Yes, you can now build Workday Extend apps without a company subscription. A personal developer account, which anyone can create on developer.workday.com, gives one person one Development tenant filled with Workday's sample data. A company account belongs to a Workday Extend customer: its Company Administrators decide who is in it, its limits come from the customer's Extend contract, and its apps move from Development through Implementation and Sandbox to Production in the customer's own tenants.
Workday's documentation calls the first kind Personal Account developers, who join through the Open Developer Platform (ODP) program. Workday describes the personal development environment as currently in Beta.
Personal and company accounts side by side
| Personal account | Company account | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can have one | Anyone who creates an account on developer.workday.com | People a Workday Extend customer's Company Administrators add |
| Development tenants | One active at a time; no more than two created within six hours | As many as the customer's Workday Extend contract specifies |
| Sample data | Staged sample data | A choice of staged sample companies: higher education, global corporate, government |
| Tenant expiry | Expires after 7 consecutive days without a sign-in | Workday documents the 7-day rule for Personal Account users only |
| Promotion levels | Development | Development, Implementation, Sandbox, Production |
| Real customer data | None: Workday recommends sample data only, never PII | Implementation and Sandbox tenants hold the customer's data |
| Usage limits | The personal tenant limits above | Entitlements set by the customer's contract, shown on the Entitlements dashboard |
Who controls a company account
Company Administrators manage a company account from the Developer Site. Workday documents that they can add users, inactivate or delete primary users, remove secondary users, change roles and reset multi-factor authentication. A few rules are worth knowing before a client adds you:
- A new user's email domain must match the domain the customer gave Workday.
- Each customer company can have at most 55 users.
- Every company must keep at least two active Company Administrators.
- When someone leaves or moves to other projects, Workday recommends inactivating their account so they can no longer change the company's Extend apps or settings.
A personal account has none of this: it is one person's own account.
Development tenants: what's the same and what isn't
Both kinds of account build in WCP Development tenants, which Workday describes as optimized for
app development. Both use staged sample data rather than a customer's real records, and both receive
Workday's Weekly Service Update. For company accounts, Workday names the staged companies: Alma
Mater University for higher education, Global Modern Service for a global corporation, and Green Oak
Valley for government. It assigns company tenant aliases in the pattern tenantPrefix_wcpdev#.
The difference that matters day to day is the expiry. Workday's documentation states that a Personal Account user's tenant "expires if you don't log in to it for 7 consecutive days". The personal tenant is a place to learn and build, not a place to keep work for months.
How far an app goes in each account
Workday Extend's lifecycle has four promotion levels:
- Development, where you deploy and update your code continuously on a Development tenant.
- Implementation, which installs the app on the customer's Implementation tenants to configure and test it.
- Sandbox, which installs it on Sandbox tenants. Workday notes that these are refreshed every week with production data, so problems show up before Production.
- Production, where the customer's Account Administrator installs and configures the app.
Implementation, Sandbox and Production tenants belong to a Workday customer, so those levels apply to apps built in a customer's company account. A personal account's documented tenant is a Development tenant. Workday also notes that once an app is installed on an Implementation, Sandbox or Production tenant, it can't be removed from that tenant.
Which account to use for what
- Learning Workday Extend, or trying an idea: a personal account. It needs nobody's permission, and the sample data means a mistake costs nothing.
- A client's app: the client's company account. Their Company Administrators add you, the app is built against the client's own setup, and it can be promoted to their tenants.
- Showing a client a prototype: either works, but a prototype built in a personal account runs on sample data, not the client's own business processes and security. Say so when you show it.
Using kiweely with either account
kiweely works with both kinds of Workday developer account. In a personal account it designs, builds, deploys and tests the app in your Development tenant, with Workday validating every version. In a client's company account it can also promote the app through Implementation and Sandbox, asking before each step. The first install in a tenant and Production stay with you.