What is Workday Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB)

What is Workday Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB)?

 To support a robust data management strategy, Workday offers the Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) tool, which allows mass loading or extracting of company data from your Workday system.

Workday EIBs were designed to help customers more easily keep their organizational data updated and accurate, however, it is a lesser-known functionality to those new to the Workday ecosystem. In this article, our Workday experts break down what an EIB is, use cases for both inbound and outbound EIBs and top tips to help ensure success as you leverage Workday to continue evolving your data management strategy.

Breaking down Workday EIBs

Workday’s EIB tool allows Workday customers to mass load or mass extra data from their Workday system. It works by generating an XML Excel template from your Workday system that contains the required fields you need data on, or that need to be populated.

You can use EIBs to complete data management tasks such as:

• Updating your supervisory organizational structure.

• Updating or adding employee information.

• Updating or creating business processes and security assignments.

• Send off or load in background check information to and from a third-party vendor.

Inbound Workday EIBs

Inbound Workday EIBs are used to load data into your Workday system. This is achieved through loading your data into Workday via the downloaded EIB template as an attached or file transfer from an external SFTP, FTP/SSL or FTP endpoint.

Inbound EIB use cases:

• Hiring a large group of employees.

• Requesting mass compensation changes.

• Importing a new set of job profiles for an acquired company.

• Importing expense credit card transactions from an external file to enable transaction processing within Workday.

Outbound Workday EIBs

Outbound Workday EIBs are used to export data using data from custom reports. Workday EIBs can transform your organizational Workday data into almost every type of flat file format apart from Microsoft Excel documents. Therefore it’s recommended to ensure your team understands vendor requirements before determining your export formatting.

Outbound EIBs are typically used for simpler integrations where one data source can be used, typically a report, and the transformation is simple enough to be done with a single custom transformation (XSLT) or Custom Report Transformation.

Outbound EIB use cases:

• Exporting headcount and contribution data from Workday via CSV file and sending it to a life insurance provider via encrypted email.

• Exporting all active employees from Workday in XML format and sending it to an external endpoint with FTP.

• Sending payroll actuals data to an HAS vendor via CSV file.

• Sending general ledger data to an internal financial system via text format.

Tips for using Workday EIBs successfully

Business process EIB loads

​Always review your business process definitions before you load an EIB. If a step in your business process is required (the optional box is not checked), you can’t skip the step in your EIB. If you do try to skip the step, your EIB will get stuck.

Retroactive data checks

Always check your data in your Workday system after loading. Absence of errors on your EIB doesn’t always equate to data successfully loading into your system. If Workday says all records are loaded successfully but you see nothing new or updated in your Workday system, check that your spreadsheet key and all row number fields are populated. If you do see an issue with your system when checking your data, utilize the “Mass Cancel Business Process” report to see if loaded records are “In progress” due to stuck business processes.

Security

For outbound integrations, it is best practice to use an Integration System User (ISU) and Integration System Security Group (ISSG) to run the integration in place of a human user. This allows the integration to be run on a schedule without human intervention, or launched by anyone who can see the integration.

Get started with EIBs

Workday EIBs can be tricky at times for even the most experienced Workday users. That’s why Alight offers flexible Workday support services to enable you to approach your data management activities with confidence.

Download our product sheet below to learn more about our most flexible ongoing support offer, Alight Support Desk as a Service, designed for Workday customers looking for day-to-day configuration and integration support supplemented with insights, best practices and analytics to drive business case realization.