Yes. A custom Workday Extend app can run inside the Workday mobile app, but only if every widget in the page flow is mobile-enabled; if even one is not, Workday sends the user to the phone's browser at the start of the flow instead. You turn it on with the Enable for Mobile App setting on the custom task that launches the app.
How users open an Extend app on a phone
Workday documents two entry points in the mobile app, both of which launch a model task:
- Apps (bottom icon), then Custom Apps
- Find (bottom icon), then Tasks & Reports
One limit is stated outright: the Workday mobile app does not support custom apps on a custom dashboard. If your design puts the app on a dashboard, mobile users will not get it there, so give them a task entry point as well.
What decides whether a page renders in the app
The deciding factor is the widgets, which Workday calls PMD tags. Each tag is either mobile-enabled or it is not.
- If every widget in a page flow is mobile-enabled, the user can move through all the pages of that flow inside the Workday mobile app.
- If at least one widget in the flow is not mobile-enabled, Workday redirects the user to the mobile browser at the start of the flow, and the user gets a button to open the page there.
The redirect applies to the whole flow, not just the page with the offending widget. A single unsupported tag on page four moves the user out of the app on page one. If mobile matters, check every page in the flow, not only the first.
To find out which tags qualify, open Workday's Reference: PMD Tags page. It lists each tag with
the modes it supports, and writes mobile after those that are mobile-enabled, for example
( view | edit | mobile ). The page layout tags, the basic inputs such as text, number, date,
checkbox and dropdown, and the endpoint and outbound-data subschemas are all marked that way. A few
tags are not. The guide tag, for instance, is listed as ( edit ) only. Each mobile-enabled tag
also has a Mobile Support section on its own documentation page, which typically reads
"Android, iOS".
Treat that list as the source of truth rather than any summary of it, since Workday maintains it release by release.
Make a custom task that opens the app
For the app to appear on a phone, a custom task has to launch it:
- Create a custom task that runs your Extend app. Workday's guides for this are Add Tasks with Business Object Context and Add Context-Free Tasks.
- Select Enable for Mobile App on the task.
- If the task should open the app's default page, enter
/in Route Path.
Test the app on a phone
Workday documents testing against a Development tenant. You need the Workday mobile app, a custom task as above, and permission to change the Tenant and Web Address settings in the app. If your phone is managed, ask your Mobile Device Management administrator whether that is restricted.
- Open the Workday app.
- On the sign-in page, tap the gear icon at the top.
- Enter the Tenant name (Workday's example is
gms) and the Web Address, which is the Development tenant's host name, entered as a full https address. - Tap Save and sign in.
- Select Apps, then Custom Apps, then the custom task that opens your app.
When you later deploy the app to another tenant, change Tenant and Web Address again to point at that tenant.
What Workday does not say
The documentation does not give a list of supported phone models or operating system versions, and it does not say how to preview a mobile layout from App Preview. The only documented way to see the app on a phone is the procedure above, on a real device and a real Development tenant. If you build in a personal developer account, the tenant you get is described in the Open Developer Program guide, and testing as different users on that tenant is covered in the multi-persona testing guide.