Notes from the morning of day 1.
- Assumptions - general — Assumptions that apply broadly.
- Done - defined — Definition of Done
- Done - steps to be done — The steps to making an integration of 'Done'
- Integration Prototype Definition — Basic definition of the prototypes to pursue.
- Parking lot — Backlog / parking lot of topics
- Workday constraints to know about — file sizes, turn around time on tests, etc.
Kalan presented an overview of Workday Integrations
Everything going in or out of Workday goes through a web services API for consistency
2 integration tools - Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) and Workday Studio
The Workday Integration Network (WIN)
- HCM Network
- Benefits Network
- Payroll Network (Interface)
- Workday Payroll (Network)
- Workday Spend Network
- Workday Financial Network
bulk loads typically don;t happen - usually one data item is transferred at a time
Reviewed a few use cases (see Workday slide deck)
Typical Integrations Mix - Configured (Workday Integration Network - 30%), EIB (simple - 45%), Workday Studio (complex - 25%)
Studio is an Eclipse based language - Java based
EIB Integrations Outbound: => Get Data -> Transform -> Deliver -> External System
Inbound: External System -> Get Data -> Transform - > Deliver
Cornell has 95 integrations - 25 of which are studios
Why does CU have more Studios than most customers? - retroactive benefits and semi-monthly pay are a result of Kronos configuration at CU
A menu of SOA design options - Dustin - Vivantech
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
It is a formalized approach for incorporating:
- Web Services
- XML
- Enterprise wide multi-tiered design
Goals
Compatible with current systems
- New applications would be able to communicate with existing systems
- Minimal changes should be required to existing applications / systems
Support multiple document formats
- Legacy Formats (PS, Kronos)
- Current Formats (Workday XML v14)
- Future Formats (XML v100)
Ease of Maintenance & Enhancements
- Maintenance & Enhancements account for well over 50% of typical software cost
- In long lived environments, like universities, the costs jump much higher
Organize our Units of work into Enterprise Services
- Allows reuse of 1. low level data retrieval services 2. high level data processing such as reports
- Easier Developement
- Simplified Maintenance
- Makes replacement of individual components possible
Design
- A good SOA design can be described in this simple way
- Software design is the most important ingredient to building an effective SOA environment
- This is the basic SOA principal for software design
- Group (encapsulate) the programs into logical business processes
- Allow access to each business process by a web service
- Business processes are designed to meet the needs of the entire enterprise not just the current application
- In an ideal SOA environment applications do not exist as independent silos
- Instead each new business process joins the pool of available "enterprise services"
- New application projects reuse or if needed extend existing business processes
- Only where a business process hasn't been created yet is a new program created
Multi-tier = Division of labor in our software
Provides:
- Industry best practice
- Simplifies maintenance
- Promotes code reuse
- Stability
- Manageability of complex applications
Touch Points - all integrations are made of 2 or more touch points
Standardized Internal File Format
Benefits:
- allows maximum reuse of programs
- simplifies addition of future programs
Integration Types
Not long ago, the text book anser was that the only valid SOA communication is SOAP based web services.
In practice this is not realistic
Not all systems support web service...
In practice there are a number of communication systes that are commonly used
Oracle SOA will support all of these
- Web Services (SOAP or REST)
- Queues
- File Drop
Recommendations:
- Use SOAP web services for all communication outside of the Enterprise
- Standardize on either REST or SOAP fo web services within the Enterprise
- Most communications will be quick with reasonable sized docs Use Web services fr these
- for very large docs use files
- for batch processing use ques
- more to add
Oracle SOA is an Integration Suite.
See Dustin's slide deck for diagrams and detailed notes.
Workday Tenants
CU is using 5 tenants currently
How do we manage CU environments to match Workday tenant upgrades? We need a test environment synced up with Workday.
Dustin - what is the backward compatibility plan - Kalan - current - 3 is the current policy
Phil - how does load test get handled
Workday has a 2GB limit on flle extracts and integrations can only run for less than an hr
In bound Workday can only receive 5MB file size
COPY in Steve's Google doc notes here.
One customer out of 200+ wants a user acceptance test environment in place
We will need to plan for testing CU systems when a system (including Workday) is upgraded