Workday: How to Sync Employee Data to CultureBot

CultureBot needs a handful of employee details from Workday to power birthdays, work anniversaries, recognition, and employee profiles. There are three ways to deliver them: upload a file (your first import can land today), set up a feed that Workday runs itself on a schedule, or email us the export. All three start from the same Workday report, and none of it needs Workday Studio, a developer, or an IT ticket.

Build the Report (15 to 30 minutes)

In Workday, run the Create Custom Report task: name it ("CultureBot Employee Sync" works), set the type to Advanced, check Enable As Web Service, and choose a data source that covers your active workers.

Add these columns, renaming each column heading to exactly the name shown. The renames are what let CultureBot recognize your file with no mapping step:

Only email  is required. Leave out any column you don't want CultureBot to update. On birthdays: CultureBot keeps only the month and day for the celebration. The birth year is never stored. Workday's own reference for report building is Building Custom Reports.

Option 1: Upload a File Today (10 minutes)

1. Export The Report: Run your report and export the results as CSV.
2. Import It In CultureBot: In the CultureBot web app, open Directory, click Import user data, and choose CSV. (You need CultureBot full admin access to see this button.) The preview shows exactly what will change before anything is written.

That is a complete sync. For plenty of teams, repeating this monthly is all the integration they ever need.

Option 2: Have Workday Send It Automatically (about 20 minutes)

Workday can deliver the report to CultureBot itself, on a schedule, using a built-in Workday integration type called an EIB. No servers, no scripts, and nothing for IT to run. If you want to see the data land before automating, run Option 1 once with the same report first.

1. Get Your CultureBot Key: In the CultureBot web app, open Directory, click Import user data, choose API, then Generate new key. The key is shown once, so keep it handy for step 4. (CultureBot full admin access required.)
2. Create The Integration: In Workday, run the Create EIB task. Name it ("CultureBot Feed"), select Outbound, and click OK. If Create EIB does not come up in your search bar, ask your Workday admin to grant you integration-building access, a one-time permission.
3. Point It At Your Report: On the Get Data step, set Data Source Type to Custom Report and pick your report, then set Alternate Output Format to CSV. On the Transform step, set Transformation Type to None.
4. Set The Delivery: On the Deliver step, choose the delivery method HTTP/SSL and enter:
   • Address: https://getculturebot.com/api/users/import/raw
   • Web Service Invocation Type: Basic Auth
   • User Name: culturebot

   • Password: your API key from step 1

     If you put the key in the User Name field instead, that works too.

5. Schedule It: From your new integration, choose Launch / Schedule. Run it once with Run Now to test, then schedule the recurrence. Weekly overnight is right for most teams. Workday schedules always carry an end date, so set it as far out as allowed and drop a calendar reminder to renew it.

Good to know: the feed runs under the Workday account that schedules it. If that person leaves your company, recreate the schedule under another account, or ask your Workday admin to have a service account own it.

Option 3: Email Us the File

Export the report as CSV and email it to support@getculturebot.com. We'll import it for you.

How You Know It Worked

In Workday, each run of the feed shows Completed in the integration event. On the CultureBot side, if an import ever lands incompletely (a mistyped column heading, a new hire who has not joined your Slack or Teams workspace yet), CultureBot sends a direct message in Slack or Teams to the admin who created the API key, saying exactly what happened, and it repeats on every run until the cause is fixed. No message means everything applied.

New hires need no action from you: CultureBot learns about someone within a day after they join your Slack or Teams workspace, so a brand-new hire's row simply imports on a later run. Someone in your report who never joins Slack or Teams will keep being reported as not found; filter them out of the report if that gets noisy.

The full technical reference behind the feed, for anyone on your side who wants it, is Using the API to Sync Employee Data to CultureBot.

Need help? Reach out to support@getculturebot.com for help troubleshooting.