Automation and platform connections are vitally important to productivity in today’s data-driven corporate environments.
That’s why Workday, one of the premier cloud apps for planning, finance, and human resources (HR), offers strong integration possibilities through its API architecture.
Many organisations continue using SOAP APIs for intricate legacy system connections despite Workday offering REST and SOAP APIs as integration avenues.
Authentication is key when engaging with Workday’s SOAP API, ensuring only authorized users or apps may gain access to its sensitive data and perform tasks such as changing financial records, accessing employee details or sending payroll data
In this comprehensive tutorial, we’ll walk you through each Workday SOAP API authentication step.
From creating an integration system user (ISU) to understanding the types and methods available and setting up authentication methods accordingly to working with security, our expert instructors will take you step by step through the authentication of Workday SOAP APIs using the Workday security protocol.
Gaining an overview of SOAP
APIs and their significance within Workday is essential before diving deeper into SOAP API authentication.
SOAP (Simple Object Access mechanism)
is used in the implementation of web services to facilitate structured data exchanges. SOAP APIs rely on XML communication, offering extra features like error handling, security features and transaction management compared to REST, which relies on HTTP communications alone.
Workers, financial transactions, and requisitions are just a few of the business objects to Workday’s SOAP APIs can connect to.
Companies using more complex transactions will find these APIs efficient when interfacing with Workday.
Integrity System Users (ISUs)
must authenticate with Workday’s platform using specific authentication credentials and protocols in order to make API calls against its SOAP services.
Workday offers two primary authentication techniques for SOAP API integrations
1. Simple Authentication
2. Web Services Security (WS Security)
WS security will be explored here to demonstrate its use in SOAP API authentication, the preferred and generally recommended approach.
Each approach offers different degrees of security and various use cases.
Establishing an Integration System User (ISU) account is the initial step toward system integration.
Step 1:
Establish an Integration System User (ISU) in Workday to communicate securely and authenticate against its SOAP APIs. An ISU acts as a trusted intermediary service account between external systems and Workday in a safe manner.
1. Access Workday with Administrator Credentials
2. Navigate to Set Security: Parameters to create Integration System Users in Workday > System > Security.
3. Click Create Integration System User to create a new integration system user (ISU). Give this ISU an ID, password and username; additional authentication details should be provided through SOAP headers using WS Security, but basic authentication may still occur here.
4. Grant Permissions: Ensure the ISU can access its required business objects through Workday by assigning appropriate roles that allow access. This will allow them to query or modify required data within Workday.
5. Save and note ISU’s password and username credentials; these depend on both WS Security and Basic Authentication protocols.
Step 2: Configure Authentication and Web Services
Once your ISU has been created, its web services should be set up to ensure that any integration system can successfully access Workday.
Workday offers various online services that may be relevant to your daily work life, including procurement, financial management, and human resources management.
Step 3: WS Security Authentication with SOAP Request Structure.
Workday requires Security headers:
Containing authentication credentials, timestamps, and signature information to be used when signing SOAP requests to provide additional layers of protection and ensure secure SOAP communications.
Workday’s SOAP API:
Prioritizes inserting security credentials in its SOAP request header as the most crucial element of security.
Security credentials for Workday Integration System User (ISU):
Login credentials can be provided in the WS Security Header element of its SOAP API.
ISU account passwords are included within the Username Token element for added protection and convenience.
As part of creating an ISU:
Credentials such as Username and Password will be established; requests using these credentials will be authenticated before being sent to Workday API for processing, for instance, requesting employee information.
Each request body itself will include actual requests such as retrieving employee records.
Depending on your environment’s security needs, Workday SOAP requests may also include timestamps and signature elements, as well as your username/password, for authentication purposes.
Address Reactions and Mistakes Workday will return an XML response following any SOAP request submitted, typically including any requested data if successful and an error if otherwise.
Success Response: Your data (such as employee details and transaction outcomes) will be provided as an XML document.
Error Handling: Should any request fail due to authentication problems, invalid data input, or other faults, an error message will usually appear in your response section.
Be sure to include error handling into your code to quickly and properly address errors that arise during request and response processing.
This way, you will identify and address errors promptly.
The security authentication of Workday SOAP APIs is key to ensuring safe and dependable communication between Workday and other corporate systems.
You may successfully authenticate with their SOAP APIs by following this tutorial’s instructions on establishing an Integration System User (ISU), creating the SOAP request with WS Security headers included, and authenticating using this tutorial’s SOAP API authentication scheme.
Facilitated authentication allows you to fully leverage Workday’s SOAP APIs, creating strong interfaces between corporate apps and automating key business procedures.
Security should always remain your top priority as you ensure keys and credentials remain safe at every point in the integration lifecycle.
