Workday Email and Phone writeback

Writeback enables profile sources, such as Okta and Active Directory, to write email and phone number attributes to Workday. You can only use writeback with these two Workday attributes.

There's also a Workday writeback enhancement where Okta makes separate calls to update work and home contact information. This helps ensure that Workday business processes don't block writeback when home contact information for a user is missing. See Configure Workday writeback for home and work contacts.

Before you begin

Set up provisioning for Workday. See Workday

Task 1: Configure Workday

For the writeback feature to work successfully, you need to grant required permissions to the integration system user/System Group and then activate those permissions.

1. Domain Security Policy permissions. Follow steps 8-11 of Grant permissions to an integration system user, adding the Worker Data: Maintain Contact Information permission to both Domain Security Policy permitting Put access and Domain Security Policy permitting Get access.

2. Business Process Security Policy Permissions.

   • Search for bp:contact change, and then edit the Business Process Policy:

     

   • Assign the Integration System User's security group created in Create an integration system user in Workday to Initiating Action: Maintain Contact Information (Web Service):

     

3. Follow step 16 in Grant permissions to an integration system user to activate the required security policies.

Task 2: Configure Okta

1. In the Admin Console, go to ApplicationsApplications.

2. Open your Workday app integration.

3. Go to the Provisioning tab.

4. Select To App under Settings. Then, under Workday Attribute Mappings, select Go to Profile Editor.

5. Click Go to Profile Editor in the Workday Attribute Mappings section.

6. For each Workday attribute that's supported for writeback, click Add Attribute. Choose the attribute to add and click Save. This is done by discovering attributes from Workday and mapping to the relevant Okta attributes.

7. Click Refresh Attributes.

8. Add the required Workday attributes, and then click Save. See Supported attributes for a complete list of available attributes.

   Each attribute has three different data types. The following table explains the data types and uses the Work Email attribute as an example:

   Attribute Name	Type	Required/Optional	Comments	Sample Values
   EmailAddressData Work EmailAddress	String	Required	Map to Okta user attribute	OktaCustomWorkEmail
   EmailAddressData Work Primary	Boolean	Required	Set this to true when the work email written back to Workday needs to be set as Primary. Default is false.	true
   EmailAddressData Work Public	Boolean	Required	Set this to true when the work email written back to Workday needs to be set as Public. Default is false.	false

   Workday Contact information has two parameters: Primary and Public:

   Primary: This parameter defines if the contact information is of type Primary or Additional.

   Public: This parameter defines if the contact information visibility is Public or Private.

   

   See Resources for a list of the Workday attributes that are currently supported.

9. Map the newly added attribute to relevant Okta attributes. Click Map Attributes

10. Select Okta to Workday, map the attributes as shown in the following image, and then click Save Mappings:

    

    The following examples demonstrate some ways in which you can use Okta Expression Language to parse phone numbers. For example, if user.mobilePhone = +1 (415) 123-4567 x 12345:

    Work Mobile Phone AreaCode: String.substringBefore(String.substringAfter(user.mobilePhone, "(" ), ")" ) -> 415

    Work Mobile Phone InternationalPhoneCode: String.removeSpaces(String.substringBefore(String.substringAfter(user.mobilePhone, "+" ), "(" )) -> 1

    Work Mobile Phone PhoneNumber: String.removeSpaces(String.substringBefore(String.substringAfter(user.mobilePhone, ")" ), "x" )) --> 123-4567

    Work Mobile Phone PhoneExtension: String.removeSpaces(String.substringAfter(user.mobilePhone, "x")) -> 12345

11. Attribute-Level Sourcing

    In the typical Workday writeback use case, Workday is set as the overall Profile Source. However, to have the email or phone number attributes written back into Workday, configure attribute-level sourcing with Okta, Active Directory, or some other app as Profile Source for those specific attributes. See the following example:

    • Go to DirectoryProfile Editor.

    • Click Okta under Filters, and then click the profile that you want to edit.

    • Select Edit.

    • Select the profile source of your choice, then click Save Profile.

    • Go to Attributes, then select CustomFilter.

    • Select User permission and Source priority.

    • Click Save attribute to complete the setup.

Known limitations

• Format validation/rules for phone number and email:

  • Workday v15: Unlike the Workday user interface, the Workday API doesn't have format validation/rules for phone number or email (for example: Phone number format must be 3 Digits + Optional dash (or dot) + 4 digits).
  • Workday v29 does perform format validation/rules for phone number and email.

• After Okta sets the Primary Workday attributes, it doesn't set it back to NULL. This is because of a Workday validation rule that doesn't allow NULL values.

