Boomerang (Integrations) - Michael Domingo -->

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Boomerang (Integrations)



Ok, he's officially lost it...

Workday Rising 2018 bands aside, I'm actually talking about boomerang integrations.  

What is a Boomerang Integration?

These handy little tools allow you follow a nifty little cycle in which you can pull data out of Workday, Manipulate/add/edit the data in some way, and then place data back into Workday.  Aren't you glad I used this song as my intro and not a certain Dance Moms person?

No more cruel and unusual punishment. Jo-Jo Siwa is the modern Rickrolling. Here's a few use cases:

  • I absolutely hate how Workday parses names from resumes.  I want to run an integration that takes the name out on a regular basis, and parses it into proper case.  (On a side note, this is an extremely interesting use case where regular expressions are a godsend - and you're still only going to get to a 80% solution - at best). Oh, and someone has done it. And this was an EIB boomerang.  Just be prepared to fall down a rabbit hole (Mc, Mac, D', deLorenzo, etc. - have fun!)  The best Regex I've seen so far for (US ENGLISH) names is below:

if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(name))
    {
        return Regex.Replace(
                         name,
                         @"(?<=\b(?:mc|mac)?|_)[a-zA-Z](<!'s\b)",
                         m => m.Value.ToUpper());
    }
    return name;


  • I want to send a BIRT report to a bunch of newly acquired Manager W: Drive (Now Workday Documents), right after I finish my iLoads/EIBs (Find my .clar here).
  • As a result of data from another system (that I can access via a web service), I want to pull a report of employees out of workday, and possibly create new events (like, a job change) - I'm working on this project now.
  • And the list goes on...
A boomerang (not the integration)

A more detailed look

I'm going to take deeper dive into my second use case.  What my Comp VP wanted was a BIRT statement of all of our employee programs, including compensation, benefits, and the like to deliver to a newly acquired employee.  Sounds easy enough.  But the twist was this: It had to be made available to the manager, and it had to be there right after we finished with the hires.  We didn't want a new manager, with (possibly) limited Workday experience to have to hunt around for a report.  And to click a button?  Heck no.  We wanted it available right away on day 1 so they can sit down with their directs.

A boomerang integration was perfect here.  We run a RaaS report as output from workday, split it up, grab some info from the report about the manager, process a BIRT step, and put it in the W: Drive via the PIM.  Here's how it looks:

A Boomerang (integration)



  1. The Local-Out pulls a RaaS report, which identifies the cohort of employees (via a few launch parameters).  
  2. Then split the report by employee (which happens to be via the ../wd:/Report_Entry xpath
  3. Pull out some key variables (manager id, for the W: Drive, and employee name, to name the pdf something nice for the manager), and write them to the message
  4. The PdfPrintStep actually runs the BIRT report
  5. The PIM sets the document owner (puts it in the W: Drive)

Wrapping it Up

Ultimately, there's  lot of use cases for boomerangs, and David Epstein's Share-a-thons are a great place to find more, and I'm happy to be a member of teamupboomerang.com. The next sharing event is on 9/9!  

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MICHAEL DOMINGO
+1 215 262 6635
Philadelphia, PA

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