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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-04-17
Setup Considerations: Custom Reporting

Setup Considerations: Custom Reporting

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of custom reporting. 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

You can create custom reports to serve reporting and analytics requirements specific to your business needs.
As with standard reports, custom reports enable you to:
  • Access real-time, relevant data.
  • Take action on the data directly from the report results.
  • Use configurable security to limit access to reporting data.

Business Benefits

Custom reports enable you to:
  • Create reports for your specific business needs.
  • Enable a report as a worklet.
  • Maintain greater control of your reports, since they remain unchanged when Workday updates standard reports.
  • Schedule reports and share results with different groups in various formats.
  • Transfer data into or out of Workday by enabling reports as web services.
  • Translate a report to another language.

Use Cases

  • Copy an existing standard report and modify it for your business.
  • Create a new custom report.
  • Create or edit dashboards to display multiple related reports.
  • Extract data from Workday through an Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) integration.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
Which standard report can you use to provide the results you need?
You can run the
Workday Standard Reports
 report to view these 2 types of Workday-delivered standard reports:
  • Report Writer reports. You can copy these reports and perform additional edits on the copy, in addition to using them on custom and Workday-delivered dashboards.
  • XpressO reports. You can’t copy, edit, or use them on custom dashboards. You can use XpressO reports on Workday-delivered dashboards.
If none of the standard reports meet your needs, you can copy then edit an existing report, or create a custom report.
Do you want to delegate report management to 1 role in your organization/tenant?
You can designate a report administrator to manage all the reports in your tenant.
What report data source (RDS) should you select?
The data you can access in a report depends on the RDS you select. Each RDS contains instances of a business object, which serves as the primary business object. Multiple RDSs can have the same primary business object.
Consider selecting an RDS with a primary business object that includes most of the fields you need.
Whenever possible, select an indexed RDS. Indexed RDSs enable your report to run faster than standard RDSs.
If your report needs to be effective dated, use a standard RDS.
How can you use multiple RDSs on 1 report?
You can combine data from multiple RDSs in composite reports. Composite reports access data through the RDSs of subreports. You can reference these report types as subreports:
  • Advanced
  • Matrix
  • Trending
How can you include fields that aren't in the RDS?
You can create calculated fields that use existing data in Workday to:
  • Change your data into different formats.
  • Configure constant values for your data.
  • Perform simple calculations on your data.
  • Retrieve your data.
You can also add custom fields to business objects when you create a custom object.
Do other users need access to the data in this report?
If users have access to the correct security domains, they can run the report and edit the report definition.
You can also export report results as a spreadsheet or PDF and share the file with other users. Spreadsheets and PDFs don't retain any security restrictions.
Do you want to enable your report as a web service?
You can enable advanced and search reports as web services, which enable access to report results through URLs. You can use these web services in:
  • Integrations between Workday and external business services. Example: Payroll or benefits providers.
  • External reporting tools to access Workday data. Example: Microsoft Excel.
Do you need reports to run at specific times or at regular intervals?
You can schedule when and how often reports run. Scheduled reports run in the background, and you can download the report output files.
Do you want to run multiple reports at the same time?
You can create groups of related reports and schedule them to run at the same time. Example: Year-end financial reports.
You can also burst reports by using a report group to run a single report with different prompt values in quick succession.
How do you want the report results to display?
You can display report results in a chart, table, or both. Matrix reports are the best report type for displaying most chart types.
You can also display reports as worklets on a dashboard to give stakeholders an overview of important data. Examples: The Workday-delivered
Compensation and Benefits
 and
Diversity
 dashboards.
How do you organize and manage all the reports in your tenant?
You can tag reports to organize them and make them easier to search for.
Workday recommends that you regularly review your custom reports and delete unused reports.

