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How to Make a Google Workspace to Workday Integration

More companies are choosing to embrace HR automation than ever, and integrating your HR system with your Identity Platform is an easy way to achieve successful HR automation. Workday is one of the world’s most popular HR systems, and Google Workspace is a leading alternative to Microsoft’s Active Directory. In this blog, we’ll show you how you can connect your Workday to Google Workspace, avoid common pitfalls, and build a successful Workday integration for HR automation.

How to Connect Workday to Google Workspace

Software connectors are the foundation of a successful Workday to Google Workspace integration. Adding Workday and Google Workspace connectors allows the two platforms to communicate, exchange data, and make and execute requests from one platform to another. Many HR systems offer APIs that work with connectors to simplify endpoint connection and reduce the amount of coding needed, and Workday is no different.

Why You Should Use Workday API Integration

Workday offers two different types of APIs for connectors: REST API and SOAP API. The REST API uses HTTP methods, which makes it the preferred choice for web-based integrations like the one you are building. By using Workday’s REST API, you can synchronize data from Workday in real-time and enable OAuth 2.0 Authentication to ensure the data transfer is encrypted and secure.

What Should a Workday Integration Accomplish?

After making an API connection to establish data transfer between Workday and Google Workspace, it’s time to create HR automation workflows for your Workday API integration. This process is fully customizable, allowing you to tailor your integration to meet your exact needs. However, successful Workday integrations with Google Workspace achieve these benefits:

Automate High-Volume Tasks to Free Up HR and IT Resources

Automating repetitive HR tasks is the core purpose of a Workday integration, and successful integrations can save HR employees hours of work per day. When sysadmins and HR staff don’t need to focus on boring paperwork, they can instead work on fostering a positive company culture and employee experience.

Access Provisioning for Google Workspace SSO

Creating custom rulesets for your integration to follow allows your organization to implement role-based access control (RBAC) or attribute-based access control (ABAC) for employee Google Workspace accounts. This can automate access provisioning when employees are hired or change roles, giving them the proper tools for the job while integrating Google Workspace SSO across your organization.

Increase Employee Retention with Automated Onboarding

A smooth onboarding experience is a proven driver of high employee retention, so your Workday integration should be able to create Google Workspace accounts, provision system access, and automate workspace and resource assignment before a new hire even starts their first day on the job.

How to Create HR Automation from Workday to Google Workspace

With your connection established and goals outlined, there are three main steps to enabling HR automation in your Workday integration.
The first step involves mapping employee attributes from Workday profiles to their requisite Google Workspace profile attributes. The number of attributes mapped together can vary based on the exact needs for your integration, but we recommend defining and mapping the following attributes at minimum:
Associate ID
First Name
Last Name
Position Status
Reports to Position ID
Once attributes are mapped from Workday to Google Workspace, the second step is creating HR automation workflows for different employee lifecycles. These workflows tell the integration when and how to create new Google Workspace profiles for onboarding events, update them for role change events, and disable or delete them for termination or long-term leave events.
Finally, you can create rulesets that enable automated access provisioning and Google Workspace group memberships assignment when lifecycle events occur. There are additional HR automation workflows that can increase the scope and capability of your integration, but these are the core steps to making your integration successful.

Common Problems with Workday Integrations

The journey to successful HR automation is not without roadblocks. These are some of the most common problems that organizations face when trying to build Workday integrations:

High Development Costs

The biggest barrier to organizations implementing Workday integration to Google Workspace is the time and money needed to code and develop the integration. Using Workday API integration can help reduce these costs, but it is still a time-intensive process that can quickly become a cost sink.

Lack of Scalability

There is an inherent tradeoff to custom-build Workday integrations: The more HR workflows the integration can automate, the more complex the integration becomes. While this is not an issue in small organizations, growth or expansion can quickly create a complicated mess of connectors that causes more problems than it solves.

Additional IT Integration

While HR automation solves many lifecycle management challenges, separate integrations with IT service desks are required to achieve the next level of automation. In addition, any third-party application needs a separate integration to automate access provisioning.

How to Choose the Right Workday Integration

While you can custom-build your own Workday to Google Workspace integration, the high development cost and lack of scalability can make it a decision you regret down the line. Instead, consider iPaaS solutions like Hire2Retire by RoboMQ.
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– Ben Whitehill
Vice President of Information Technology, TrueCare

Ready to Create Your ADP to Google Workspace Integration?

Hire2Retire not only seamlessly syncs data from Workday to Google Workspace but makes building HR automation workflows simple with a 100% code free, drag-and-drop interface. Hire2Retire’s Workday integrations can also seamlessly integrate ATS systems, ITSMs, and third-party applications, providing complete employee lifecycle automation with role-based access control. Best of all, Hire2Retire can easily scale to handle more than 10,000 employee profiles, making it the last Workday integration you’ll ever need to add!
Picture of <strong>Cameron Macaulay</strong>

Cameron Macaulay

Cameron Macaulay is a Marketing Associate with RoboMQ. Cameron graduated from Syracuse University with a major in Broadcast & Digital Journalism, and a minor in Professional & Technical Writing. Cameron combines his skills in technical writing with a passion for storytelling.

Picture of <strong>Cameron Macaulay</strong>

Cameron Macaulay

Cameron Macaulay is a Marketing Associate with RoboMQ. Cameron graduated from Syracuse University with a major in Broadcast & Digital Journalism, and a minor in Professional & Technical Writing. Cameron combines his skills in technical writing with a passion for storytelling.