Setup Considerations: Workday Data Cloud

Administrator Guide

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Workday Data Cloud is only available in public-cloud-hosted Implementation tenants.

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of Workday Data Cloud.

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

Workday Data Cloud is a product suite that facilitates data flow between Workday and external data platforms.

It utilizes a zero-copy architecture, which enables external systems to access Workday data objects without physical data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) processes.

The suite provides bidirectional access, allowing you to query Workday data from external platforms and view external data within Workday.

Business Benefits

Workday Data Cloud addresses data access challenges related to extraction volume and data replication.

With Workday Data Cloud, you can:

Reduce integration maintenance

: Lower the cost of integrations by reducing the need for ETL tools, storage, and operational overhead through the use of standard connectors like JDBC and Apache Iceberg.

Accelerate data access

: Provide data teams with direct access to Workday data tables, reducing the time required to stage data for analytics.

Minimize data replication

: Keep data stored within the Workday secure environment while allowing virtual access, reducing the creation of redundant data copies across the enterprise. Minimum data replication minimizes security risk by eliminating redundant copies and ensuring consistent security models.

Support advanced analytics

: Provide scalable access to granular Workday data for use in external machine learning models and enterprise data lakes, accelerating AI initiatives and innovations.

Use Cases

Data Out

In these scenarios, data in the Workday Data Cloud Catalog is accessed from an external platform:

Use Case	Description
Unified enterprise analytics	Organizations can blend trusted Workday data with operational data in external warehouses (Examples: Snowflake, Databricks, Google Cloud Platform, and others) to gain cross-functional insights. Examples: Retail performance : A retailer can combine employee engagement data from Workday with store sales data in Snowflake to identify which teams drive the highest revenue. Operational efficiency : A manufacturing plant manager can view Workday metrics (overtime, training compliance) alongside factory output data (from a Manufacturing Execution System) in a third-party BI tool like Power BI. This provides a holistic view of how staffing affects production safety and efficiency.
Advanced AI and Machine Learning	Data scientists require access to granular, historical data to train predictive models. Workday Data Cloud provides governed access to the Data Cloud Catalog without requiring file extraction. Examples: Talent retention models : Scientists can access detailed employee performance metrics, compensation changes, and career progression paths to build models that predict attrition or identify skill gaps. Workforce planning : Organizations can leverage rich semantic context from Workday to power AI initiatives in external platforms.
Self-Service data discovery	Workday Data Cloud democratizes access to data schemas, reducing reliance on IT to build custom reports. Example: Ad-hoc analysis : Data analysts or HR Business Partners can browse the Data Cloud Catalog to understand data relationships and schemas. They can directly query objects, such as compensation history or training records, using standard SQL in their preferred tools.

Zero-Copy Data In

These scenarios use the data management tools in Workday Prism Analytics to access zero-copy external data within Workday.

Use Case	Description
Financial reconciliation	Finance teams often struggle to reconcile General Ledger (GL) accounts in Workday with high-volume transactions stored in external operational systems. Example: Automated matching : Controllers can bring granular transaction data from external warehouses directly into Workday. This facilitates automated matching against the GL and creates an auditable trail from summary accounts back to source transactions.
Compliance reporting	Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR) often require gathering data scattered across multiple systems. Example: Centralized retrieval : Compliance officers can use Workday Data Cloud to pull activity logs or personal data stored in external warehouses (e.g., IT helpdesk tickets in Snowflake) to generate a complete compliance report for a specific employee.
Talent scorecards	HR leaders can import business outcome data into Workday to evaluate employee impact beyond standard performance reviews. Example: Performance correlation : By bringing in Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores from Salesforce or project profitability metrics from finance systems, organizations can link employee profiles directly to business outcomes for better succession planning.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
Do you need real-time access or high-volume analytics?	Use Workday Live Data Query for transactional reads that require real-time data freshness. Use Workday Data Lake for large-scale analytics where periodic refreshes are acceptable.
Does the external data require transformation?	Use Zero-Copy Data In to reference or augment Accounting Center processes with external data that does not require complex manipulation. Use Prism Analytics ingestion connectors when the use case requires multiple joins, heavy transformations, or large batch processing before use in Workday.
Which cloud infrastructure do you use?	Workday Data Cloud supports tenants running on the Public Cloud.
Which inbound connector is right for your use case: Prism Ingestion or Zero-Copy Data In?	Use Prism Ingestion Connectors when you want to move and transform data into a centralized warehouse as the source-of-truth to enable high-performance, complex analytics. Best for high-performance analytics and complex data modeling where you need to move, transform, and store a permanent copy of the data locally. Use Zero-Copy Data In when you want a live virtual link to the source-of-truth data exactly where it lives, eliminating the need for expensive pipelines or duplicate storage. Best for real-time visibility and strict data governance.

