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Workday to Salesforce integration: Salesforce users with the right language, time zone and role from Workday
With an integration between Workday and Salesforce, every new sales or service worker in Workday automatically gets a Salesforce user with profile, role, manager and the language and time zone of their location. On the last day of work in Workday the user is deactivated, so the licence is released and access to customer data is closed.
What the integration does
Organisations that manage employees and contingent workers in Workday and use one Salesforce environment for sales and service request new users through a form. Someone starting outside head office sometimes sees the wrong date and time format in Salesforce, and contingent workers stay active after their assignment.
- HR completes the hire in Workday, with job, supervisory organisation and location.
- KoppelHet reads the worker and uses job and organisation to decide whether a Salesforce user is needed, with which profile and role.
- The user is created with the language, locale and time zone of the Workday location and with the manager from Workday.
- A Change Job updates profile, role and manager; a move to another location updates the time zone as well.
- After the last day of work the user is deactivated. If a hire is rescinded, the never-used user is switched off at once.
What to watch for with Workday and Salesforce
- Workday sets the time zone of every location nobody configured to Pacific Standard Time. Copying that blindly gives an account manager in Rotterdam a Salesforce calendar nine hours behind. KoppelHet checks per location whether the time zone was set on purpose and otherwise falls back on the country.
- Workday uses IANA time zones such as Europe/Amsterdam, and Salesforce uses the same kind of names for a user's time zone. A configured Workday time zone therefore goes to Salesforce without a lookup table; only language and locale need a conversion.
- Employees and contingent workers each have their own number range in Workday, so the same number can exist twice. In Salesforce a contingent worker gets a prefix on their number, so a departing contractor never switches off a permanent colleague's user.
- The supervisory organisations in Workday follow the line organisation, while the Salesforce role hierarchy decides who sees which opportunities and accounts. A lookup table links only the sales and service organisations to Salesforce roles; a reorganisation elsewhere in Workday does not touch Salesforce.
- When a hire is rescinded in Workday the worker no longer exists, but a Salesforce user cannot be deleted. KoppelHet deactivates that user straight away, so the licence does not stay tied to someone who never started.
- A departure is often in Workday weeks ahead. KoppelHet only deactivates after the last day of work. If Salesforce refuses because the leaver is still a default owner or approver, KoppelHet freezes the user and the sales operations administrator gets a list of what still needs handing over.
- The integration may only see worker, organisation and location data in Workday. Salary, commission plans and bank details stay in Workday.
This integration is also part of joiner, mover, leaver.
How we build and run it
- The integration runs on the KoppelHet platform, hosted in a data centre in the EU.
- Every sync and every error is visible in the functional log; on an error your administrator is notified.
- A change that cannot go through is not half-applied but queued for another attempt.
- KoppelHet is ISO 27001 certified. Data travels encrypted and stays on the platform no longer than needed.
- After go-live we manage the integration and adjust it when your process changes.
- The integration fits next to your existing integration layer. Only the fields in the design are transferred; the platform keeps no register of its own.
Implementation and price
This is not an app you switch on. We build the integration for your organisation on our platform, with building blocks we reuse on every project. So it is custom work that does not start from scratch.
A consultant prepares the intake and analyses both systems. We then record the mapping and exceptions field by field, test in the test or acceptance environment and go live at a moment you choose. Costs are a one-off amount for the setup and a monthly amount for platform, monitoring and support.
Frequently asked questions
Do contingent workers get a Salesforce user too?
If you want. Per worker type we record whether someone gets a user and with which profile; the end date of the contract in Workday determines deactivation.
What if someone moves to a branch in another country?
The location changes in Workday, and with it the time zone, language and locale in Salesforce. Profile and role only change if the job or organisation changes too.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- Workday is read through Workday Web Services (Get_Workers) or a RaaS report, on completed business processes and modification date, with an Integration System User that only has the security domains for worker, organisation and location data. Employee_ID and Contingent_Worker_ID are separate ranges.
- Workday supports all IANA time zones per tenant, location and user; when not configured it is Pacific Standard Time.
- Salesforce is written through the REST API on the User object with a connected app (OAuth 2.0) and an integration user with Manage Users. Required on create include Username (unique across all Salesforce environments), Alias (at most 8 characters), Email, LastName, ProfileId, TimeZoneSidKey, LocaleSidKey, LanguageLocaleKey and EmailEncodingKey. On departure IsActive = false, or UserLogin.IsFrozen = true when deactivation is refused.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in Workday | Field in Salesforce | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Employee_ID of Contingent_Worker_ID | EmployeeNumber | With a prefix for contingent workers |
Preferred name | FirstName en LastName | |
Werk-e-mail | Email, Username en FederationIdentifier | |
Preferred name (ingekort) | Alias | |
Business_Title | Title | |
Job profile en supervisory organization | ProfileId, permission sets en UserRoleId | Through a lookup table |
Company | CompanyName | |
Locatie: tijdzone, locale en taal | TimeZoneSidKey, LocaleSidKey en LanguageLocaleKey | |
Manager (Employee_ID) | ManagerId | |
Termination date en last day of work | IsActive |
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