How to Integrate Workday to AD or Entra ID (Azure AD)

How To

Use Cases

Synchronizing employee profile data between Workday and Active Directory (AD) is essential to keeping an organization’s HR and IT operations running smoothly. However, this process is time-intensive and requires lots of tedious manual work to be done by Sysadmins. As a result, many companies search for solutions that can integrate Workday and AD or Entra ID (Azure AD) to automate this process.

Integrating Workday to AD and Entra ID (Azure AD) can synchronize employee profile data for one or all of the following employee lifecycles:

Onboarding

Offboarding

Role or Profile Changes

Long-Term Leave

There are options available on iPaaS marketplaces that use data sync connectors to populate data from Workday to AD or Entra ID. Most customers would then use PowerShell or another script to perform operations on this synced data. These options can sync the data but need a patchwork of scripts and automation to fully manage the employee identity lifecycle. In addition, these options are too complex to effectively scale and won’t work for organizations with hundreds or thousands of employees. The total cost of ownership (TCO) is also high as you must maintain the skilled resources needed to perform any changes to the code base.

However, with Hire2Retire from RoboMQ, you get one–stop Workday to AD or Entra ID integration. Hire2Retire is a fully built, no-code, enterprise–grade self-service product that provides breadth and depth of the related requirement coverage

Hire2Retire: The Ultimate Workday to AD Integration Solution

Hire2Retire is the complete, no-code business process automation for employee identity lifecycle management. It integrates Workday with AD and Entra ID (Azure AD) to automate onboarding, terminations, role and profile changes, and long-term leave lifecycles. Hire2Retire can scale up to tens of thousands of employee profiles, making it the perfect fit for organizations of all sizes.

"Efficient, Insightful, and Helpful"

– Douglas P.

IT Systems Administrator, Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens

Provide a Superior “First Day at Work” Experience

Hire2Retire automatically creates employee profiles in AD or Entra ID for new hires and provisions role-based access to third-party applications and physical resources before they start their first day at work. This means new hires have everything they need to hit the ground running, and your organization makes a great first impression, which is proven to drive employee retention.

Enhance Data Security with Safe & Secure Terminations

Any delays in removing system access from terminated employees are a data security and reputation risk for your organization. Hire2Retire automatically revokes access in near real-time and can be customized to do so at your organization’s preference, giving you peace of mind from knowing your data is safe and secure.

Auto-Provision System Access on a “Need-to-Know” Basis

Employees should have access to the key systems and applications they need for their role and shouldn’t have access to the ones they don’t. Hire2Retire’s industry-leading Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) makes this a reality. Hire2Retire also provides hundreds of SCIM Connectors to auto-provision employee access to third-party applications based on their role.

Achieve up to 90% Cost Avoidance on Employee Lifecycle Management

When the work required to create, update, manage, and synchronize hundreds or thousands of employee profiles piles up, it quickly becomes a huge cost sink. Hire2Retire makes it all quick, simple, easy, and fully automated, freeing your Sysadmins to focus on more important tasks and saving your organization money.

Integrate Workday to AD and Entra ID (Azure AD) in 4 Easy Steps with Hire2Retire

While other integration solutions use a complex web of individual connectors and scripting, Hire2Retire’s no-code, intuitive UX-based interface makes integrating Workday to AD and Entra ID a breeze.

Hire2Retire uses Workday as a source of truth (SOT) for employee identity lifecycle management. It receives employee profile information including Basic PII for account creation, job-related information to assign role-based access privileges, start date and last day worked to determine the lifecycle stage, and reporting information to make sure the Global Address List (GAL) and org chart is always current.

Here’s how to set up a Hire2Retire integration in just 4 easy steps:

1: Connect Workday to Hire2Retire

Hire2Retire offers two methods of ingesting data from Workday:

File Extract Integration

API Integration

For the file-based integration, you would create a Workday Report-as-a-Service (RaaS) or custom report to extract employee attributes you want to sync with Identity Providers (IDPs) such as AD or Entra ID (Azure AD). This custom report can be scheduled to run at specified intervals and securely sent to Hire2Retire over SFTP with RSA key authentication, ensuring a fully automated and encrypted process.

For API-based integration, Hire2Retire can connect directly to Workday through SOAP APIs using Password challenge authentication. This integration allows seamless, real-time data ingestion directly from Workday for immediate updates across all connected platforms.

2: Connect AD and Entra ID (Azure AD) to Hire2Retire

Hire2Retire can connect Workday to the following Identity Provider (IdP) setups:

On-Prem Active Directory

Cloud-Only Entra ID (Azure AD)

Hybrid AD (AD and Entra ID)

After selecting your preferred IdP setup option, you will connect to multiple endpoints based on your choice of IdP configuration to leverage the features and functionality offered by Hire2Retire. Typically, most customers in a Hybrid setup will connect to on-prem AD for account creation or updates and to Entra ID, Exchange Online, and SharePoint to manage cloud resident groups, OneDrive, and Shared Mailboxes.

3: Set up Hire2Retire Lifecycle Automation

This is the most important step where you would define your own business process as to how you onboard employees, assign UPN or email, manage role-based access control, handle terminations, and perform access and resource assignment or de-provisioning. You can do all of this without a single line of code on our simple intuitive UX by simply making choices on dropdowns, checkboxes, and radio buttons.

This step involves the following activities:

Define Workday HR input Data

Map Workday HR profile fields to IdP (AD or Entra ID) attributes

Define your personalized business process rules for each of the employee lifecycles of onboarding, change of role, termination, and long-term leaves

Define profile-driven rule-based assignment of privileges or group memberships to security groups, O365 groups, and distribution lists based on your IdP setup

Setup template-driven emails that can be sent upon a lifecycle change with employee-specific AD or HR attributes using Communication Hub

Configure role-based (RBAC) or attribute-based (ABAC) Access Provisioning to third-party applications using our SCIM gateway

Resource provisioning with more than 10 Service Management platforms like ServiceNow, ServiceDesk, FreshService, and others to create incidents, requests, or trigger approval-based workflow for resource or asset allocation

Defining your identity lifecycle is highly customizable, ensuring that you can tailor Hire2Retire to perform the exact actions or operations you need to manage an individual employee identity lifecycle for all employees of your organization.

4: Assign Group Memberships with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Profile-driven rule-based assignment of privileges through group memberships in a core feature to implement “need to know” basis access and assignment of resources. Hire2Retire’s industry-leading RBAC is an optional but highly recommended part of the Hire2Retire setup process. By using AND/OR conditions, you can create rulesets using one or more employee profile attributes to assign memberships to security groups, mail-enabled distribution lists, Microsoft 365 groups, and more. The choices or the groups that you can manage memberships of depend on your Identity Provider (IdP) Setup.

Don’t Waste Any More Time! Start your Hire2Retire Journey Today!

Integrating Workday to AD and Entra ID (Azure AD) with Hire2Retire automates employee lifecycle management, providing a superior employee experience, enhancing data security, and saving time and money. That’s why many leading organizations have already chosen Hire2Retire as their one-stop lifecycle management solution.

The only question left is: what are you waiting for? Book a one-on-one discovery call with a Hire2Retire integration expert today and take the first step into a new world of employee lifecycle management!

Somya Shrimal

Somya Shrimal is a Marketing Specialist at RoboMQ. She is a tech enthusiast and a prolific blogger who helps businesses stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in the industry. Her expertise in SaaS, cloud, on-premises apps, and IoT has made her a go-to source for businesses looking to navigate the ever-changing tech landscape.