. When combined with CData Connect Cloud, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to Workday data to create visualizations, reports, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on connecting to Workday within Connect Cloud and creating visualizations using Workday data in Klipfolio.

CData Connect Cloud offers a direct cloud-to-cloud interface for Workday, enabling you to construct reports from real-time Workday data data within Klipfolio—without the need for data replication to a database natively supported by Klipfolio. While building visualizations, Klipfolio generates SQL queries to fetch data. With optimized data processing capabilities out of the box, CData Connect Cloud efficiently directs all supported SQL operations (such as filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Workday, harnessing server-side processing to swiftly retrieve the requested Workday data 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 Klipfolio

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

  1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
  2. Select "Workday" from the Add Connection panel
  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.

  4. Click Create & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Workday Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
  2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
  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, you are ready to connect to Workday data Klipfolio.

Connect to Workday from Klipfolio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Klipfolio to create a new Workday data source.

  1. Open Klipfolio
  2. Click in Data Sources to add a new data source
  3. Search for and select MSSQL as the Service
  4. Click "Create a custom MSSQL data source"
  5. Configure the data source by setting the MSSQL connection properties:
    • Host: tds.cdata.com
    • Port: 14333
    • Database: your database (e.g., Workday1)
    • Driver: MS SQL
    • Username: a Connect Cloud user (e.g. [email protected])
    • Password: the above user's PAT
    • SQL Query: any query to retrieve data (e.g. SELECT * FROM Workers )
    • Select the checkbox to "Include column headers"
    • Select the checkbox to "Use SSL/TLS"
  6. Click "Get data" to preview the Workday data before building a data model.

Build a Data Model

After retrieving the data, click the checkbox to "Model your data" and click "Continue." In the new window, configure your data model.

  1. Confirm that the model includes all columns you wish to work with
  2. Name your model
  3. (optional) Set the Description
  4. Set "Header in row" to 1
  5. Click the toggle to "Exclude data before row" and set the value to 2
  6. Click "Save and Exit"

Create a Metric

With the data modeled, we are ready to create a Metric (or visualization) of the data to be used in the Klipfolio platform for dashboards, reporting, and more.

  1. Click "Create metrics"
  2. Select a Data source
  3. Select a Metric value and default aggregation
  4. Select Segmentation(s)
  5. Select a Date & time
  6. Select a Data shape
  7. Configure the Display settings
  8. Click Save
  9. Navigate to your Metric and further configure the visualization

SQL Access to Workday Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a Metric built from live Workday data. You can add it to a new dashboard, share, and more. Easily create more data sources and new visualizations, produce reports, and more — all without replicating Workday data.

To get SQL data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect Cloud.

Ready to get started?

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