Automating Workday with Tosca: The Merito Automation Accelerator for Workday Demo

Watch the Merito Automation Accelerator for Workday run live in Tricentis Tosca. The accelerator is a library of highly reusable, buffered modules assembled into reusable test step blocks for the actions nearly every Workday test needs, such as proxy as a user, global search and entering a date into any date field.

In this demo, Louis Tadman walks through an example create expense report test, runs it against a Workday tenant, and shows how each reusable test step block is built from other blocks. He then runs a demo test library covering global search, clearing search results, setting multiple date fields with standard Tosca date expressions, and selecting search results by radio button and by index.

The same library applies across Workday Financials, HCM, Student and Government tenants. Merito architects evaluate your critical business processes, select the subset of blocks that fits your tenant, and build test cases specific to your configuration and your upstream and downstream integrations, so you maintain the fewest automation assets while covering the most business processes.

If your team runs Tricentis Tosca and wants to automate Workday, book a conversation.

Intro (0:00)

Hello. In this video, we are going to have a look at the Merito automation accelerator for Workday. We're going to walk through the assets and have a look at some of the examples. The first thing that we're going to do is look at an example test case, run it, and then discuss all the reusability that it inherently uses from the Merito automation accelerator. Then we're going to look at the RTB demo test library that shows some specific one-off use cases. Our accelerator library is a series of highly reusable modules that have been thoughtfully buffered which are essentially Tosca variables that allows them to be extremely dynamic and very reusable.

The accelerator library and reusable test step blocks (0:38)

Those modules are constructed into reusable test step blocks to do common actions such as start proxy as a user aka impersonate a user in Workday, perform a global search, enter a date into any date field. And this is exactly what these look like. So this is using the global search to search for the create expense report task. To leverage this, you simply drag and drop it into your test and type any task, report or whatever else it is. And the RTB itself uses this dynamically to search for and find what you are looking for.

Next, we have another one to fill in expense report information with the correct details. a lot of these reusable test step blocks leverage additional reusable test step blocks within them and we'll have a look at that in just a moment after we run this test. Then we'll add line items which includes clicking on the add attachment using Windows Explorer to search for a file name and add that dynamically. And you can see right here we are adding in some notes here in the memo field using the regular Tosca date expressions. So any you know in tool built out Tosca expressions such as dates formatterers can all be used within these as well. And then there's an optional project task.

So if for example there was no project task here we do not need to enter one. and this reusable test step block will not enter that value. So that's an example. We don't need to walk through every one of these. I'll just pop these out so you can have an idea of where we're entering these. And generally if the values that we're searching for, for example, creating an expense report is static, that's always what we want to do when we're running a create expense report task.

We will put that value down here. Otherwise, we generally allow for test configuration parameters to input them and buffer them as variables within Tosca so they can be dynamically referenced throughout. It's a very thoughtful framework, very easy to use. And our primary goal is to create the fewest amount of automation assets for you to maintain while promoting the absolute maximal coverage of your critical business processes. Now that we've had a look at the general composition of this test case and the reusable test step blocks that are being leveraged, we'll go ahead and run this test and I'll talk through it as it runs.

Running the create expense report test (3:22)

I've pre-opened the browser. There we go. So it will run a little bit quicker. First step that we do is use our Tosca standard module open URL to navigate to our Workday instance and click the sign-in button. Once we're signed into this tenant, we will use our start proxy as user task which leverages our global search proxy to enter in our username that we want to impersonate.

The reason why we do this in a create expense report flow is we would want to file an expense report as an employee and then perhaps later in the flow we could start to proxy as the manager of that user and then perform additional tasks such as approve, deny or whatever other whatever other business processes we have configured. We use some of our generic RTBs to enter text and values in that previous field. We're selecting the tab and clicking the add attachment button. We'll now go ahead and navigate with Windows Explorer to search for a specific input name for a yellow taxi receipt. We're now going to click that check box and enter in the date of the expense report, which is today minus 3 days.

Enter in the expense item and then we'll submit the expense report. We're also taking screenshots along the way and saving them thoughtfully into a dynamic file path to verify and we sign out. Pretty easy to build this test. Again, you would use the reusable test step block library and drag and drop those into place.

How the test is built (5:06)

And as I mentioned, some of these reusable test step blocks leverage additional test step blocks and highly reusable modules. So let's go ahead and go to the create new expense report and fill in reusable test step block and have a quick look at it. So within our reusable test step block library, not 100% of these will be applicable to every Workday tenant and or customer. So we will select the subset that most represents the functionality that you need. In this case we can see some of the preconditions.

Start proxy, stop proxy, log in, log out. Those are common reusable test step blocks that will be used in nearly every single test case. If we look at the start proxy task right here, it's also leveraging another reusable test step block. Use global search. Use global search is used in many different reusable test step blocks as well as in pretty much every single test case.