Recommendations

Evaluate data volume and complexity

: Use zero-copy access for simple joins or lookups.

Continue to use traditional ingestion connectors if your use case involves complex multi-row transformations.

Plan for data responsibility

: While Workday secures data storage within Workday, you must configure security controls within the partner platform for data read out of Workday.

Utilize the Data Cloud Catalog

: Consult the Data Cloud Catalog for information about what objects are available.

Requirements

You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.

Public Cloud

: Your Workday tenant must run on the Public Cloud.

Partner Contract

: You must hold a contract with a supported partner platform (Examples: Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks, Google Cloud, and others).

Subscription

: You must subscribe to Workday Flex Credits to access Workday Data Cloud products.

Limitations

Object availability

: Consult the Data Cloud Catalog for information about what objects are available.

Connectivity

: Zero-copy connectivity is currently limited to specific vendor partners and is not available for general-purpose JDBC connections to unsupported tools.

Tenant Setup

You must configure your tenant to authorize connections with external partner platforms.

For an overview of setup instructions, see Workday Data Cloud.

Security

Domains	Considerations
Integration Security domain in the Integration functional area. Security Configuration domain in the System functional area.	Enables administrators to configure Integration System Users.
Set Up: Tenant Setup - Security and Security Administration domains in the System functional area.	Enables administrators to register API Clients.
Data Cloud: Manage Data Lake Access Policies domain in the Data Cloud functional area.	Enables administrators to create access roles and user provisioning groups for Data Lake.
Data Cloud: Manage Data Lake Application Configurations domain in the Data Cloud functional area.	Enables administrators to configure which Workday objects and fields are made available in Data Lake.
Manage: Datalake User Provisioning domain in the Data Cloud functional area.	Enables administrators to create user provisioning groups for Data Lake.
Prism: Manage Connection domain in the Prism Analytics functional area.	Enables administrators to create a connection in the Prism Data Catalog.
Prism: External Catalog Create , External Catalog Manage , and Prism: External Catalog Owner Manage domains in the Prism Analytics functional area.	Enables administrators to create and manage external catalogs in the Prism Data Catalog.
Prism: External Tables Manage and Prism: External Tables Owner Manage domains in the Prism Analytics functional area.	Enables administrators to enable external tables for analysis in the Prism Data Catalog.

Reporting

Workday Data Cloud allows you to:

Query Workday data using standard SQL from external BI tools and data platforms.

This replaces the need to create custom Reports-as-a-Service (RaaS) for some data extraction scenarios.

Use Prism Analytics reporting and analytics tools to access blended external and Workday data.

Integrations

Workday Data Cloud provides an alternative to traditional integrations.

Integrations	Considerations
Workday Live Data Query	Provides real-time access to data via SQL.
Workday Data Lake	Uses Apache Iceberg table formats to share data files without a need to persist data in other platforms.
Zero-Copy Data In	Uses Prism Data Catalog for zero-copy access to external data within Workday.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features	Considerations
Workday Prism Analytics	Use Prism Data Management tools for accessing zero-copy external data within Workday.
Accounting Center	Can ingest data via Prism connectors or reference external data via Data Cloud for journal entry generation.
Workday Build	Workday Data Cloud acts as the data foundation for the Workday Build portfolio, supporting app development and interoperability.