Workday HRIS Integration

Span connects to Workday via a secure third-party integration layer to sync your employee directory and org hierarchy. This keeps your people, team structure, and reporting relationships automatically up-to-date in Span.

Which Workday Integration Should I Use?

Span offers two Workday integration options:

Both options support all the same data — including absences/time-off — and follow the same setup process.

Prerequisites

For Standard Workday

• A Workday Integration Security User (ISU) account with permissions to read:

  • Workers / Employees

  • Organizations / Cost Centers

  • Management Hierarchies

• Your Workday tenant name and environment URL

For Workday Custom Report

• A Workday RAAS custom report configured to expose employee data

• The report must include the fields listed in the Data Synced section below

• Report URL/credentials provided to complete the setup wizard

Setup Steps

Step 1 — Navigate to Integrations

1. In Span, go to Settings → Integrations

2. Under the HRIS category, select Workday (or Workday Custom Report)

3. Click Connect

Step 2 — Authenticate with Workday

A secure connection wizard will open (powered by Kombo). Follow the prompts to:

1. Enter your Workday tenant URL

2. Provide your ISU credentials (or custom report URL for the Custom Report variant)

3. Authorize the connection

💡 Span never stores your Workday credentials. The integration uses a secure token issued by the connection layer to fetch your data.

Step 3 — Wait for Initial Data Load

After authenticating, Span will begin loading your organizational data. This takes approximately 10 minutes. You'll see a confirmation message — you can leave the page and come back.

Step 4 — Configure Your Sync

Once data is loaded, you'll be prompted to configure what gets synced:

Select Departments / Org Units

Choose which departments or cost centers to include. You must select at least one department or org unit. Only employees who belong to that unit (and its sub-departments) will be synced into Span. Selecting a parent org unit automatically includes all departments beneath it.

Include People (always enabled)

Employee records are always synced. This cannot be disabled.

Include Teams (optional)

Toggle this on to also sync your Workday team/org hierarchy into Span's team structure. Recommended if you want Span metrics segmented by your Workday org chart.

Click Save to activate the integration.

Data Synced

Employee Fields

The following fields are pulled from Workday for each employee:

Team / Org Unit Fields

Absences / Time-Off (optional)

If enabled, Span also syncs absence records including:

• Absence start and end dates

• Absence type (e.g., PTO, sick leave, parental leave)

• Approval status

• Duration and unit (days/hours)

Absence sync uses an incremental approach — only new or changed records are fetched on each sync, keeping the data load efficient.

Sync Frequency

• Employee and team data is synced every 2 hours.

• Absence/time-off records are synced incrementally whenever a change is detected

• All synced data must be no more than 6 hours stale — if the sync fails, Span will alert your admin

Filtering & Scope

If you selected specific org units during setup, only employees who belong to those units (and their sub-departments) will be synced. You can update this configuration at any time under Settings → Integrations.

Note: Only one HRIS integration can be active per organization. If you need to switch from Workday to another HRIS, you must disconnect the existing integration first.

Troubleshooting

Disconnecting Workday

To remove the integration:

1. Go to Settings → Integrations

2. Find the Workday integration and click Disconnect

3. Confirm the removal

Disconnecting stops future syncs. Existing people and team data in Span is not deleted — it remains but will no longer be updated automatically.

For additional help, contact support@span.app.