Bringing the Power of Workday Cloud Platform to your Organization

Building applications with your unique needs in mind using Workday Extend

At Alight, we strive to make Workday work for you and your company. That’s why we are using Workday Extend (formerly known as Workday Cloud Platform) to design, build, deploy and share applications that run on and integrate with your Workday system. In this guide, we discuss how our Workday team is using Workday Extend to enhance the user experience, the basics of Workday Extend functionality and what you need to do to bring the power of Workday Extend to your organization.

Alight Workday Extend apps—Built with you in mind

At Alight, we’re using Workday Extend to build apps your organization can use to meet your specific needs. Here are some examples of the apps we are building.

Hiring Contingent Workers
Time off: Buy, compensate, sell and donate time off
CV/resume generation
Charitable Giving - Onboarding
Year at a Glance
Vehicle Registration
Report Requests
CV/Resume Generator
Degree Approval
Tuition Reimbursement
Flexible Work Arrangement
Promotion Nomination
Sales Opportunity Tracker
Transit Route Search
Supplier Managed Requisitions
Project Based Feedback
Talent Insights
Peer/Mentor Matching

What is Workday Extend?

Workday Extend enables developers and business analysts to design, build, deploy and share applications that run on and integrate with Workday. It provides Workday customers enhanced customization of their system to create an engaging experience for end users. Workday Extend is not designed to customize existing Workday pages or tasks and the custom apps created will be standalone. Primarily, Workday Extend is meant for new functionality and kept separate for upgradability.

How can Workday Extend be used?

Having the ability to customize your system to create applications that support your business processes whilst still leveraging the power of Workday provides you with endless possibilities. Below are some use cases for how Workday Extend can be used:

Streamline and automate new workflows within Workday
Create new experiences within Workday
Bring Workday into natural workspaces
Create industry-specific extensions and applications

How can my organization build apps with Workday Extend?

Workday Extend offers different tools for different user skill levels and application configuration complexity, allowing your organization to leverage the right functionality to meet your needs. The table below shows the different audiences these tools are targeted for.

Building Block	Workday Administrator	Professional Developer
Enablement	Community & Developer Site	Developer Site
Data Storage	Custom object	Custom objects, application business objects
Presentation	Presentation Services	Presentation Services & Canvas
Workflow	Custom business process	Custom business process & Studio
Logic	Conditional rules	Function service
Lifecycle / Deployment	Push to deploy	Apphub / Workday pipeline

Workday Extend functionality for application creation

Below are all the different use cases for Workday Extend, as well as who in your organization is best suited to use the different functionalities and how it impacts your workers’ Workday experience.

Building Block	Functionality	Target User	End User Experience
Presentation Services	Build your own custom pages leveraging the same adaptable UI components which make Workday's Canvas Design System great. Learn more	Developer	Organizational task-specific pages that cater to your unique business needs without straying from the uniformity of Workday's UI design.
Business Logic	Create validations on forms, Workday API's for retrieving native Workday Data, custom business processes and external endpoints that allow you to integrate data from outside of Workday.	Administrator / Developer (depending on complexity)	Mitigate human error and pull in data specific to application tasks in Workday in a way that flows with your organization's processes.
Custom Business Process	You can use create custom business processes for workflows specific to the needs of your organization and for which Workday doesn't provide delivered business processes.	Administrator	Utilize custom business processes to consolidate tasks previously handled outside of Workday all into one system, enhancing ease of use.
Outbound Webhooks	A webhook is a user-defined HTTP callback and enable you to notify external systems when certain events happen in Workday.	Developer	Increases organizational visibility and accountability around business process and notification events.
Data Storage	Business Objects will enable fully standalone objects where you can define related business objects.	Administrator / Developer	Store data related to your custom applications in Workday Custom Objects for greater reporting abilities.
Custom Objects	Customized Workday business objects that house captured data outside of the Workday delivered business objects.	Administrator	Customize the UI and add custom validations versus the generic UI and validations given today for custom objects to better fit your organizational flow and data capturing.
Business Objects (coming soon)	Created independently of Workday-delivered business objects and securable with new domains defined at the time of creation.	Developer	Enhance your organization's ability to report on and drill into the details of meaningful data.
Connect Services	Customizable messaging templates that enable leaders to quickly get the word out about important initiatives and influence colleagues towards action.	Administrator	House your organization's primary communication system in Workday for more efficient and targeted reach.