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Last Updated: 2025-05-02
Setup Considerations: Composite Reports

Setup Considerations: Composite Reports

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of composite reports. It explains:
  • Why to set them up.
  • How they fit 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 They Are

With composite reports, you can combine data from multiple sources into a single report. You can use report data sources to collate data from these types of subreports:
  • Advanced
  • Matrix
  • Trending

Business Benefits

Composite reports enable you to:
  • Consolidate and compare data across multiple data sources and time periods.
  • Format reports for browsers, Microsoft Excel, mobile devices, and PDFs.
  • Reduce or eliminate manual Excel intervention by incorporating style options directly in the report designer.

Use Cases

  • Deliver a detailed financial statement that compares plan and actual data.
  • Measure the health of your organization by comparing headcount and turnover.
  • Prepare comprehensive payroll documents.
  • Track internal metrics for your organization.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
Which report type should you use as your subreport?
  • Advanced reports enable you to include dynamic data rows. When you use advanced reports, Workday maintains any sort order defined in the reports in your composite report.
  • Matrix reports enable you to summarize and drill down on data in your composite report.
  • Trending reports enable you to analyze trends in financial and employee data.
Which business objects should you enable for filtering and grouping?
The business objects that you enable for filtering and grouping determine the:
  • Data you can reference in your composite report.
  • Filter criteria you can use on rows.
  • Groupings you can use on columns.
Each subreport must reference all enabled business objects as primary or related business objects.
How should you define prompt values for subreports?
Prompts might not display to report runners in subreports. You can configure prompts by defining prompt values:
  • Directly in the subreports.
  • In the composite report so report runners can easily run the report without needing to provide prompt values each time.
You can use custom or Workday-delivered prompt sets to configure populated values for prompts to avoid creating duplicate prompts in your composite report.
How frequently do you reuse row configurations across multiple reports?
When you create or edit a composite report, you can import rows from another composite report that:
  • Uses the same control fields as the target report.
  • Uses the same hierarchy structures as the target report.
  • Includes lookup data, calculation, or empty rows.
Workday excludes source reports with dynamic or combine data rows.
When you need to reuse the same row configuration in multiple target reports, you can use the
Mass Copy and Replace Composite Rows
 task to select multiple target reports as the recipient of copied rows from a source report.
You can use the
View Mass Copy and Replace Composite Row History
 report to view the process history of mass copied composite reports and replaced composite rows based on the selected time period and user for audit purposes

Recommendations

Use:
  • A consistent naming convention across your subreports to help you find your subreports more easily. Example: Add
    Subreport
     to the name of each subreport.
  • A lookup date rollup calculated field to compare trended data across different time dimensions when using trending subreports.
  • Fewer filters on your subreports so you can access and manage data from the composite report.
  • Hierarchies to define the filter criteria when using business objects with hierarchical structures. Workday updates the filter criteria as you update the hierarchy.
  • Matrix subreports because you can drill down on and summarize your data.
  • Dynamic control fields to enable report users to generate various financial reports with multiple combinations of accounting worktags.

Requirements

  • All subreports that use the trending report type must use the same time dimension.
  • The
    Group by Field
     on your subreports must use the same related business object as the control field column on your composite report.
  • Use the
    Table
     output option on all subreports so that your data displays properly when used on the composite report. You can configure other output options on the composite report.

Limitations

  • You can incorporate changes to your organizational hierarchies using effective dates, but not all hierarchies are date effective.
  • You can't:
    • Apply outline structures when you use multiple control field columns.
    • Configure column outlining for repeating column groups when a conditional value already exists on a cell.
    • Create composite reports on mobile devices.
    • Export charts to Excel.
    • Freeze columns using the
      Grid Preferences
       option on the table toolbar when the report has column or row groupings, multilevel column headers, or repeating column groups.
    • Include control field columns in repeating column groups.
    • Retain column width and row height when you export to PDF.
    • Use advanced, matrix, or trending reports with filter aggregations as subreports.
    • Use matrix or trending reports with text-based count distinct summarization fields or only percentile summarization fields as subreports.
    • View conditional formatting or all formatting styles on mobile devices.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Custom Report Creation
 domain in the System functional area.
Enables you to create and manage custom reports.
Custom Report Management
 domain in the System functional area.
Enables you to delete, edit, and view custom reports you own.
Formatting Style Management
 domain in the System functional area.
Enables you to create, manage, and view formatting styles.
Maintain Excel Template
 domain in the System functional area.
Enables you to attach an Excel template to a report definition.
Manage: All Custom Reports
 domain in the System functional area.
Enables you to delete, edit, and view all custom reports in your tenant, including reports owned by other individuals.
Outline Structure Management
 domain in the System functional area.
Enables you to manage outline structures for composite reports.
Report Prompt Set Management
 domain in the System functional area.
Enables you to create, delete, and edit prompt sets.
Workday determines composite report security based on the security settings of the subreports. If you don't have access to the composite report and subreport, Workday dynamically modifies the report so you view only the fields you have access to.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Report Definition Usages
Displays how often you use a subreport.
Validate Composite Report
Displays anomalies, exceptions, and warnings for composite reports so you can take action on them.

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.