Start with the tenant's status
Three documented rules stop a personal Workday Development tenant from opening even when you type everything correctly. Personal tenants expire after 7 consecutive days without a sign-in, temporary passwords must be changed within 72 hours, and every tenant is unavailable during the Weekly Service Update. Open the Developer Site, go to Console > Tenants, and read the tenant's Status before you try anything else.
The documented statuses are Initiated, In progress, Running, Error, Deleting and Deleted. A tenant you can sign in to shows Running.
| Status | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| StatusInitiated, In progress | What it means for youStill being built. Wait for the email that says it's ready. |
| StatusRunning | What it means for youThe tenant is up. The problem is the sign-in or the connection; see below. |
| StatusError | What it means for youThe build didn't complete. Workday documents no repair, so delete it and request another within the limits below. |
| StatusDeleting, Deleted | What it means for youGone, or going. Deletion permanently removes its data and configuration. |
If the tenant isn't listed under Development Tenants, there is nothing to sign in to. For a personal account, request a new one with + under Development Tenants (or Create Development Tenant). Workday's getting-started page also has you register for the Open Access Beta program on the Tenants page before the create option is offered, so on a brand-new account with no create option, check that form has been submitted.
The 7-day expiry on personal tenants
Workday's page on personal account tenants says the tenant expires if you don't sign in to it for 7 consecutive days. Treat an expired tenant as gone, with its test data and tenant configuration. Your apps aren't lost, because their source lives in App Hub, so a new tenant only needs them redeployed and reconfigured. The guide to moving Extend apps to a new developer tenant lists what to re-create.
Two limits apply when you replace it. A personal account can have only 1 active Development tenant at a time, and no more than 2 Development tenants within 6 hours. If you've already created two in the last 6 hours, wait for that window to pass before requesting another.
When a new tenant is ready, Workday sends the sign-in details by email only; the Developer Site doesn't notify you. The personal-account page says that is usually within 15 minutes, and the getting-started walkthrough describes 1 to 2 minutes. If no email arrives, refresh the Tenants page: a Running status means you can use Reset Password (next section) to get a fresh one.
The right user name for the tenant type
Development tenants come with staged personas, and you sign in as one of them, not with your Developer Site email. Workday's table:
| Tenant type | Staged company | User name |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant typeGMS | Staged companyGlobal Modern Service | User namelmcneil |
| Tenant typeAMU | Staged companyAlma Mater University | User namebking or jjones |
| Tenant typeGOV | Staged companyGreen Oak Valley | User namejjones |
Personal account tenants are GMS tenants: Workday's personal-account page has you sign in as lmcneil, the Logan McNeil persona. Your Developer Site email is not the tenant user name.
The 72-hour temporary password window
The email with a new tenant's sign-in carries a temporary password that you must change within 72 hours of receiving it. Workday's pages give the 72-hour rule for both new tenants and password resets. If you missed it, or simply forgot the password you set:
- On Console > Tenants, select the tenant.
- Click Reset Password on the side panel.
- Use the new sign-in details from the email (subject Your Tenant Password Has Been Reset in Workday's walkthrough) and set a new password on first sign-in, again within 72 hours.
On a company account, Workday's customer page says Company Administrators reset Development tenant passwords, so a developer without that role asks one.
Weekly maintenance
Workday's Weekly Service Update applies to Development tenants on the standard Workday maintenance schedule, and during it you can't access or create Development tenants. Tenants in the WD104 data center have their own published schedule. If sign-in fails at the same time each week, check the maintenance schedule first; wait for maintenance to finish rather than resetting the password.
The update patches Development tenants with the Service Update from the preceding Friday, with Workday metadata at Production confidence level (GMS tenant data is at Preview confidence level).
When the tenant opens in a browser but not from the Developer Site
A Running tenant you can sign in to directly can still refuse connections from App Builder, the API Explorers or Orchestration Builder. These use their own tenant connections with their own lifetimes:
- API Explorers (Graph, REST, SOAP) share one connection, set up from the Manage Tenant Connections icon at the top of the Developer Site. The access token expires 60 minutes after you connect. Copy a fresh token rather than reusing one from an hour ago.
- App Builder connects from the cylinder-and-lightning-bolt icon. A green dot means connected, orange means the connection expires within 10 minutes, and no dot means it's inactive. App Preview against your data needs this connection live.
- Orchestration Builder uses Global Tenant Connect: one sign-in per app, each lasting at most 60 minutes. Opening a different app doesn't reuse the connection.
All three offer a bypass option (Bypass single sign-on Redirect for the API Explorers, Bypass single sign-on in App Builder and Orchestration Builder). Select it when your company's SSO provider intercepts the sign-in and the Development tenant's own credentials (such as lmcneil) are what you need. A tenant sign-in on the Developer Site carries over: Workday says you can then connect in Orchestration Builder without entering the password.
If none of the Developer Site tools can reach the tenant on a company network, the block may be the network. Workday's basic setup reference lists, per region, the Development tenant host, the API gateway and authorization domains on port 443, and localhost ports 63342 and 8123 for the IntelliJ plugin; IT may need to allow them.
Signing in as someone else in the tenant
If you can sign in as lmcneil but need to test as another persona, don't look for their passwords. Set up proxy access: run Create Proxy Access Policy, restrict it to the WCPDEV environment, choose an unconstrained group that can proxy and the groups they can act on behalf of, then use Start Proxy and Stop Proxy. The tenant shows On Behalf of during a proxy session, and the Signons and Attempted Signons report records the sessions. The multi-persona proxy testing guide covers using this for security tests.
How to keep it from happening again
Sign in to a personal tenant at least once in every 7 days, even when you're not building, and keep your app source in App Hub and in a local copy. If the tenant does lapse, you lose test data and tenant configuration, not the app. Whether a company Developer Site account (with Development tenants under the Extend contract and no 7-day rule on its page) suits you better is covered in personal vs company developer accounts.
Sources checked
- Create and Manage Personal Account Development Tenants
- Concept: WCP Development Tenants
- Create and Manage Development Tenants for Workday Customers
- Get Started on the Workday Developer Platform
- Reference: Workday Extend Basic Setup
- Connect API Explorers to a Tenant
- Connect to a Development Tenant
- Concept: Global Tenant Connect
- Enable Proxy Access on WCP Development Tenants