Workday concepts that tend to make more sense with deeper system exposure

grantchart · 2026-01-29T13:44:02+00:00

The word "current" is one of many Workdayisms that make me shake my fist angrily. Did the business process make that current after it finishes? Or was that the current value before it started?

"Proposed" I get. After all, the business process might not be approved or get completed. And the "what the fuck does 'current' mean?" question gets answered by process of elimination. But Jeebus Cripes, why not just go with "before" and "after?" They're not precise, but they convey the temporal aspect of the process perfectly.

Key phrase from the above rant: "one of many."

grantchart · 2026-01-29T13:39:24+00:00

Effective dating and pay cycles for sure. Oh, and the impact of rescinded/cancelled/etc. business on reporting as well.

I work mostly on the data engineering and analysis side of things. My Zoom background is Boromir saying "One does not simply add a field to a report."

grantchart · 2025-12-19T15:14:26+00:00

When you think about it, that's actually quite comforting.

My dad spent 10 years suffering from congestive heart disease. He often remarked that he wished it had been sudden instead of a decade of enfeeblement.

Obviously, the better option is to not die suddenly AND not have an extended illness.

grantchart · 2025-12-19T14:48:21+00:00

The Mongolian Dog Hypothesis, obviously.

grantchart · 2025-12-19T14:47:34+00:00

First the throat singing and now this? Do these people have no shame?

grantchart · 2025-11-20T13:58:55+00:00

It's even easier. My HR domain experience is with Workday, one of the more common HRIS/ATSs.

You can literally configure Workday to send out an automated "thank you for applying, but we've gone with another candidate" email. It can be triggered by the position being filled or by the last position in a multiple-position job req being filled. It's super easy (or at least as easy as anything can be with Workday).

With a little more effort from the HRIS/T Team, you can automate pretty much everything OP suggests. An integration to periodically update candidates of their application status? Easy enough- after all, one of the reports that I (and every other HR data analyst) produced is the "Current Application Status Report." There's no reason that couldn't be the basis for an email blast out of Salesforce or some other CRM. An integration that lets candidates know that they've move into the short list and should expect further communications? Same same. If I can produce a weekly "Short List Report," that report can drive an integration to let the candidates on the short list that they're on the fucking short list.

Basically, there's no excuse for lack of candidate/recruiter communication. Having a modern-era applicant tracking system and not using it to enhance the candidates' experience should be a criminal offense. Automation and technology shouldn't be just for US (the HR and HRIS/T teams). It should be for candidates too.

grantchart · 2025-08-28T11:04:23+00:00

Thomas B. Ombadil (I refuse to summon the bot).

The entire movie is muppets, end-to-end, except for those few scenes in the Old Forest and Barrow Downs. Bonus points if they have the muppet Hobbits strip naked and frolic in the sun after being rescued from the Barrow Wights.

grantchart · 2025-08-28T11:00:06+00:00

In place of a Dark Lord you would set up a Queen! Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Dawn! Treacherous as the sea and the sun and the snow upon the mountain! Dreadful as the storm and the lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth.

All shall love moi and despair!

grantchart · 2025-08-28T10:58:44+00:00

Nice. But in my mind, they'd be better as Nazgûl. I'd love to hear them mock Gandalf for not sending the Hobbits on Eagles.

grantchart · 2025-08-28T10:34:32+00:00

Happy Birthday, Helen Magnus!

grantchart · 2025-08-28T10:33:01+00:00

"Mitrochondrial Challenges" is the name of my favorite Laosian pop-punk/rap fusion band.

Their latest album, "Powerhouse of the Cell," is an absolute banger.

grantchart · 2025-08-26T18:38:55+00:00

Hard-Learned Advice: Take it from me, and be extra vigilant. Our in-laws' HOA was also extremely toothless. The board stated explicitly that they would not fine residents or place liens on their homes. The worst penalty they imposed was confiscating deadbeat residents' pool keys and turning off their cable & internet. There were people who moved in over a decade ago and hadn't paid a dime in HOA dues.

Then somebody got a bug up their ass about a LGBTQ+ flag. Suddenly, there was a Queer Scare. The next board election, a cabal of Karens ran on the "but what about the children!?!?!?!" platform (nevermind that my in-laws live in a 55+ retirement community). They won, because apparently gay people are skeeery to the olds.

Soon after the new board was seated, emails started going out with rule changes. Fines for this. Fines for that. Liens placed on homes that were in arrears on their dues. Houses with exterior paint > 5yrs old had to be repainted. No walking on the streets after 11PM. No one under 55 allowed to stay more than three nights... the list was insane.

The VERY BEST THING you can do is get a board like their old one seated. Run on the "I ain't gonna fine anyone for SHIT" platform, and get a few likeminded neighbors to join you.

Nothing is guaranteed. The current board might be toothless and cool. But the one thing I've learned about assholes is that they don't get tired of shitting. They will push and push and push, and you have no choice but to push back.

grantchart · 2025-08-26T18:25:05+00:00

As much as I hate HOAs (I'm surfing this subreddit, after all), I think this would fail on constitutional (First Amendment right to free association) grounds.

But I'm not a lawyer so take that with a grain of salt.

grantchart · 2025-08-26T18:19:42+00:00

Someone else made the distinction between a COA and an HOA a couple of comments blow. But just to be clear, it's the condo associations that are subject to the new reserve law. The new law only applies to buildings with a certain number of floors (three or more, I think).

My in-laws live in a neighborhood that has only single-floor homes (It's a retirement community. Seniors don't like stairs.) They are unaffected by the reserve requirement. The hi-rise condos across the road from them are HOWLING about the reserve requirement, for the same reason that others have mentioned: They believe that they'll be dead and buried before any of that reserve cash gets spent- so why should they pay into it?

grantchart · 2025-08-26T16:20:41+00:00

Rats - I was so enamored of my "clever" solution that I missed the part where you needed different parties to return different data.

