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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Run and Print a Custom Report that Uses a Business Form Layout

Run and Print a Custom Report that Uses a Business Form Layout

Before printing a custom report that uses a business form layout, you must first upload a business form layout (defined by an
.rptdesign
 file) to Workday and attach it to the custom report.
PDFs generated for Workday custom reports may require you to install language packs when viewing the document using Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader will prompt you and install the language pack for you. This task only needs to be completed once. This is likely to happen if you are viewing a PDF that includes Chinese characters on a computer that is not typically used for viewing Chinese documents. This is normal behavior and helps to reduce the size of the PDFs by not including the required fonts in every PDF generated.
The following steps take place in Workday (as opposed to Workday Studio). This is the final step in using a business form layout: printing a report that uses the business form layout that you've designed in Report Designer.
  1. Sign in to Workday.
  2. Select and run a custom report that has a business form layout attached.
    Note:
     You also can print a business form from the report step of a business process.
  3. Print the report.
    When you run a report that has a business form layout attached, a
    Print
     button appears and persists at the bottom center of the browser window. It is always visible, even when you scroll vertically. To print the report using the business form layout, select either:
    1. The
      Print
       button described above.
    2. The standard
      Print
       icon located at the top right of all custom report results.
    If you schedule the report using the
    Schedule a Report
     task, and multiple business form layouts are available for the report, you can identify exactly which business form layout to use for the scheduled report. To do so, select the
    Business Form (PDF)
     output type on the
    Output
     tab of the
    Schedule a Report
     task, and specify the business form layout to be used.
  4. When a business form is finished processing, a message appears near your sign-in name and you receive a notification.
A PDF is generated based on the report definition and the selected business form layout. If there is only a single business form layout for the report, then the process of generating the PDF file starts immediately when you select to print the report. If multiple, active business form layouts are attached to the report, then you are prompted to select which business form layout to use before the PDF is generated.
When the PDF file generation is complete, the resulting PDF file is sent to
My Reports
 and you receive a notification. Note that if you use
Process Monitor
 to check the status of a report that you've attempted to print, the name of the process is
Print Service Retrieve Report and Generate PDF
.
If the total time required to run a custom report and generate the associated PDF document using a business form layout exceeds 2 hours, the process terminates, and its status in Process Monitor changes from
Processing
 to
Failed
. Similarly, if the Print Layout page discussed in step 4 above is still open, it also displays a message to alert you that the process has failed.