8.3 Scheduling Reports, Report Groups & Transferring Ownership
Key Takeaways
- Use the Schedule a Report task to schedule a report or report group, with run frequencies of run now, run once in the future, daily, weekly, monthly, dependent, or custom recurrence.
- The scheduling tabs are Report Criteria, Schedule, Output, and Share, and output types are Excel, Report (PDF), or Text (CSV).
- Report groups run several reports as one unit, and adding a report to a group requires the Enable Save Parameters option and at least one saved filter.
- Use the Transfer Ownership of Custom Reports task to change report owners when people leave or change jobs, and Transfer Ownership of Report Group for report groups.
- Report bursting generates multiple versions of a report from a bursting set, and bursting with an Excel template produces one workbook with up to 200 sheets.
Scheduling a report
Use the Schedule a Report task to schedule a report or report group to run. Scheduled reports run in the background - which matters, because background and scheduled reports are processed by a different service from interactive UI work, so scheduling a heavy report is the standard remedy for a report that times out interactively.
You can also reach this task from the report's Related Actions.
Run frequency
Run now, run once in the future, daily recurrence, weekly recurrence, monthly recurrence, dependent, or custom recurrence.
| Frequency | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Run Once in the Future | Start Date, Start Time, Time Zone |
| Daily Recurrence | Recurs Every Weekday, or Recurs Every x Day(s) with 1-366; plus Start Time, Time Zone, Start Date, End Date |
| Weekly Recurrence | Recurs Every x Week(s) with 1-52; Day(s) of the Week; plus Start Time, Time Zone, Start Date, End Date |
| Monthly Recurrence | Every Month or specific Month(s); Recurrence Type of Day(s) of the Month or Day of the Week |
| Dependent | Runs based on conditional dependencies - set the process type and triggering status, with optional time delays |
| Custom Criteria | Start Date and Custom Start Time, for nonstandard intervals and multiple recurrences |
Dependent is the one people forget. It chains a report to another process - run the reconciliation report when the payroll process reaches a given status - instead of guessing at a clock time.
Workday lets you select an End Date that allows five executions of any recurring report beyond December 31 of the following year. Long-running schedules therefore need periodic renewal rather than running forever.
Schedule priority sets the priority of schedules during periods of high system resource utilization.
The four tabs
| Tab | What you set |
|---|---|
| Report Criteria | Default values for prompts. Value Type is either Specify Value or Determine Value at Runtime, the latter deriving the prompt from another field - commonly a calculated field |
| Schedule | Run frequency and recurrence criteria, if running later |
| Output | Output configuration |
| Share | Share the output with authorized users and security groups |
Determine Value at Runtime is what makes a schedule durable. Combined with an Increment or Decrement Date calculated field (section 8.1), a report can run for a rolling window without anyone editing the prompt each period.
Output options
| Option | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Output Type | Excel, Report (PDF), or Text (CSV) |
| Report Tags | Associate tags with the output to make the file easy to find |
| File to be Deleted After (Days) | How many days Workday keeps the output before deleting it |
| Do Not Output an Empty Report | Suppresses an empty file on My Reports and eliminates the corresponding email notification |
| Hide Prompt Values | Hides prompt values on Excel or Text (CSV) output |
Do Not Output an Empty Report is the small setting with the largest effect on user goodwill: without it, an exception report that finds nothing still emails everyone a blank file every morning.
Recall the sharing warning from section 7.3: output sharing requires the Report Output Sharing security domain, and shared users see the output using the security of the user who scheduled it, regardless of their own.
Report groups
Report groups allow you to group several reports and schedule them to execute as one unit - most commonly in Financial Management, for a set of period-end reports.
Requirements and behavior:
- To add a report to a group, configure the Enable Save Parameters option on the report, along with at least one saved filter.
- Prompt sets populate common prompt fields across the group's reports, so prompts need not be configured per report. A group can reference an Empty Prompt set if not needed.
- By default a report group produces one file per report, output as Excel or PDF.
- Sharing a report group also shares any saved filters on the reports, and a user must have access to all reports in the group.
- The reports execute based on the security of the user scheduling the report group, not the group owner.
Excel templates
Maintain Excel Template attaches an Excel file to a custom report or report group definition; Workday writes the scheduled output into that workbook, so predefined worksheets can apply formulas, macros, and formatting automatically. You can configure up to 200 reports in a report group using the Excel template feature.
The workflow: schedule the report to output as Excel, download it and note the worksheet names (they default to the report names), build additional worksheets in the same file that reference the output and apply formatting, then attach the file through Custom Report > Maintain Excel Template or Report Group > Maintain Excel Template.
Workday ensures the report data is written into the workbook. You are responsible for designing and troubleshooting the Excel macros and formulas in the template.
Report bursting
Use a bursting set to generate multiple versions of a report when a report group executes. The background job iterates through each instance of a bursting set field to produce one report for each value - one financial statement per company, for example, instead of running the report once per company by hand.
- When configuring reports in the group, define Bursting Set as the value type for the report prompt, and specify a field supplying the instances. The value can be a global field such as Active Companies, or a calculated field using Extract Multi-Instance.
- Burst by securing entity: the bursting set field can also serve as the securing entity, so each burst iteration is delivered to a security group relative to that entity - the output for a given company goes to that company's costing manager group.
- Bursting with an Excel template produces a single workbook with one sheet per iteration, up to a maximum of 200 sheets. Users shared on a securing-entity basis see only the worksheets they have access to.
Reporting Mass Action
For Advanced reports, the Reporting Mass Action task replaces references from one class report field to another across many reports - valuable when a field is marked Do Not Use.
- Select the Original Report Field and the Replacement Report Field. To be certain you have the right field, open it with View Report Field and copy the Integration ID or WID from Related Actions. To replace a DNU field you must use its WID.
- Workday lists every report using the original field, with where it is used, the owner, who last ran it, and when.
- Validations run before replacement. If an error occurs the task names the report causing it but not which validation failed - clear the failing rows and run again.
- When a class report field is part of an Analytic Indicator, you must update the Analytic Indicator manually.
- Run View Reporting Mass Action History to see all report definitions updated in a timeframe.
Transferring ownership
People leave and change jobs, and orphaned reports are a real maintenance problem.
Use the Transfer Ownership of Custom Reports task to change the owner of one or more reports to a different user.
- The new owner must have access to the report's data source and data source filter, and access to the Analytics Data: Report Fields and Values security domain.
- You must have access to the Analytics Data: Report Fields and Values or Manage: All Custom Reports security domain to transfer ownership of reports owned by other users.
- You can transfer ownership without granting access to the fields in the report definition, but the new owner cannot save changes to the report without access to all fields in it.
Run the Custom Report Exception Audit before transferring. You can transfer a report to a new owner as long as they have access to the data source, but an error appears if they later try to edit it without access to all report fields. Running the audit surfaces those errors ahead of time rather than weeks later.
For report groups, use Transfer Ownership of Report Group, so groups need not be recreated when an employee leaves their role.
A scheduled exception report emails an empty file to twenty recipients every morning when no exceptions exist. Which output option resolves this?
An administrator must transfer several custom reports to a new owner. Which requirement applies to the new owner?
A finance team needs one version of a statement per company, delivered to each company's costing manager group, produced automatically when a report group runs. Which capability does this?