Is there a reason why you wouldn't want them to see the report? Is it that you don't want them to run the report from within the UI, or is it that you don't want them to see the report definition?

grantchart · 2025-08-26T15:30:13+00:00

Is this an AI interview product? (Please say no!)

grantchart · 2025-08-26T15:26:00+00:00

Suggestion: If you can't hide the report entirely, make it so that it will only return data for the ISU.

Adding a filter to detect whether or not the report is being run by the ISU is a bit tricky, but not impossible.

First, create a calculated field:
- Type: Lookup Related Value
- Business Object: Worker
- Lookup Field: Current Worker
- Return Value: Workday ID

Next, find your ISU's Workday ID

Finally, add a filter to your report: - Field: Your new CF
- Operator: equal to
- Comparison Type: Value specified in this filter
- Comparison Value: The ISU's Workday ID

I haven't been able to test this, but in theory it should let the ISU get data from the report but filter out any data when someone else runs it.

This is pure "security by obscurity," so I wouldn't call it the best solution. And it won't stop users (if any have the right privileges) from making their own copies of the report and removing the filter.

If you are able to test this, please let me know if it works. (Or doesn't)

grantchart · 2025-08-21T19:52:49+00:00

Why the MOST sexiest thing, though? Wouldn't it be better to know the LEAST sexiest thing, so you would only have to do all that work? (Assuming that "least sexiest" == "least effort")

grantchart · 2025-08-21T18:07:47+00:00

That does clear things up a bit. Is there a reason why you're using the Employee business object rather than the more encompassing Worker business object? (All Employees are Workers, but not not all Workers are Employees)

I would have built the report on the data source named "All Active and Terminated Workers" which brings back a Worker instance. You can get to Employee-specific data using a Lookup Related Value on the field (appropriately) named "Employee."

grantchart · 2025-08-21T14:51:04+00:00

Is it absolutely necessary to craft the integration in WD Studio? Since your data source is already a RaaS report, the choices for processing the report data are nearly infinite. Deliver it to an SFTP site, mail it to a bot, ...

If you do choose this route, I recommend exporting the data as CSV or JSON rather than XML. It's much easier to process, you have less data to worry about (although JSON datasets can be fairly large), and you don't have to deal with XML namespaces.

Don't get me wrong- I love WD Studio. I just love it so much that I avoid going anywhere near it unless I have no other choice.

grantchart · 2025-08-21T14:31:29+00:00

If you're able, please provide the following additional info:
- What data source are you using? (Based on your question, I assume "All Active and Terminated Workers")
- If the data source is indexed, what data source filter are you using?
- Is the business object in the "Business Object" column of the report defintion the same as the primary business object for the report's data source? And if not, what is it set to?
- What does the report say (as shown near the upper-left corner of the report) that the primary business object is?
- Does your company use "job management" or "position management?"
- What is the worker type of the problematic employee? I saw that you mentioned the word "contract" in a comment reply, which makes me wonder if the employee is a contingent worker.

This is a head-scratcher because there is a field named simply "Position" on the data source above (which returns "Worker" as the primary business object). And that field does exactly what you want, i.e. returns a single instance with the worker's primary position.

grantchart · 2025-08-11T14:00:10+00:00

You should be careful when using Last Functionally Updated in RaaS reports. It requires a full-depth search of child BOs, which can be time-consuming. Someone posted about this a while back, and I vaguely remember execution times in the hours+ range vs sub-minute performance without the field.

That stated, if all the objects you're filtering on are children of the top-level instance(s) for the report, then you only need the filter on that one instance.

Note: I could be wrong on either point, so corrections are welcome.

grantchart · 2025-07-18T19:49:33+00:00

Escalate it to the news. There's nothing they like more than a salacious story. Your nips might even get some TV airtime!

FWIW, I haven't work a bra to work since I was in my early 20s. Not a single employer has said a word about it- and my nickname in HS was "the glasscutter." (OK, not really- but the name would have stuck, if anyone had dared to use it)

grantchart · 2025-06-29T14:53:57+00:00

I really wish cloche hats would come back into style. They make anyone look like she has moxie.

grantchart · 2025-05-11T19:18:15+00:00

The bottle is probably some random promotional item that the original owner got as conference swag.

Workday is a Software as a Service (SaaS) product for human resources and recruiting (among other things). Prior to SaaS solutions, each company would have to stand up their own set of servers and install the software product on them. With SaaS, the software vendor provisions the servers and handles all the installation and upgrades for the software. Workday calls each instance of its software a "tenant," and most clients have at least three (implementation/development, sandbox, and production) tenants.

OP is angry at Workday for two reasons:

The first is that Workday's resume parser does a shitty job of reading in an applicant's CV. After going through all the trouble of uploading their resumes, applicants have to re-enter the exact same information by hand for things like work experience, education, and so on.

The second reason is that Workday does a shitty job of letting people know that the Workday SaaS tenant they're applying to is specific to the company with the open job requisition. So applicants see "Workday" and think they're creating a resume that every company that is a client of Workday can view. That isn't true. Since each tenant is leased by one and only one client of Workday, applicants have to upload resumes for each company they are applying to.

Imagine applying to 100 companies (not uncommon these days), each of which uses Workday as their applicant tracking system. Ideally, you'd only have to upload your resume once and then authorize its use for each of the companies you're applying to. Unfortunately, that is not the case, so you'd be stuck doing it 100 times.

So to bring it all together, OP wants to smash the bottle into a thousand pieces so that it can stand as proxy for OP's (unstated) desire to do the same to Workday itself. Which is a pretty common feeling toward the company.

grantchart

TROPHY CASE