Our goal is to simulate real world business processes that your users would do and not take shortcuts that other automation frameworks might. We can also view some of the additional reusable test step blocks. We have use global search. There's an advanced search option, a specific one for customer search. Navigating to related actions.

We have buttons, tabs, tables, lists. All of these are again highly reusable and can be leveraged in multiple different ways. And the Merito architects will work with you to evaluate your critical business processes and the flows that you need tested. And we will leverage this highly reusable framework to then build out specific RTBs and test cases that can be leveraged with a multitude of different data-driven scenarios.

Search, text, index and date blocks (7:07)

We have some other things as well. And in addition to search text input, for example, there's several different types of text fields within Workday. For example, a search box where you might select a radio button. We also have indexed versions of these, which we'll see in just a second. So, for example, if you're searching for an item that has more than one matching item in the list and you wanted to select the second or third option, you can select that by index.

Again any date field that you would want to use. You can enter the set generic date reusable test step block by entering in the business properties date using standard Tosca date formulas and then the label of the field such as expense report on date or pay by date whatever field label that might be within Workday.

Modules and Workday coverage (7:58)

We'll have a quick look at the modules but we won't dive in there too much. We have our standard modules that ship out of the box with Tosca. Some universal common modules, some controls for Chrome and that sort of thing. We have some dedicated specific RTBs for different finance areas within here. All of these reusable test step blocks are applicable to finance, human capital management, Workday student, and Workday gov.

It's the same underlying code base with the same controls. However, of course, depending on which tenant you're running, the business processes will be different. That's why we find our accelerator toolkit to be extremely advantageous. Rather than pre-built test cases that have to be altered and maintained, we want to start with a strong reusable foundation and build out bespoke test cases that are unique to your environment and implementation of Workday, your integrated upstream and downstream tool sets as well as your configurations. So, here's an example of some of these.

Again, there's a ton more reusable test step blocks down here or excuse me, modules. We're not going to dive into those. I think you get the gist. And if you would like more information on the entire asset library, we're more than happy to help out. Next, what we're going to do is we're going to run this demo test library.

The demo test library (9:20)

So, what this is doing is it's just showing us simple use cases for some of the most popular reusable test step blocks. It will do things such as perform global search and then clear global search results and log out, set dates into multiple date fields. So right here I've left the reusable test step blocks using their default name so you can get an idea of the reusability. Generally when you leverage these in a test case you would enter the value that you want to use in the actual name. You'd rename that to you know what are we setting here we are setting the to date for this particular form and using Tosca date 1 month plus 7 days.

Same thing up here. We're just setting 7 days, 1 month plus 7 days, 1 month plus 14 days to illustrate, you can use standard Tosca formulas. So if you're already familiar with Tosca and how to use it, very easy to leverage this reusable test block library the Merito automation accelerator platform.

Running the demo test library (10:29)

Next, we will do select and search for a value via radio button in a search field. And then we're going to do the same thing with an index. So we can show you clicking the second one. So I'll go ahead and run all of these at once and again talk through them as they're running and we will get to see most of the critical RTBs in action. There's a bunch of other ones such as table navigations, navigating tabs, buffering values, so collecting dynamic values from the UI as you maybe perform things.

So you've seen the login. It's a common reusable test step block used in pretty much everyone. Our global search to search for the create journal task. We're going to go ahead and then clear the global search results. And then we'll log out.

And the reason why you'd want to clear that is sometimes Workday uses IntelliSense. So if you click into the field and start typing again, you might append text. And all of these are very thoughtfully made. And if you dive in and look under the hood at the reusable test step blocks, there's a lot of additional things to create these to be very stable such as click in enter text and then maybe press a tab or enter key to ensure the UI accepts and takes that value. In this case, we're going to enter the from date 7 days from today, the two date 1 month and 7 days from today, the due date override 1 month and 14 days from today.

Again, all standard date formats are applicable here that you could enter with a Tosca formula. Now, we're going to go ahead and go back to that same form, and we're going to search for some terms, and we're going to select the first radio button option that matches our input text. As I mentioned, the values that you enter into these reusable test step blocks are used as identifiers in the module to ensure they're extremely dynamic. We're going to search for the payment terms of net30 and click that first radio button. And as you'll notice, you can see for these examples, we're using a lot of clicks and whatnot.

That is the most stable way to interact and automate Workday. some of the you know send direct text to fields and things don't always register consistently because the Workday UI is highly dynamic with things such as IntelliSense and as you can see when you type something it automatically pulls up relevant items and since we entered that specific text we find it and enter it. We're searching for the same thing. And in this time, we're selecting the radio button by index. And last but not least, we will sign out. So that's just a small sample of what comes with the Merito automation accelerator for Workday.

Wrap up (13:11)

I hope you see its power and reusability. Again, our main goal is to help you create as much mission-critical business process coverage with as little maintenance as possible. And that's how we find you get the most return on your investment in this toolkit and our services to assist you. Thank you for watching.