Setup Considerations: Analytics Dashboards
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of Analytics Dashboards. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
Analytics Dashboards enable you to discover, view, and personalize interactive data displays in Workday. You can compile multiple report-backed visualizations into a single dashboard, organize them across tabs, and apply prompt mapping to filter data dynamically at the global, tab, or card levels. Workers can interact with published dashboards to drill into visual data hierarchies, customize layouts, and save personal custom views without altering the original dashboard configuration or affecting other workers.
Business Benefits
Analytics dashboards empower organizations with an interactive reporting experience tailored to specific roles and analytical needs:
- Consolidates data from multiple custom reports onto a unified dashboard.
- Applies prompts at global dashboard, tab, or card levels to isolate relevant metrics efficiently.
- Enables users to save up to 12 personal custom views to preserve prompt selections and card layouts without impacting the author'sOriginal Viewor other workers.
- Enables workers to drill down into visual hierarchies or launch source reports directly.
- Enables exporting visualization cards to PDF or Excel formats for executive presentations and external audits.
Use Cases
- A finance author builds a Headcount Analytics dashboard with fiscal year and cost center prompts, consolidating workforce and financial subreports onto a single dashboard for executive leaders.
- A cost center manager opens a shared organizational dashboard, applies a specific cost center filter, hides non-essential KPI cards inLayout Mode, and saves the configuration as a personal custom view for monthly reviews.
Questions to Consider
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
Which security groups require authoring capabilities versus viewing capabilities? | Select Modify access on the Manage: Analytics Dashboards domain to administrators and authors who need to create, edit, delete, and share dashboards. Select View access to workers who only need to run, filter, and personalize dashboards. |
How should prompt mapping be structured across dashboard tabs? | Determine whether prompt keys should be mapped at the Global dashboard level, which applies across all tabs, or the tab level, which applies only to specific tabs. Ensure that all underlying report data sources expose matching prompt fields. |
How will authors communicate shared dashboard access to users? | Workday does not send automatic notifications when a dashboard is shared. You must communicate exact dashboard names to target audiences so workers can locate them using global search or the Maintain Analytics Dashboards task. |
Recommendations
- Configure and test report-backed visualizations and prompt key mappings in an Implementation or Sandbox Preview tenant before publishing dashboards in Production.
- Verify that all underlying report prompts have default values or explicit parameter selections configured before publishing a dashboard.
- Group related visualization cards across up to 15 tabs and limit card counts per tab up to 12 cards per tab, for optimal page-rendering performance.
Requirements
- You must configure permissions on theManage: Analytics Dashboardsdomain in the System functional area and run theActivate Pending Security Policy Changestask. Workday delivers this domain policy empty and disabled by default.
- Reports do not require theEnable as Workletoption selected on the report definition to render as visualization cards on an analytics dashboard.
- You must populate all undefined prompt defaults on underlying report definitions before you can add them as visualization cards or publish the dashboard. Reports with undefined prompt defaults still appear in the report catalog search.
- You must publish a dashboard before you can share it with workers or security groups.
- Workers must have security access to underlying report data sources and report fields to view data in visualization cards. Domain access onManage: Analytics Dashboardsalone does not grant access to protected report data.
Limitations
- Workers viewing a shared dashboard cannot add new reports or visualization cards. Authors can add content; workers can filter, reorder, resize, or hide exposed content.
- Ability to run a report in the Workday UI does not guarantee discovery in the report catalog search. Reports must meet API eligibility filters for supported report types and data sources. Search report types aren't eligible. An initial report search returns a maximum of 500 results, and Workday indicates when results are capped.
- Dashboards support a maximum of 15 tabs and up to 12 visualization cards per tab.
- Workers can save up to 12 personal custom views per dashboard.
- Visualization report queries time out after 45 seconds. Workday automatically retries failed queries up to 3 times before displaying an error indicator on the card.
- Workday does not send automatic notifications when you share a dashboard with workers or security groups.
- Tab names, prompt key labels, and custom view names are limited to 50 characters each. Dashboard descriptions are limited to 1,500 characters.
- Dashboard viewers always see the most recently published version. Edits you save to a draft aren't visible to other workers until you publish, and changes to dashboard sharing take effect immediately against the current published version.
Tenant Setup
No impact. Feature access and task availability are determined by domain security policy configuration.
Security
Configure the
Manage: Analytics Dashboards
domain in the System functional area. Select
View
access to enable the View Analytics Dashboard
and Maintain Analytics Dashboards
tasks for consumers. Select
Modify
access to enable the Create Analytics Dashboard
, Edit Analytics Dashboard
, Delete Analytics Dashboard
, Share Analytics Dashboard
, and Maintain Analytics Dashboards
tasks for authors and administrators. Authors assign dashboard-level sharing permissions to individual users or security groups from the
Share
dialog or the Maintain Analytics Dashboards
catalog.Business Processes
No impact.
Reporting
Reports or Dashboards | Considerations |
|---|---|
Maintain Analytics Dashboards | Central catalog used to view, run, edit, delete, and manage security for dashboards. |
Create Analytics Dashboards | Launches the authoring canvas to create and configure new dashboards. |
View Analytics Dashboards | Displays published dashboards for consumers and enables personalization mode. |
Integrations
No impact.
Connections and Touchpoints
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.