As a report developer, we should always use best practices to create a report and ensure that users can run reports quickly to get the desired results. In this post, I will cover High-level processes to create your custom report, best practices, and how you can optimize your report for performance.
High-Level Process to Create Workday Custom Report:
- Determine Report Type:
For summary view use matrix and composite report. For data in tabular format, your first preference should be the advance report type. - Select Data Source:
Determine which data source to use based on the field list. Your goal should be to pick a data source that returns fewer results but includes the majority of the fields required for the report. If a field does not exit on the primary business object, ensure that you have a linkage to a related business object to achieve the desired outcome. - Create Custom report:
Below steps outlined based on report type custom report but it may very based on report type.- Access Task “Create Custom report”
- Type Custom Report Name (Keep is short and ensure that ourlines the purpose of report)
- Select Data Source
- Select the field requested in in column section of report. If some fields does not exists then create a calculated field based on existing fields.
- Apply sorting if needed
- Apply filter to get desired population in report
- Apply sub filter if data needs to be filter for related business object
- Populate Prompt if any and level them with user friendly names.
- Share the Report with require recipient so that they can find report and run in workday.
Best practice to consider while developing Workday custom report
- Utilize the optimized version of the report data source, for instance, Index report data source: Indexed Workers or Worker for HCM Reporting. Additionally, using a non-indexed report data source with a defined prompt can be faster compared to using a data source without any prompts.
- Organize your filter criteria- Apply filter from discard population from most to lead. Example: If the requirement is to get all employees from Germany and the Hire Date falls into the period then in this case 1st filter should be countries in the selection list Germany and then add hire date criteria in the filter. By this approach you will first country filter will remove most of employees from data selection and the second filter will apply only on employees from Germany so it will be much faster compare to having it vice versa.
- Try to use less number of calc fields on the report. If you are using a calc field then ensure that it’s not so lengthy example one after another an so on.
- Sort – Applying sorting on instance fields can reduce the performance of the report so try to use text field in sorting.
- If you are using a report in integration and enabling it as RaaS then ensure that the XML alias of the field is sorted. example: Keeping alias as Manager_Level_01 will be slower compared to keeping just as MgrL1 or Just as M.
Reference:
- Steps to create custom report: https://youtu.be/D04X8VSLUO8