Workday Interview Questions

Workday was established with an innovative idea to allocate people at the center of enterprise software. Workday HCM was introduced to unite a wide range of HR functionality into a single system. Human Capital Management (HCM) advance towards employees as assets, whose current and future value can be measured and enhanced through investment.

1. What is Workday?

• Workday is a new generation of cloud-based applications that service human resources, payroll, and financial needs for organizations.
• Workday is the leader in cloud-based, enterprise applications that combine a lower cost of ownership with an innovative approach for global businesses.
• Workday provides unified Financial Management and Human Capital Management (HCM) applications designed for today’s organizations and the way people work.
• Workday is delivered in the cloud and leverages a modern technology platform, which will provide greater information accessibility.

2. What are the different modules present in Workday?

The different modules present in Workday are:

• Workday HCM
• Workday Financial

3. What are the advantages of Workday?

• Workday enables 24/7 access to the information over a secure network.
• Workday’s SaaS/cloud delivery model allows services to reach customers with a minimal number of servers, reducing energy needs.
• Workday functionality offers employee and manager self-service, enabling staff to update or access their information privately from any computer or mobile device with internet access
• Workday is designed to support the unique needs of higher education.

4. Will Workday work on any computer with any internet browser?

Workday is supported by most internet browsers, including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari. For those who need to use older versions of IE (e.g., Darcy or IRES users), you will need to use Chrome, FireFox or Safari to log into Workday.

5. What does “ERP” mean and how does it relate to Workday?

“ERP” is an acronym for “Enterprise Resource Planning” and is a generic industry term for integrated suites of business systems (such as payroll, HR, and finance systems). Workday became ERP for human resources, academic, and payroll business processes as of July 2015.

6. What types of reports will Workday provide?

HCM, payroll, and financials in Workday will have standard and custom reports according to its primary business focus. Some reports combine information from both the HCM/Payroll and the Financials modules. Reports can have features such as custom prompts, calculated fields, and interactivity, as well as graphics and charts. Data in certain types of reports can also be made available to other applications.

 7. What sources of information will be used in Workday for reporting in the future?

In addition to becoming the official source of business information for HCM, payroll, and financials, Workday will also become the main source for your reporting needs whenever possible. Reporting from the Institutional Data Store (IDS) using Cognos or other tools will supplement Workday reporting capabilities and will be used whenever data that do not exist in Workday are needed.

8. If I am used to getting my reports through Cognos, where will I get them when Workday goes live?

If there are critical data that Workday does not handle or if date ranges fall outside of what will exist in Workday, then the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) team will coordinate the use of other systems such as Cognos, Tableau, and the Institutional Data Store (IDS).

9. Will every piece of existing data from the mainframe and Workday be available in the IDS?

No, the IDS is not a backup system. Any data from the mainframe that will no longer be needed will be archived separately. Data that are in Workday will be backed up on Workday servers. The Institutional Data Store (IDS) will only store a subset of Workday data if the data have been identified as our most important data and are a requirement for a critical downstream report or data feed that cannot be handled by Workday or another application.\

10. What is Workday HCM?

Workday Human Capital Management is the only application that unifies HR and Talent Management into a single system-of-record. And with embedded analytics, manager and employee self-service, and a user experience unlike any other enterprise application, Workday redefines what it means to manage a global, mobile, and diverse workforce.

Learn Workday HCM from Industry Experts

11. What is Workday?

Workday is an enterprise business service software application that integrates human resources, payroll, finance, and purchasing.  It delivers these applications in a cloud model that allows people to work collaboratively in a real-time environment that is accessible to every member of Madison College.  PeopleSoft Student will not be impacted by this change.

12. What are the advantages of Workday?

Workday provides employees with more immediate access to data since transactions are real-time. Workday also offers greater flexibility. The reports that will be available to managers will give them more insight to their data, allowing them to make data-driven decisions. Employees will be able to view or run their own reports on demand rather than having to request a report and waiting for the results of that request. Employees will be able to access and manage their own HR benefit elections, address changes, dependent changes, withholding exemptions, absence requests and time tracking entries, to name a few.

13. How can get training on Workday?

Find training materials at the WORKDAY TRAINING & RESOURCES PAGE.

14. What kind of reporting will be available?

Workday will provide access to real-time, multi-dimensional reports and analytics with the ability to drill down to transaction-level details, and allow an employee or manager to take immediate action in Workday directly off any report or analytic. With Workday, reports give you access to relevant data in context, making the informative actionable.

15. Who will have access to Workday? Can everyone generate reports?

Access to Workday is determined by login credentials and settings.  All employees will have some level of access.  An individual’s level of access will determine which delivered reports and/or data they can view.

16. How do I keep informed of this initiative?

The best place to go for information is the Workday web page.

17. As an employee, why might I use Workday?

The Workday will be used differently by different groups of employees (i.e. FT Faculty vs. PT Faculty vs. PSRP employee).  Generally, based on your role, an employee will use Workday for self-service items such as: benefit elections, address changes, dependent changes, withholding exemptions, time tracking and absence requests.  For Finance, you will use Workday for travel authorizations and expense reimbursement.

18. Will I need to use Workday for any student-related academic information?

No.  Student, class, schedule and grade information will remain in the PeopleSoft Student System accessed using the current processes.

19. Workday HCM?

Workday Human Capital Management, Workday Human Capital Management is the only application that unifies HR and Talent Management into a single system-of-record. And with embedded analytics, manager and employee self-service, and a user experience unlike any other enterprise application, Workday redefines what it means to manage a global, mobile, and diverse workforce.

20. What are the main features of Workday Human Capital Management?

Workday Human Capital Management offers the following features:

• Talent Management
• Time Tracking
• Payroll Solutions
• Goal Management
• Performance Management
• Succession Planning
• Career and Development Planning
• Payroll Co-Sourcing Services
• Cloud Connect for Third-Party Payroll

21. How much does Workday Human Capital Management cost?

We have the following pricing information for Workday Human Capital Management:

Pricing model: One-time Licence, Subscription

Register for Live Webinar on Workday HCM

22. Who are the typical users of Workday Human Capital Management?

Workday Human Capital Management has the following typical customers:

Large Enterprises, Mid Size Business

23. What languages does Workday Human Capital Management support?

Workday Human Capital Management supports the following languages:

English

24. What type of pricing plans does Workday Human Capital Management offer?

Workday Human Capital Management has the following pricing plans:

One-time Licence, Subscription

25. Does Workday Human Capital Management offer an API? 

No, Workday Human Capital Management does not have an API available.

26. What level of support does Workday Human Capital Management offer? 

Workday Human Capital Management offers the following support options:
Knowledge Base, Online Support, Phone Support.

27. Name a few modules of the Workday Human Capital Management Suite.

Absence, Benefits, Compensation, Onboarding, Payroll, Recruiting Time Tracking

28. Name some post-production and pre-production Workday Tenants.

Post-production: Production tenant and Sandbox tenant.

Pre-production or implementation: Implementation tenant and Gold tenant.

29. How is Workday reporting different to other SQL ERP systems?

Workday follows an object-oriented relationship model. When creating a report, you select a Primary Business Object and a Data Source.

30. What are some ways to access a Workday Standard Delivered Report?

Browsing by Category in the Sitemap, running Workday Standard Reports or writing the name of a specific report in the search bar.

31. What are the main types of Workday Integrations?

Workday Studio Integration, Enterprise Information Builder (EIB) Integration, Cloud Connect Integration.

32. What is a RaaS Report?

A Workday Report that has been web service enabled is called Report-as-a-Service.

33. What is a Business Process?

A series of tasks that lead to the completion of an overall business event. For example: recruiting an employee.

34. Name a few Workday assigned security groups.

All Users, All Employees, All Contingent Workers, All Retirees.

35. Name some Workday security group types.

User-based, Role-based, Job-based, Level-based, Integration System

36. Name two types of Workday Standard Reports and a difference between them.

Report Writer Reports and XpressO reports. Report Writer can be copied and customized, but you cannot copy XpressO reports.

37. What are two ways to create a report in Workday?

• Run the Create Custom Report task.
• Copy a Workday Standard Report and modify it.

38. What are some of the Report Types in the Workday Report Writer?

Simple, Advanced, Composite, Search, Matrix, etc.

39. Differences between Simple and Advanced Reports.

• Simple reports cannot access related Business Objects while Advanced Reports can.
• Simple reports cannot be shared while Advanced Reports can be shared.
• Simple reports cannot be RaaS enabled, Advanced Reports can be RaaS enabled.

40. If you share a report with everyone within your organization, will anyone be able to see the same output when running the report with the same input values? Why?

No, the output will depend on the security access to the data source of the person who is running the report.

41. What are the main types of Workday Integrations?

The main types of integrations are Workday Studio Integration, Enterprise Information Builder (EIB) Integration and Cloud Connect Integration.

42. How do you select which solution to use?

When deciding over which tool to use we need to take into account some factors; whenever you take in the design of an integration, from the requirements you should follow a roadmap, here is an example of it:

• Is the solution already pre-built? Am I connecting to a third-party vendor with a solution already in place? – If yes, most likely you will choose a Core Connector.
• Does this integration just need to export or import some data into Workday? – If yes, then most likely you need to go with EIBs.
• Do I need to execute several rules, and reports to get the data and calculate the results I need? For example: Determining payroll between Exempt and Non-Exempt employees, calculate deductions, etc. If yes, then most likely you need a Workday Studio Integration.

43. Name some Integration ID types.

Workday ID, External ID, Reference ID

44. What do you use XSLT for in an integration?

You use XSLT to transform the input or output data going into an XML document.