Workday Testing
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About Workday
Workday is a robust cloud-based platform focusing on human capital management (HCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and financial management applications. Workday provides a comprehensive solution, tailored to meet the needs of medium-to-large-sized companies. By centralizing functions such as recruiting, talent management, payroll, accounting, and project management, Workday helps organizations streamline operations and achieve greater efficiency.
Beyond traditional business environments, Workday has extended its reach to educational institutions, offering unified management for finance, human resources, and the student/faculty lifecycle. Its cloud-based nature ensures scalability, and the system’s intuitive interface makes it accessible to all organizational users. Security, compliance, and a commitment to a user-friendly experience have made Workday a popular choice among many enterprises and educational entities.
Based in Pleasanton, California, Workday was founded in 2005 by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri, who formerly worked at PeopleSoft. Workday was a pioneer in software-as-a-service (SaaS) business applications. Workday’s software is known for being user-friendly and quick to set up, especially compared to traditional human capital management (HCM) and finance applications that need to be installed on individual computers.
Advantages of Workday
The main advantages of Workday products encompass several key areas that benefit organizations. First, they streamline HR and financial processes by centralizing and integrating various functions, such as payroll, recruitment, and budgeting, saving time and reducing errors. Second, Workday offers advanced analytics and reporting tools, enabling businesses to gain deep insights into their operations. This facilitates intelligent decision-making and aids in crafting informed strategies for better performance. Lastly, Workday enhances collaboration and communication within an organization. Its unified system and tools for information sharing enable different departments to work together more effectively, ensuring clarity and alignment across the organization. Companies such as Amazon, Bank of America, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IHG, Netflix, and The Ohio State University utilize Workday.
Workday, as a complex ERP system, requires mandatory testing to capture bugs during initial development, during integration with various modules, and while performing user scenarios. Now, let’s review the tools and frameworks that can be used in testing Workday.
Unit Testing
Unit testing in Workday is a bit unconventional, as Workday is a cloud-based software and does not provide access to its underlying source code. However, unit testing in the context of Workday might involve verifying specific functionalities, configurations, or processes within the Workday application. In Workday, unit testing essentially refers to using functional testing tools to test core configurations and business processes.
Integration Testing
Integration testing focuses on testing integrations to ensure that the third-party integration tools function correctly with the Workday system and that the input and output data between these systems align with the system configurations. Workday is designed as a comprehensive package, so integration testing is often included in End-to-End testing. This approach covers the user flow across various modules, ensuring that all integrated parts of the system function cohesively. But still, we can use Workday’s inbuilt integration tools to test the integration with external dependencies.
Those tools are:
- Workday Studio
- Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB)
Workday Studio
Workday Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) that allows creating, testing, and deploying sophisticated and highly customizable integrations to and from Workday. Workday Studio is designed for more complex scenarios.
Integration testing with Workday Studio involves defining the integration requirements between Workday and other systems using Workday Studio’s graphical development environment. A testing environment that mirrors the production setting should be established, followed by the creation and execution of detailed test cases. The process includes evaluating the results, performing regression testing if changes are made, documenting the process, and collaborating with stakeholders such as internal Workday teams, IT teams, and external vendors. Once the testing is completed, the integration is deployed to the production environment, with continuous monitoring and support to ensure ongoing success.
Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB)
The Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) is a tool within Workday that allows for creating and testing integrations with external systems. Unlike Workday Studio, which is designed for more complex integrations and requires greater technical expertise, EIB is intended to be accessible to business users. Workday’s Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) facilitates integration testing, ensuring that data can be successfully imported and exported between Workday and other systems.
The integration requirements are first defined to start integration testing, and then the EIB tool is used to create or utilize an existing integration template. Next, a testing environment is set up that reflects the real-world scenario in which the integration will operate. The EIB allows mapping fields, applying transformations, and defining criteria for integration. Test cases are executed that mirror typical user scenarios, assessing the data being input and output between the systems to ensure alignment with the integration configurations. After thoroughly evaluating the results and making necessary adjustments, the integration can be promoted to a production environment.
End-To-End Testing
End-to-End (E2E) testing in Workday aims to assess the full lifecycle of business operations. It encompasses the entire process flow that interconnects various functions and integrations within the system. Unlike isolated testing methods focusing on specific components, E2E testing aims to replicate real-world usage to ensure that all system parts interact seamlessly and effectively.
Workday E2E testing focuses on:
- Functional Configurations and Business Processes: E2E testing examines all components of complete Workday business procedures, such as hiring cycles, payroll processing, benefits management, etc.
- Core Integrations: These are essential connections between Workday and other internal or third-party systems, like ERP or CRM platforms. E2E testing verifies that data exchange and collaboration across these platforms occur without hindrance.
- Reports: This involves validating custom and standard report functionalities within Workday, ensuring that they extract, filter, and present data accurately and in the intended layout.
- Worklets: As small, reusable user interface components within Workday, worklets must be tested to confirm they perform correctly within broader business processes.
- Security Configurations: Security within Workday is paramount, and E2E testing verifies that roles, permissions, and access controls are enforced correctly, aligning with organizational compliance and privacy standards.
User Acceptance Testing
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) ensures Workday has been appropriately configured, enabling business users to perform daily tasks. The main goal of this testing is to see if the system works the way it’s supposed to from the user’s point of view. It’s more about evaluating the configured processes than testing individual functions or features. The involvement of business users is essential in UAT, as they are the ones who will be using the system to carry out routine activities.
User Acceptance Testing will focus mainly on a subset of End-to-End test cases, including various business processes, roles and routings, messages, notifications, accounting results, and integrations with other systems.
