Independent Workday consultants and implementation teams often face a common hurdle when building Workday Extend applications: experimenting directly within a client's implementation or sandbox tenant introduces compliance overhead, change-control approvals, and risks of accidental configuration drift.

Setting up a dedicated Workday Developer Account provides an isolated personal sandbox environment where you can design data models, experiment with Presentation Page Models (PMD), and test App components without touching client data.

This guide outlines how to register, configure tenant access, and establish secure developer connections.

1. Requesting Access to the Workday Developer Program

Workday provides developer tenant access through the Workday Developer Program for registered partner organizations and certified developers.

  1. Navigate to the official Workday Developer Portal.
  2. Sign in using your corporate credentials affiliated with your partner firm or developer subscription.
  3. Access the Developer Tenants or Sandboxes section under Account Management to request a development sandbox instance.
  4. Once provisioned, note your tenant domain, tenant name, and base REST API URL.

A personal developer tenant provides standard Extend capabilities, including Custom Business Object (CBO) creation, Workday Query Language (WQL) execution, and application packaging.

2. Configuring an API Client in the Developer Tenant

To build, test, and deploy Extend apps automatically or connect developer tooling, you must register an API Client in your sandbox tenant.

Step 1: Register API Client for Integrations

  1. In the Workday search bar, run the task Register API Client for Integrations.
  2. Set the Client Name to a descriptive value (for example, Extend App Developer).
  3. Set the Non-Expiring Refresh Tokens setting according to your firm's security policies.
  4. Select the appropriate Scope (Functional Areas) required for Extend development:
    • Extend App Management
    • Staffing (if creating worker-linked custom business objects)
    • Integration
    • System Auditing
  5. Save the generated Client ID and Client Secret in a secure credential vault on your computer.

Step 2: Create an Integration System User (ISU)

  1. Run the task Create Integration System User.
  2. Create an ISU designated for developer tools.
  3. Assign the user to an Integration System Security Group (ISSG) configured with access to Extend domain policies.
  4. Run the task Activate Pending Security Policy Changes to enforce permission grants.

3. Best Practices for Developing in Isolated Sandboxes

Operating within a dedicated developer tenant allows you to build with maximum speed while protecting client confidentiality:

  • Never Clone Client Production Data: Keep your personal developer sandbox populated only with synthetic test personas and mock organizational structures.
  • Model Clean Boundaries: Define Custom Business Objects (CBOs) using portable namespaces so that completed Extend applications can be packaged and migrated into client environments cleanly via Object Transporter (OX).
  • Verify Schema Limits: Validate custom field quotas and WQL execution plans in development before proposing changes to customer architecture boards.

4. Connecting Your Developer Sandbox to kiweely

kiweely operates directly on your computer to assist with Extend development without sharing credentials across different customer contexts.

To connect your newly provisioned developer sandbox in kiweely:

  1. Open kiweely and navigate to Connections.
  2. Select Add Connection and enter your developer tenant name and base URL.
  3. Authenticate using your saved developer credentials or registered API client.
  4. Start a new conversation associated with your Extend project: kiweely can now inspect your sandbox schema, generate and validate PMD/AMD definitions, and verify deployments safely before you export components to client tenants.

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