Workday HRIS Integration Guide

Integration Overview

Ethena’s Workday integration allows organizations to manage their Ethena enrollment automatically as well as keep learners’ individual profile information up to date. Ethena will automatically add new team members into Ethena as well as update key information such as location or managerial status, so that if additional training is needed, Ethena can automatically assign it without any input from an administrator.

To populate their user feed into Ethena via Workday, Ethena customers create a custom report (RaaS) in Workday that includes the required fields, outlined below. They'll then create an Integration Service User for Ethena that can access the report. On a twice-daily basis, our integration will pull the data from that report and adjust user records in Ethena accordingly.

By default, the Ethena<>Workday integration is a one-way sync (pushing your user list to Ethena). If you're interested in a bidirectional Workday sync, to push completion records from Ethena back to Workday, please reach out to your CSM for more information.

Setup Instructions

Ethena’s technical team will work directly with the Workday team in your organization to make the integration process as seamless as possible. Please follow the below instructions to initiate your Workday integration.

1. Create an Integration System User within Workday. The Integration System User will be used to access Custom Reports.
2. Create a Security Group with the necessary permissions to access the report, such as ‘Integration System Security Group (Unconstrained).’ Add the Integration System User to the group.
3. Add domain security policies to the Security Group you created. Be sure to provide ‘Get’/'View' access for any necessary data types.
4. Create a Custom Report using data source ‘All Active Workers’ (includes non-employee worker types) or ‘All Active Employees.’ Ethena will note when workers disappear or appear in the report and enable and disable them accordingly. 
   • Note: If these data sources are no longer available you can use "All Active and Terminated Workers" but will need to make sure to filter out terminated workers.
   • Note: You may want to filter out on-leave workers as well. See FAQs for details.
5. Add the following fields to the report. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.

• employee ID*
• email*
• name* - We recommend either a name field with First Name Last Name or a separate First name and Last name field 
• country* - Three letter ISO country code
• state* - Two letter US state abbreviation. If not in the US, leave blank.
• isManager* - Indicates whether this worker is a supervisor
• workerType* - Full time, contractor, etc
• department*
• manager_worker_id* - Worker ID of the learner’s supervisor
• leave_start - Optional field for handling leaves of absence. See FAQs for details on this field.
• custom_reporting_field - Optionally include one additional reporting field to enhance your Ethena analytics experience, such as function, e-staff name, or supervisory org.
  • Note: Ethena customers with the Advanced Analytics add-on can include unlimited custom reporting fields.

6. Add Integration System User as an authorized user on the report.
7. Share the following information via email with support@goethena.com:
   • If basic authorization is preferred:
     • Username
     • Password
     • JSON Report URL
   • If OAuth is preferred:
     • Client ID
     • Client Secret
     • Token URL
     • JSON Report URL
     • Refresh Token

Once the URL and credentials are provided, expect a one-week turnaround time for Ethena to ingest the fields provided and set the integration live.

Domain Security Policy Permissions

Here is a sample list of permissions you may need to include for this integration. All permissions should be Get Only and View Only. The specific permissions will vary depending on the fields you choose to include.

Integration FAQs

How do you enroll learners in Ethena courses?

If all learners at your organization included in the RaaS should be enrolled in an Ethena course, you can easily select all learners in Ethena. For courses like Harassment Prevention, Ethena will use the location information provided to automatically assign each learner the training that they need based on regulations. If only a subset of learners should be enrolled in some courses, you can manage enrollment based on manager status, department, location, and employee type directly in Ethena. If needed, you can also manage enrollments manually per user or via CSV.

At what frequency will the Workday report update for Ethena?

Ethena pulls this report one to two times per day to ensure that our records are up to date. The sync time varies each day.

How do you handle terminations?

Ethena assumes that everyone included in the report is an active worker, and that anyone not in the report should be deactivated, so would expect terminated team members to be excluded from the report. When a worker who previously appeared in the report no longer shows up, Ethena marks them as “disabled” in our platform, which is functionally equivalent to “terminated” but used out of caution because the process is automated.

Note: If you already have users loaded into Ethena before setting up your Workday integration, you may need to do some initial cleanup of users who were terminated prior to the Workday integration being initiated.

How do you handle leave of absence?

Ethena's Workday integration includes a native leave_start_date field that sets a user's status to On Leave, but it only pauses notifications — it doesn't unenroll users or adjust their assignment and deadline dates when they return. For most customers, one of the two alternatives below is a better fit.

Option 1: Add a custom "on leave" field

We add an on-leave indicator to one of the custom category fields on each learner's Ethena profile. Users remain Active in Ethena while on leave. We apply a filter to each training assignment that excludes learners when that custom category field is set to true, which fully unenrolls them from active campaigns.

When they return and the field is cleared, they're re-enrolled — and because it's a fresh enrollment, their assignment and deadline dates reset to reflect their return date.

One thing to plan for: the filter needs to be applied to every relevant campaign, including any new ones you create after the initial setup.

Option 2: Remove users from the HRIS feed during leave

With this approach, users on leave are temporarily marked as Inactive in Ethena. They're automatically unenrolled from all training campaigns — no per-campaign filter needed. When they're added back to the feed, they're reset to Active, re-enrolled, and get new assignment and deadline dates aligned to when they returned.

This is the lower-maintenance option if you don't want to manage filters across campaigns.

If you're not sure which option fits your setup, reach out to support@goethena.com.

What happens to a learner record if a contractor converts to full-time, or changes their email or name? 

As long as the worker ID stays the same, we can ensure that the learner record remains consistent with the learner. If the worker ID updates, our team will need to discuss other options with you. 

What types of reporting fields should we include and why?

Ethena provides additional reporting capabilities through embedded Looker reports. By including additional fields to slice and dice the data such as Function, Supervisor Name, E-Staff or C-Suite Name, another level of department reporting, Supervisory Org and so on, teams are able to get the most out of Ethena’s platform.