Workday Payroll Parallel Testing
Integrating various systems, such as HCM (Human Capital Management) and Payroll, within your organization is vital in enhancing business procedures. Workday Payroll Parallel Testing synchronizes internal and external payroll processes and integrations with the Workday platform. This approach is particularly beneficial for companies that rely on Workday for handling payroll but also use another legacy system for different organizational functions. By testing the connection and how well these systems work together, we can ensure that Workday’s processes align with the same standards and requirements already set up in the previous system. This provides a smooth transition and continuous efficiency in your payroll operations.
Automating E2E, UAT, and Parallel testing
Usually, the E2E and UAT test cases cover the entire process from start to finish, encompassing numerous complex scenarios. Manually executing all of these scenarios can be time-consuming and require more resources. To tackle this, it’s better to use automation. Automation not only streamlines the testing process but also ensures greater accuracy and consistency in the results. So let’s review a few automation tools we can use.
Selenium
Selenium is a long-standing tool for web automation. As an open-source tool, it supports multiple programming languages. It can be integrated with various tools, such as cloud browsers and device farms, test management tools, CI/CD tools, and more. Despite its popularity, many organizations are moving away from Selenium as their preferred tool due to several downsides. These include the complexity of scripting, extensive test maintenance efforts, prolonged time duration, slow execution speed, dependence on third-party integrations, and a high incidence of flaky tests. More details about Selenium can be accessed here, and also its downsides here.
Katalon Studio
Katalon Studio is a low-code automation tool that facilitates test creation by supporting record and playback features for automation. Katalon Studio is built on top of the open-source automation frameworks Selenium and Appium with a specialized IDE interface for web, API, and mobile. Katalon Studio provides record and playback options and script options for creating automation scripts. Katalon supports Java and Groovy programming languages.
import static com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.ObjectRepository.findTestObject
import com.kms.katalon.core.webui.keyword.WebUiBuiltInKeywords as WebUI
// Open Workday login page
WebUI.openBrowser('https://your-workday-url.com')
// Input credentials and log in
WebUI.setText(findTestObject('Page_Login/txt_username'), 'YOUR_USERNAME')
WebUI.setEncryptedText(findTestObject('Page_Login/txt_password'), 'YOUR_ENCRYPTED_PASSWORD')
WebUI.click(findTestObject('Page_Login/btn_signIn'))
// Navigate to the "Add Employee" section (example navigation, please customize as needed)
WebUI.click(findTestObject('Page_Home/menu_Employees'))
WebUI.click(findTestObject('Page_Employees/btn_AddNewEmployee'))
// Fill in the new employee details (please customize these steps according to your Workday configuration)
WebUI.setText(findTestObject('Page_AddEmployee/txt_firstName'), 'John')
WebUI.setText(findTestObject('Page_AddEmployee/txt_lastName'), 'Doe')
// Additional fields as needed...
// Submit the new employee information
WebUI.click(findTestObject('Page_AddEmployee/btn_Submit'))
// Optional: Verify that the new employee was added successfully
// Close the browser
WebUI.closeBrowser()
Though Katalon Studio is popular, it does have a few downsides. One significant drawback is the difficulty parameterizing the test data using the record and playback options. While this can be overcome using a scripted method, like Selenium, scripts increase the maintenance effort over time as the test case count grows. Additionally, there are performance glitches, such as slow execution speed for complex scenarios. Katalon Studio also requires exclusive skills in Java or Groovy programming, as these are the only two languages supported by the tool.
What sets testRigor apart from other testing tools?
The tools we discussed earlier have drawbacks, particularly regarding ease of test creation, execution speed and script maintenance. This is where testRigor distinguishes itself from the rest of the tools. testRigor is an AI-integrated codeless automation tool packed with a bundle of features.
Let’s go through a few of them now.
- With its generative AI, testRigor can create the test case just from the title or description provided by the user.
- testRigor enables manual testers to create and edit all test scripts in plain English, thus removing the need for programming languages. This helps manual testers develop automation scripts more quickly and extends the ability to create test scripts for Business Analysts and other stakeholders, making it a tool not limited to any particular team.
- Traditional automation tools depend on XPath or CSS selectors. Consequently, any change in DOM element properties can cause the test to fail, leading to false positive bugs. In contrast, testRigor utilizes its own element locators, allowing testers to reference either the name or location of an element. For example, for clicking the cart button, simply say – click “cart” or, similarly – double click on the 3rd occurrence of “hello” .
- testRigor also supports visual testing by comparing the current screen with a saved screenshot. Additionally, it supports audio testing by recording the audio and then comparing it with another recording in the same test or an external file.
- testRigor provides seamless integrations with industry-leading CI/CD tools, test management platforms, infrastructure providers, and communication tools.
- testRigor facilitates cross-browser and cross-platform testing, accommodating various testing types. This includes web and browser testing, mobile app testing, desktop testing, load testing, API testing, and more.
- These are a few features of testRigor. The top features of testRigor are listed here.
open url "https://your-workday-url.com" login click “Employees” click “Add New Employee” enter "John" into "First Name" enter "Doe" into "Last Name" click "Submit"
The above example shows login to the Workday and adding a New Employee to the system. We can see how simple the testRigor code is.
Conclusion
Workday is one of the leading ERP solutions across various industries, making it mandatory to test the entire system and its integrations comprehensively. In our discussion, we covered different types of testing and the tools that support them, including testRigor, which supports various testing types such as E2E and UAT. Utilizing testRigor allows the QA team to complete different tests at a faster pace, thereby enabling more rapid deployment of changes.
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