• For compatibility purposes, the following v15 schema attributes are used for writeback:

  • homeEmail
  • homeFax
  • homeMobile
  • homePager
  • homeTelephone
  • workEmail
  • workFax
  • workMobile
  • workPager
  • workTelephone

Supported attributes

S. No	Attribute Name	Type	Description
1	EmailAddressData Home EmailAddress	string	emailAddressDataHomeEmailAddress
2	EmailAddressData Home Primary	boolean	emailAddressDataHomePrimary
3	EmailAddressData Home Public	boolean	emailAddressDataHomePublic
4	EmailAddressData Work EmailAddress	string	emailAddressDataWorkEmailAddress
5	EmailAddressData Work Primary	boolean	emailAddressDataWorkPrimary
6	EmailAddressData Work Public	boolean	emailAddressDataWorkPublic
7	PhoneData Home Fax AreaCode	string	phoneDataHomeFaxAreaCode
8	PhoneData Home Fax InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataHomeFaxInternationalPhoneCode
9	PhoneData Home Fax PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataHomeFaxPhoneExtension
10	PhoneData Home Fax PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataHomeFaxPhoneNumber
11	PhoneData Home Fax Primary	boolean	phoneDataHomeFaxPrimary
12	PhoneData Home Fax Public	boolean	phoneDataHomeFaxPublic
13	PhoneData Home Mobile AreaCode	string	phoneDataHomeMobileAreaCode
14	PhoneData Home Mobile InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataHomeMobileInternationalPhoneCode
15	PhoneData Home Mobile PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataHomeMobilePhoneExtension
16	PhoneData Home Mobile PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataHomeMobilePhoneNumber
17	PhoneData Home Mobile Primary	boolean	phoneDataHomeMobilePrimary
18	PhoneData Home Mobile Public	boolean	phoneDataHomeMobilePublic
19	PhoneData Home Pager AreaCode	string	phoneDataHomePagerAreaCode
20	PhoneData Home Pager InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataHomePagerInternationalPhoneCode
21	PhoneData Home Pager PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataHomePagerPhoneExtension
22	PhoneData Home Pager PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataHomePagerPhoneNumber
23	PhoneData Home Pager Primary	boolean	phoneDataHomePagerPrimary
24	PhoneData Home Pager Public	Boolean	phoneDataHomePagerPublic
25	PhoneData Home Telephone AreaCode	string	phoneDataHomeTelephoneAreaCode
26	PhoneData Home Telephone InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataHomeTelephoneInternationalPhoneCode
27	PhoneData Home Telephone PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataHomeTelephonePhoneExtension
28	PhoneData Home Telephone PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataHomeTelephonePhoneNumber
29	PhoneData Home Telephone Primary	Boolean	phoneDataHomeTelephonePrimary
30	PhoneData Home Telephone Public	boolean	phoneDataHomeTelephonePublic
31	PhoneData Work Fax AreaCode	string	phoneDataWorkFaxAreaCode
32	PhoneData Work Fax InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataWorkFaxInternationalPhoneCode
33	PhoneData Work Fax PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataWorkFaxPhoneExtension
34	PhoneData Work Fax PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataWorkFaxPhoneNumber
35	PhoneData Work Fax Primary	boolean	phoneDataWorkFaxPrimary
36	PhoneData Work Fax Public	boolean	phoneDataWorkFaxPublic
37	PhoneData Work Mobile AreaCode	string	phoneDataWorkMobileAreaCode
38	PhoneData Work Mobile InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataWorkMobileInternationalPhoneCode
39	PhoneData Work Mobile PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataWorkMobilePhoneExtension
40	PhoneData Work Mobile PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataWorkMobilePhoneNumber
41	PhoneData Work Mobile Primary	boolean	phoneDataWorkMobilePrimary
42	PhoneData Work Mobile Public	boolean	phoneDataWorkMobilePublic
43	PhoneData Work Pager AreaCode	string	phoneDataWorkPagerAreaCode
44	PhoneData Work Pager InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataWorkPagerInternationalPhoneCode
45	PhoneData Work Pager PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataWorkPagerPhoneExtension
46	PhoneData Work Pager PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataWorkPagerPhoneNumber
47	PhoneData Work Pager Primary	boolean	phoneDataWorkPagerPrimary
48	PhoneData Work Pager Public	boolean	phoneDataWorkPagerPublic
49	PhoneData Work Telephone AreaCode	string	phoneDataWorkTelephoneAreaCode
50	PhoneData Work Telephone InternationalPhoneCode	string	phoneDataWorkTelephoneInternationalPhoneCode
51	PhoneData Work Telephone PhoneExtension	string	phoneDataWorkTelephonePhoneExtension
52	PhoneData Work Telephone PhoneNumber	string	phoneDataWorkTelephonePhoneNumber
53	PhoneData Work Telephone Primary	boolean	phoneDataWorkTelephonePrimary
54	PhoneData Work Telephone Public	boolean	phoneDataWorkTelephonePublic