Prism Analytics Overview

With an abundance of data for organizations to collect and track, there has never been a more important time to evaluate the tools and processes around your organization's data. If you have cloud applications, it can be even more difficult to connect the dots and get a holistic view of all the data you have available to you and how to report on it together. Furthermore, if you have Workday, you may have found yourself downloading excel spreadsheets out of Workday or trying to integrate two systems that just do not want to speak to each other. In comes one of Workday’s newer SKU’s centered around data called Prism Analytics!

What is Prism Analytics?

Prism Analytics is an optional Cross Application Product within Workday that is primarily used to bring external data from a separate system into the Workday reporting framework. It can be thought of as a Workday version of a data pipeline. This is not to be confused with People Analytics - another arm of the Workday product which provides key analytical insights on workforce data through Workday’s automated analytics engine. Prism itself is useful for organizations that find themselves wanting to create reports that combine external datasets with data in Workday for use within the Workday reporting and security framework. Some examples Prism could include:

• Reporting on COVID-19 infection rates in a county and creating a dashboard in Workday to spot workers in high risk areas
• Bringing in equity data to more completely report on total compensation
• Historical data from a legacy system to get a more complete picture of a worker’s history
• Creating static data sources for more performant reports on big datasets

From what you can see in these examples, if you have ever asked the question: Wouldn’t it be great if we could report on this in Workday? Or if you have ever spent days/weeks taking exports and combining excel spreadsheets to muster a report for leadership, Prism is a match made in heaven.

I should also note that Prism is the basis for one of Workday’s most popular features right now in Accounting Center. Accounting Center uses Prism to load external data for analysis. More on that in another blog!

How does Prism Analytics work?

Prism uses tools that are not uncommon in the “ETL” world all wrapped up in the familiar Workday UI we know and love. In the “E” portion of ETL, otherwise known as “Extract”, Prism offers you the ability to pull data into it via a direct Prism API call or via a flat file upload. 

In the “T” portion, or “Transform”, this is where Prism’s value really starts to shine. If you have built your experience on words like CAST, SUBSTRING, CONCAT, etc. then you will be right at home in Prism’s data catalog. Prism uses what are called base datasets and derived datasets to create a pipeline in however many steps it takes to get your data ready for ingestion into Workday. Along the way you may do things like:

• Filter out bad data
• Join external datasets to Workday Reports using Employee ID
• Create custom columns based on conditionals

Does all of this sound familiar so far? If so - it is because the Workday Prism ETL language closely resembles that of SQL. While not a 100% match, if you know SQL, you will be able to quickly pick up the Prism functions available for ETL processing.

In the “L”, or “Load” portion of Prism, it allows you to publish your finished product for use within Workday’s reporting and security framework. Prism allows you to customize the security tied to your data source using existing or custom domains which is a big win for customers trying to secure their data. Once published, you can create reports and use your new Prism dataset as a data source. A nice added bonus is that you are able to still take action on Instanced Objects that you joined to external datasets in your created report. That worker that you loaded with the COVID dataset? Once you run your report, you are able to take related actions and link directly to that worker so long as it was brought in as an instanced field. Instanced fields can also be used to drive a more dynamic security model such as tying data to organizations that the secured user has access to.

OK that’s great - but what now?

So now you know what Prism is and how it works but how will your organization use it to add value? Stormloop has seen many clients that have Prism but are either a) unsure how to use it or b) do not have the resources to set it up. If you find yourself in situation a, think of the examples above. Start from a reporting perspective on all the current reports that are generated currently to provide value to your organization that crossover with Workday. If any of those require downloading of Workday data and combining it with data from an external system, that would be a good place to start. Some other flags would be if you find yourself switching between systems a lot to report on data or if you find yourself preferring Workday’s reporting and analytics platform to other reporting tools. Stormloop can also provide your organization with Advisory Services to help you find the areas you could get the most value out of Prism.

If you find yourself in situation b, Workday has a ton of great documentation on how to use Prism and provides training courses for clients and consultants that are interested in learning the tool. However, if you are short-staffed or need that extra push, Stormloop Services can help you build and optimize your Prism pipelines as well as build more complex reports and dashboards from those datasets in Workday with one of our many Workday experts!

Interested in more content or want to hear more? Email us at info@stormlooptech or follow us on LinkedIn for more information and helpful tips on all Workday product areas.

Written by: Aaron Nichols