Visualize Live Workday Data in Power BI (via CData Connect Cloud)

Power BI transforms your company's data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, you get access to Workday data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to use CData Connect to create a live connection to Workday, connect to Workday data from Power BI and then create reports on Workday data in Power BI.

Configure Workday Connectivity for Power BI

Connectivity to Workday from Power BI is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Workday data from Power BI, 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, there are three pieces of information required: Authentication, API URL, and WSDL URL.

   Authentication

   To authenticate, specify your User and Password. Note that you must append your Tenant to your User separated by an '@' character. For instance, if you normally log in with 'geraldg' and your Tenant is 'mycompany_mc1', then your User should be specified as 'geraldg@mycompany_mc1'.

   API URL

   The API URL may be specified either directly via APIURL, or it may be constructed from the Tenant, Service, and Host. The APIURL is constructed in the following format: <Host>/ccx/service/<Tenant>/<Service>.

   WSDL URL

   The WSDLURL may be specified in its entirety, or may be constructed from the Service and WSDLVersion connection properties. The WSDLURL is constructed in the following format: https://community.workday.com/sites/default/files/file-hosting/productionapi/<Service>/<WSDLVersion>/<Service>.wsdl

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

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Workday data from Power BI.

Query Workday Tables

Follow the steps below to build a query to pull Workday data into the report:

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> Online Services -> CData Connect Cloud and click "Connect"
2. Click "Sign in" and authenticate with your CData Connect Cloud account
3. After signing in, click "Connect"
4. Select tables in the Navigator dialog
5. Click Load to establish the connection to your Workday data from Power BI

Create Workday Data Visualizations

After connecting to the data into Power BI, you can create data visualizations in the Report view by dragging fields from the Fields pane onto the canvas. Select the dimensions and measures you wish to visualize along with the chart type.

Click Refresh to synchronize your report with any changes to the data.

Live Access to Workday Data from Data Applications

With CData Connect Cloud you have a direct connection to Workday data from Power BI. You can import more data, create new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Workday data.

To get SQL data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources (including Workday) directly from your on-premise BI, reporting, ETL and other data applications, visit the CData Connect page and start a free trial.