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Get the Report →Integrate Workday Data into Automated Tasks with Power Automate
Use CData Connect Cloud to connect to Workday data and integrate live Workday data into your Power Automate tasks.
Microsoft Power Automate is an online service that automates events (known as workflows) across the most common apps and services. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Workday data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Connect Cloud from Power Automate and integrate live Workday data into your workflows and tasks.
CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Workday, allowing you to easily integrate with live Workday data in Power Automate — without replicating the data. CData Connect Cloud looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Automate and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Workday, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Workday 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 Power Automate
Connectivity to Workday from Power Automate is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Workday data from Power Automate, we start by creating and configuring a Workday connection.
- Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
- Select "Workday" from the Add Connection panel
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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.
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.
API ConnectionType Value WQL WQL Reports as a Service Reports REST REST SOAP SOAP
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.
- Click Create & Test
- 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.
- Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
- On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
- Give your PAT a name and click Create.
- 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 from Power Automate.
Connecting to CData Connect Cloud
To use Connect Cloud to integrate Workday data into your Power Automate tasks, you need a new SQL Server connection:
- Log in to Power Automate
- Click Data -> Connections -> New connection
- Select SQL Server
- In the connection wizard:
- Choose to connect directly
- Set SQL server name to tds.cdata.com,14333
- Set SQL database name to the name of the Workday connection (e.g. Workday1)
- Set Username to a Connect Cloud user (e.g. [email protected])
- Set Password to the PAT for the above user
- Click Create
Integrating Workday Data into Power Automate Tasks
With the connection to Connect Cloud configured, you are ready to integrate live Workday data into your Power Automate tasks.
- Log in to Power Automate
- Click My flows -> New flow and choose to create the flow from blank or template
- Add (or configure) a SQL Server action (like Get rows) and configure the action to connect to your Connect Cloud connection
- Select a Table to work with (from the drop-down menu) and configure any advanced options (like filters, orders, etc)
- Configure any actions to follow and test, then save the flow
SQL Access to Workday Data from Cloud Applications
Now you have a direct connection to live Workday data from Power Automate tasks. You can create more connections and workflows to drive business — all without replicating Workday data.
To get SQL data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect Cloud.
Related Power Automate Articles
This article walks through using CData Connect Cloud with Power Automate (Online). Check out our other articles for more ways to work with Power Automate Desktop: