Look Up Payslips, Change Benefits And Log Time With Workday

Your company runs on Workday, and most of what you need from it is a lookup or a request: a worker’s payslips for a mortgage letter, a clock-in from a kiosk that is not Workday, a benefits change after a new baby, a feedback badge for someone who covered a shift. Each of those lives behind a login and a few screens. Workday can do them through an API, a way for one piece of software to ask another to do work, so your intranet, a time clock, a help desk tool or an AI assistant can make the request and bring back the answer.

What Workday does

Workday is enterprise software for human capital management, financial management, enterprise planning and analytics, and the APIs.io listing describes a collection of REST and SOAP APIs across all of those plus platform extensibility. The oldest and broadest surface is the SOAP Web Services API, which Workday says covers 55 service areas including Human Resources, Payroll and Benefits. Alongside it sit the Strategic Sourcing API for procurement events and suppliers, the Adaptive Planning API for budgets and planning data, and the Extend API for building your own apps on top of Workday. The REST surface is split into focused pieces such as Benefit Elections, Compensation Plans, Candidates, Contact Information, Absence Types and Accounting.

What you can get done

We map Workday’s operations to 11 business capabilities. These are the five an HR or finance team reaches for first.

HR Operations Management

The day-to-day of payroll and time: payslips, the inputs that feed payroll, clock events, time entries and timesheets. This is the largest capability, with 32 operations.

• GET /workers/{ID}/paySlips returns a worker’s payslips.
• GET /workers/{ID}/payrollInputs reads the inputs, such as one-off earnings or deductions, going into that worker’s pay.
• POST /workers/{ID}/timeClockEvents records a clock in or clock out, which is how a kiosk or badge reader feeds Workday.
• POST /workers/{ID}/requestTimeEntry logs hours against a timesheet.
• GET /workers/{ID}/timesheets reads the timesheets themselves.

Compensation & Benefits Management

Pay plans, grades and benefits. A benefit election is the set of plans a worker has chosen, and a change event is how a life event or an open enrolment moves it. There are 12 operations.

• GET /workers/{ID}/compensationPlans shows a worker’s current compensation plans.
• POST /workers/{ID}/requestCompensationChange starts a pay change request.
• GET /workers/{ID}/benefitElections reads what a worker is currently enrolled in.
• GET /workers/{ID}/eligibleBenefitPlans lists the plans they could choose.
• POST /workers/{ID}/changeBenefits starts a benefits change.
• POST /workers/{ID}/requestOneTimePayment requests a bonus or other one-time payment.

Talent Management

Performance reviews, goals, feedback and succession. There are 11 operations.

• GET /workers/{ID}/performanceReviews reads a worker’s reviews.
• GET /workers/{ID}/goals lists their goals.
• POST /workers/{ID}/feedbackBadges gives a feedback badge, a small public recognition.
• POST /workers/{ID}/requestFeedback asks colleagues for feedback on someone.
• GET /successionPlans lists the succession plans in place for key roles.

Talent Acquisition Management

Hiring: requisitions, postings, candidates and applications. These nine operations are read-only, which suits reporting and keeping a careers site in step.

• GET /jobRequisitions lists the open requisitions, the approved requests to hire.
• GET /jobPostings lists the postings advertising them.
• GET /candidates lists candidates.
• GET /jobApplications lists applications against postings.

Purchase Order Management

On the finance side, suppliers and purchase orders are readable, so a spend dashboard or an approvals tool can see them without a report export.

• GET /suppliers lists suppliers.
• GET /suppliers/{ID} reads one supplier.
• GET /purchaseOrders lists purchase orders.

Two smaller finance capabilities round this out: General Ledger Management exposes accounting journals, and Financial Management exposes expense reports. Human Capital Management itself holds leave of absence requests and job profiles.

Workflows that put it together

A workflow is a recipe: several API calls made in a set order, each using what the last one returned. They are written in Arazzo, an open format for describing them, and Workday has 20 of them on APIs.io.

• Find Worker and Load Detail searches workers by name, then loads the match’s full detail and recent history.
• Clock Time Event confirms a worker, reads their recent clock events, then records a new clock in or out.
• Log Time Entry confirms a worker, reads their timesheets, then logs a new entry.
• Change Benefits reads current elections and eligible plans, then starts a benefit change event.
• Change Worker Job confirms a worker, looks up the target job profile and position, then starts a job change.
• Give Feedback Badge confirms a worker, reviews their existing badges, then gives a new one.
• Person Contact 360 searches people, loads the match, then gathers home and work contact information.
• Explore Supervisory Organization searches organizations, loads the first match, and lists its workers.

Getting started

Workday is an enterprise product: access to these APIs comes with a Workday tenant, so the person to start with is whoever administers Workday at your company rather than a signup form. The Workday Community API pages are the main reference, the REST API authentication section explains how a call is authorised, and the Workday Spend documentation covers the sourcing and procurement side. On APIs.io you can browse the Workday profile, the SOAP Web Services API, the Benefit Elections API and the Strategic Sourcing API. Pick the one request your HR inbox fields most often, a payslip lookup is the usual answer, and ask your Workday administrator whether the worker endpoints above are already enabled in your tenant.