Workday ESS Reports: Quick Integration

Key insights

• Workday reports power the Employee Self-Service (ESS) agent by supplying user context and HR data.
  Build reports with calculated fields and one row per Workday account so the ESS agent can personalize answers and start workflows.
• Required attributes to include: Employee ID, First Name, Last Name, and Is Manager.
  Map these attributes in the report and ensure the report reads from the Workday Account object to guarantee correct user matching.
• Microsoft Entra ID provides secure authentication and provisioning between Workday and Microsoft 365.
  Use Entra to sync identities and control access before connecting data to the ESS agent.
• Microsoft Copilot Studio is where you configure the ESS agent and the Workday connector.
  Install the Workday extension pack, map user attributes, and enable HR scenarios to let Copilot surface and complete Workday tasks inline.
• Best practices for reliability and security: apply least-privilege access, test reports in a dev tenant, validate one row per user, and schedule regular data refreshes.
  Log and review connector errors to catch mapping or permission issues quickly.
• Benefits include a seamless employee experience and reduced HR workload.
  When set up correctly, teams get faster answers, fewer support tickets, and higher productivity from inline Workday tasks in Copilot.

This article summarizes a YouTube video published by Microsoft that explains how to build Workday reports for the Employee Self-Service (ESS) Agent. The video walks viewers through creating calculated fields, configuring custom reports, mapping attributes like employee ID and manager status, and enabling HR scenarios by integrating Microsoft Entra ID with Workday. Consequently, the piece below highlights the video’s key steps, tradeoffs, and practical guidance for IT and HR teams planning this integration.

Overall, the video is instructional and aimed at administrators who manage HR systems and identity services. It emphasizes hands-on configuration inside Workday and the settings needed to feed the ESS agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Therefore, readers should gain a clear sense of what to prepare and what challenges to expect.

Overview of the Video’s Scope

The video defines the integration goal as enabling employees to perform HR tasks without leaving Microsoft 365, which streamlines workflows and reduces context switching. It explains that a properly built Workday report serves as the single row-per-account source of user context attributes such as employee ID, name fields, and manager status. In addition, the presenter shows how these attributes are consumed by the ESS agent to personalize responses and authorize actions.

Furthermore, the video connects configuration work in Workday with identity provisioning managed by Microsoft Entra ID, and it touches on configuring the agent in Copilot Studio. It therefore situates report building as one part of a larger integration that includes secure authentication and runtime configuration. As a result, the guide is practical for teams that already manage both Workday and Microsoft 365 environments.

How to Build Workday Reports for ESS

The presenter begins with the basics: create a custom Workday report that queries the Workday Account object and returns exactly one row per account. Next, add calculated fields for each attribute the ESS agent needs, such as Employee ID, First Name, Last Name, and an Is Manager flag, and ensure those fields have predictable data formats. Consequently, testing at this stage helps avoid downstream mapping issues where missing or inconsistent values break the agent’s logic.

In addition, the video recommends limiting the report to only the attributes required by the agent to reduce exposure of sensitive data. It also demonstrates how to validate the report output using sample accounts and how to confirm that the report produces one clean row per user. Thus, the approach balances thoroughness with data minimization for better security and maintainability.

Configuring Microsoft Entra ID and the ESS Agent

The tutorial then moves to identity integration, showing how Microsoft Entra ID is used for secure authentication and account synchronization. It explains that identity mapping must align with the identifiers in the Workday report, which means teams should coordinate attribute naming and matching rules early in the project. Otherwise, mismatches can cause user lookups to fail and the ESS agent to serve incomplete data.

Next, the video covers the ESS agent setup inside Copilot Studio, including installing the Workday extension pack and configuring topics and connectors. The presenter emphasizes that administrators should test workflows end-to-end to ensure the connector retrieves report data correctly and that the agent can start HR scenarios as intended. Therefore, iterative testing and logging are essential to surface hidden configuration issues and to validate permissions.

Benefits and Tradeoffs of the Approach

When implemented well, the integration offers a unified employee experience and faster completion of routine HR tasks, which can reduce tickets and manual interventions. At the same time, the video points out tradeoffs: connecting systems tightly increases dependency between Workday and Microsoft 365, so changes in one system can break workflows in the other. Consequently, organizations must adopt clear change control and monitoring to manage that coupling.

Moreover, exposing HR attributes to an AI-driven agent improves productivity but also raises governance concerns, so teams should balance convenience with strict access controls and auditing. The video recommends limiting report fields and using role-based access in Microsoft Entra ID, thereby reducing risk while preserving the user experience. In short, the benefits are clear, but they require disciplined governance and testing to achieve them safely.

Challenges and Practical Recommendations

The video highlights several challenges, including handling incomplete or inconsistent Workday data, managing schema changes, and ensuring correct entitlement mappings in Microsoft Entra ID. It notes that calculated fields in Workday can complicate maintenance if they rely on changing business logic, so organizations should document formulas and update procedures. Therefore, teams should invest time in establishing clear conventions and periodic audits to catch drift early.

Finally, the presenter advises a staged rollout: start with a small pilot group to validate reports, mappings, and agent flows, then expand once stability is proven. Also, enable logging and monitoring so that support teams can trace failed lookups or authorization errors quickly. Thus, by combining careful planning, conservative data exposure, and iterative deployment, organizations can realize the integration’s benefits while managing the inherent tradeoffs and risks.

Keywords

Workday report building, Workday employee self-service integration, Workday custom reports ESS, Workday reporting tutorial, Workday report writer guide, Workday integrations best practices, Workday calculated fields reports, Workday report permissions and security