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Visualize Workday Data in TIBCO Spotfire through OData
Integrate Workday data into dashboards in TIBCO Spotfire.
OData is a major protocol enabling real-time communication among cloud-based, mobile, and other online applications. The CData API Server, when paired with the ADO.NET Provider for Workday, provides Workday data (or data from 200+ other ADO.NET Providers) to OData consumers like TIBCO Spotfire. This article shows how to use the API Server and Spotfire's built-in support for OData to access Workday data in real time.
About Workday Data Integration
CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Workday. Customers use CData connectivity to:
- Access the tables and datasets you create in Prism Analytics Data Catalog, working with the native Workday data hub without compromising the fidelity of your Workday system.
- Access Workday Reports-as-a-Service to surface data from departmental datasets not available from Prism and datasets larger than Prism allows.
- Access base data objects with WQL, REST, or SOAP, getting more granular, detailed access but with the potential need for Workday admins or IT to help craft queries.
Users frequently integrate Workday with analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and Excel, and leverage our tools to replicate Workday data to databases or data warehouses. Access is secured at the user level, based on the authenticated user's identity and role.
For more information on configuring Workday to work with CData, refer to our Knowledge Base articles: Comprehensive Workday Connectivity through Workday WQL and Reports-as-a-Service & Workday + CData: Connection & Integration Best Practices.
Getting Started
Set Up the API Server
Follow the steps below to begin producing secure Workday OData services:
Deploy
The API Server runs on your own server. On Windows, you can deploy using the stand-alone server or IIS. On a Java servlet container, drop in the API Server WAR file. See the help documentation for more information and how-tos.
The API Server is also easy to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, and Heroku.
Connect to Workday
After you deploy the API Server and the ADO.NET Provider for Workday, provide authentication values and other connection properties needed to connect to Workday by clicking Settings -> Connections and adding a new connection in the API Server administration console.
To connect to Workday, users need to find the Tenant and BaseURL and then select their API type.
Obtaining the BaseURL and Tenant
To obtain the BaseURL and Tenant properties, log into Workday and search for "View API Clients." On this screen, you'll find the Workday REST API Endpoint, a URL that includes both the BaseURL and Tenant.
The format of the REST API Endpoint is: https://domain.com/subdirectories/mycompany, where:
- https://domain.com/subdirectories/ is the BaseURL.
- mycompany (the portion of the url after the very last slash) is the Tenant.
Using ConnectionType to Select the API
The value you use for the ConnectionType property determines which Workday API you use. See our Community Article for more information on Workday connectivity options and best practices.
| API | ConnectionType Value |
|---|---|
| WQL | WQL |
| Reports as a Service | Reports |
| REST | REST |
| SOAP | SOAP |
Authentication
Your method of authentication depends on which API you are using.
- WQL, Reports as a Service, REST: Use OAuth authentication.
- SOAP: Use Basic or OAuth authentication.
See the Help documentation for more information on configuring OAuth with Workday.
When you configure the connection, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.
You can then choose the Workday entities you want to allow the API Server access to by clicking Settings -> Resources.
Authorize API Server Users
After determining the OData services you want to produce, authorize users by clicking Settings -> Users. The API Server uses authtoken-based authentication and supports the major authentication schemes. Access can also be restricted based on IP address; by default only connections to the local machine are allowed. You can authenticate as well as encrypt connections with SSL.
Create Data Visualizations on External Workday Data
- Open Spotfire and click Add Data Tables -> OData.
- In the OData Connection dialog, enter the following information:
- Service URL: Enter the API Server's OData endpoint. For example:
http://localhost:8032/api.rsc - Authentication Method: Select Username and Password.
- Username: Enter the username of an API Server user. You can create API users on the Security tab of the administration console.
- Password: Enter the authtoken of an API Server user.
- Service URL: Enter the API Server's OData endpoint. For example:
- Select the tables and columns you want to add to the dashboard. This example uses Workers.
- If you want to work with the live data, click the Keep Data Table External option. This option enables your dashboards to reflect changes to the data in real time.
If you want to load the data into memory and process the data locally, click the Import Data Table option. This option is better for offline use or if a slow network connection is making your dashboard less interactive.
- After adding tables, the Recommended Visualizations wizard is displayed. When you select a table, Spotfire uses the column data types to detect number, time, and category columns. This example uses Legal_Name_Last_Name in the Numbers section and Worker_Reference_WID in the Categories section.
After adding several visualizations in the Recommended Visualizations wizard, you can make other modifications to the dashboard. For example, you can apply a filter: After clicking the Filter button, the available filters for each query are displayed in the Filters pane.