Recommendations

  • Use the
    Workday Standard Reports
     report to search for existing standard reports that might fit your requirements before creating a new custom report.
  • Create custom reports in Implementation or Sandbox tenants before migrating them to your production tenant, then validate the reports in case there's downstream impact to alerts and other processes.
  • Before migrating reports, consider the downstream impact to edited reports in lower level tenants so that you don't migrate potential issues.
  • Update any Prism Analytics data change tasks (DCTs) that use a custom report as a source if you modify the report's schema. Changes to fields or data types can cause the DCT to fail or skip schedules. See Concept: Data Change Tasks.
  • For optimal performance:
    • Use indexed RDSs.
    • Select the smallest RDS that includes all the business object instances you need.
    • Instead of creating your own filter in the report definition, use the faster built-in RDS filters whenever possible. Example: Use the
      Workers by Role
       filter on the
      Workers for HCM Reporting
       RDS. The
      Data Sources
       report has a column that indicates RDS filters.
    • Select an RDS that includes built-in prompts instead of creating your own prompts. The
      Data Sources
       report has a column that indicates whether an RDS includes built-in prompts.
    • Create custom reports with prompt values when using the report in high-volume RDSs. This helps prevent potential impact to tenant performance. Example: For reports that use the
      Business Process Transactions
       RDS, use the following as required prompts in the report to help improve report performance:
      Business Processes
      ,
      Transaction Status
      , and date range (
      Initiated Date Range
       or
      Completed Date Range
      ).
    • Limit the number of calculated fields in your report.

Limitations

Limitations
Considerations
Copying Reports
Your report must have a
Type
 of
Report Writer
 on the
Workday Standard Reports
 report.
Dashboard Processing Time
Dashboards time out after 30 seconds, so reports you deploy as worklets on dashboards must finish running within that time.
Filtering
Workday doesn't support filtering on fields that return derived instances, such as lookup date rollup calculated fields.
Freezing Columns
You can't 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.
  • For matrix, nBox, search, or trending report types.
Report Processing Time
Reports have different processing time limits depending on where you run them:
  • 30 minutes for all reports.
  • 6 hours for background reports, scheduled reports, and web services.
After 20 seconds, Workday enables you to schedule the report to run as a background process. If report processing exceeds 30 minutes, Workday displays an error.

Security

These security domains are in the System functional area:
Domains
Considerations
Ability to Create Only Temporary Reports
Enables you to restrict users to create only temporary reports.
Custom Report Administration
Enables you to take these actions on custom reports:
  • Add to the related actions menu of a business object.
  • Add to the sitemap.
  • Transfer ownership.
Custom Report Creation
Enables you to create and modify custom reports.
Data Translation
Enables you to translate custom reports.
Manage: All Custom Reports
Enables you to take these actions on custom reports:
  • Delete.
  • Edit.
  • Give users view-only access.
  • Transfer ownership.
  • View.
Report Definition Sharing - All Authorized Users
Enables you to share report definitions with all users authorized to access the RDS of the report definition.
Report Definition Sharing - Specific Groups
Enables you to share report definitions with other users in a security group.
Report Definition Sharing - Specific Users
Enables you to control which users can share report definitions with specific, named users.
Report Tag Management
Enables you to provide access to users to manage report tags.

Business Processes

You can run a custom report as a business process step by adding a
Report
 type step. Example: In the
Hire
 business process, Workday sends a report of subordinates to the manager, including the new hire. Additionally, you can automate data refreshes by adding a Prism data change task as a service step within a business process. This ensures that the Prism data used in downstream report steps is fresh and accurate before the report is generated.
Workday doesn’t allow you to schedule or directly execute Data Change Tasks as automated business process steps if they use a direct file upload as a source. However, you can schedule Data Change Tasks that use an SFTP connection as a source. To prevent business processes from failing when running Data Change Tasks, verify that:
  • The user or delegate has permission to access the Data Change Task and all associated sources, such as reports or SFTP sites.
  • The Data Change Task configuration remains valid. Because configurations, including underlying data sources and pipelines, can change over time, invalid setups can cause failures during execution.
When the business process runs, Workday enforces the security associated with the report. The report displays only the information that the recipient has permission to access.

Reporting

You can use these Workday-delivered reports and dashboards to track report usage in your tenant:
  • All Background Only Custom Reports
     report: Displays all custom reports enabled as background only in your tenant in addition to the report owner, area where used, and so on.
  • Dashboard Run History
     report: Displays dashboard usage statistics from the previous 6 months and includes details such as who ran the report and at what time.
  • Data Sources
     report: Displays these RDS details:
    • Built-in prompts.
    • RDS source filters.
    • Permitted security groups.
    • Primary business object.
  • Report Administrator
     dashboard: Displays reports and tasks that help you manage the reports in your tenant.
  • Report Run History
     report: Displays how many times a report ran and includes details such as who ran the report and at what time.
  • Workday Standard Reports
     report: Displays Workday-delivered reports.
You can create custom reports and track information, such as report owner and time of last update, based on these RDSs:
  • All Custom Reports
  • All Standard Reports
  • Indexed Dashboard Run History
  • Indexed Report Run History

Integrations

You can enable custom advanced and search reports as web services and use them in integrations between Workday and external business services.

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.