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How to Connect Workday to Power BI

Cody Schneider•

Bringing your Workday HR data into Power BI opens up a world of advanced analytics, letting you see people-data in a much richer, more visual way. This guide will walk you through exactly how to connect the two platforms, what to watch out for, and how to get your first HR dashboard up and running.

Why Connect Workday to Power BI?

Workday has some great built-in reporting tools, but they’re primarily designed for operational tasks within the HR ecosystem. When you want to perform deeper analysis, blend HR data with information from other parts of the business, or build truly interactive dashboards for leadership, Power BI is the better tool for the job. Here's why making the connection is worth it.

  • Go Beyond Standard Reports: Create bespoke, multi-page dashboards that track everything from headcount trends and employee turnover rates to diversity metrics and recruitment funnel performance.

  • Combine Data Sources: The real power comes from combining Workday data with data from other systems. You can pull in financial data from your ERP, sales performance from your CRM (like Salesforce), and marketing campaign data to see how headcount and team performance directly influence business outcomes.

  • Interactive, Self-Service Analytics: Instead of sending static spreadsheets, you can share an interactive Power BI dashboard. This allows managers and executives to slice and dice the data themselves - filtering by department, location, or time period - to answer their own questions without needing you to run another report.

  • Advanced Calculations with DAX: Power BI’s formula language, Data Analysis Expressions (DAX), lets you create complex calculations that aren’t possible in Workday. You can build advanced metrics like 12-month rolling turnover, calculate the cost of attrition, or forecast future headcount needs.

Pre-Connection Checklist: What You’ll Need

Before you jump in, it's a good idea to gather a few things to make the process smoother. A little preparation here will save you a lot of time later.

1. Access and Permissions in Workday

You can't just pull any data you want out of Workday. The most important piece of the puzzle is a specific URL that points to a report in Workday. This concept is called Report-as-a-Service (RaaS).

  • Find a Report: Identify the specific report in Workday that contains the data you want to visualize in Power BI. This could be a standard report or a custom report you’ve built.

  • Enable it as a Web Service: The report must be enabled as a web service so external tools like Power BI can access it.

  • Get the OData URL: Once enabled, the report will have several URLs. You will need the OData URL. You can typically find this by navigating to the report in Workday, selecting Actions > Web Service > View URLs.

  • Permissions: The user account you use to connect must have permission to access both the report and the underlying data domains. For security and stability, the best practice is to use an Integration System User (ISU) account with specific, limited permissions rather than your personal Workday login.

2. Power BI Desktop

The entire connection process is set up within Power BI Desktop - the free authoring tool from Microsoft. You can't set up new data sources in the web version of Power BI. Make sure you have the latest version installed on your computer.

Connecting Workday to Power BI: The OData Method

The most direct and standard way to connect Workday and Power BI is by using Workday’s OData feed for a specific report. Let’s walk through it step by step.

Step 1: Open Power BI and Select "OData Feed"

Launch Power BI Desktop. In the "Home" tab on the ribbon, click on Get Data. This will open a dropdown menu. Select More… at the bottom to open the full list of data connectors.

In the Get Data window, use the search bar to type “OData” and select OData Feed from the list. Then, click Connect.

Step 2: Enter the Workday Report URL

A dialog box will appear asking for a URL. This is where you paste the OData URL you obtained from your Workday report (the RaaS URL). Copy the complete URL into the box and click OK.

Tip: Don't use the JSON or CSV URLs from Workday, as the OData feed is better structured for Power BI to understand.

Step 3: Authenticate Your Credentials

Power BI now needs to prove to Workday that it has permission to access the data. You’ll be presented with a new window to enter your credentials.

  • Select the Basic option on the left-hand menu.

  • In the User name field, enter your Workday username. For an ISU, it must be formatted correctly, which is often username@tenantname.

  • In the Password field, enter the password for that user account.

  • Click Connect.

Power BI will now attempt to connect to Workday. If the URL is correct and the credentials are valid, a new window will appear.

Step 4: Navigate and Select Your Data

The Navigator window shows you the data tables available from the OData feed. You should see a table that corresponds to your report. Select the checkbox next to the table to preview the data on the right-hand side.

Once you’re sure it’s the correct data, you have two options:

  • Load: This will load the data directly into your Power BI data model. This is fine for clean, simple reports.

  • Transform Data: This is almost always the right choice. It opens the Power Query Editor, where you can clean, shape, and prepare your data before loading it. Power Query lets you remove unnecessary columns, rename fields for clarity, change data types (e.g., from text to a number or a date), and more.

Step 5: Build Your Report!

After clicking Close & Apply in the Power Query Editor, your Workday data will be loaded and visible in the Fields pane on the right side of Power BI. You can now start dragging and dropping fields onto the report canvas to build your charts and tables.

And that's it! Your Power BI report is now connected to your Workday data. You can publish this report to the Power BI service to schedule automatic refreshes and share it with your team.

Alternative Connection Methods

The OData method is great, but it's not the only way. Depending on your needs and technical resources, these other options might be a better fit.

Third-Party Connectors & ETL Tools

If you're connecting many reports or need to blend Workday data with dozens of other sources, a dedicated data integration tool might be your best bet. Platforms like Fivetran, Stitch, or MuleSoft specialize in moving data. They often provide pre-built Workday connectors that can handle large data volumes more efficiently than the RaaS method and consolidate all your data pipelines in one place. The main downside is that they add another layer of cost and complexity to your data stack.

Manual CSV or Excel Export

Never underestimate the simplest solution. You can always run a report in Workday, export it as a CSV or Excel file, and then import that file into Power BI. This is fast and requires no special permissions in Workday. However, the connection is completely static. If the data in Workday changes, you have to repeat the entire export/import process manually. This is a good option for one-off analyses, but it's not sustainable for ongoing, refreshable reporting.

Best Practices and Common Issues

  • Use an Integration System User (ISU): I mentioned it before, but it's worth repeating. Don't use your personal login for the connection. If you leave the company or your password changes, the connection will break. An ISU is a dedicated service account built for these kinds of integrations.

  • Beware of Large Datasets: The RaaS/OData connection can be slow or time out if you try to pull a massive report with millions of rows. It's much more efficient to apply filters in the Workday report itself to only pull the necessary data (e.g., only data for the last 24 months) instead of pulling everything and filtering it in Power BI.

  • Authentication Errors (401/403): This is the most common issue. The problem is almost always either an incorrect username/password or the ISU doesn't have the necessary security permissions for the data domain the report is accessing. Double-check everything in Workday.

Final Thoughts

Connecting Workday to Power BI transforms your raw HR data into a strategic asset. By following the OData method, you can create a direct, refreshable link that allows you to build the insightful, interactive dashboards your business needs to make smarter decisions about its most valuable resource: its people.

We believe getting these insights shouldn’t require navigating complex BI tools or technical setups. That’s why we built Graphed. We connect to all your data sources - from Google Analytics to Salesforce to data in a Google Sheet - and let you build dashboards and get answers just by asking questions in plain English. For tricky data sources like Workday, you can easily pipe live report data into a Google Sheet and have Graphed build live, interactive dashboards from it instantly, skipping the multi-step configuration in traditional BI software and empowering your entire team to have conversations with your data.