Quick Tips for Testing Workday Updates: Overlooked Tests

Something we often see manual test teams overlook is key scenarios that don 't occur naturally during the Workday Update window. This is because teams tend to test using the data that exists in their Workday tenant at that particular time. But this can lead to gaps in testing, which is risky. Take integration testing as an example. If you 're testing an outbound integration to your third-party payroll, it 's important to cover key scenarios that could have an impact on those outputs (for example a variety of hires, terminations, transfers, changes to payment elections, time entry, leave of absence, etc). But what if your data on Sandbox and Sandbox Preview doesn 't have any terminations? Your testing isn 't going to be complete, and when these activities do occur (which they inevitably will in the days and weeks after the new version of Workday is pushed to your production tenant) you could discover that the live outputs from your integration are inaccurate. These kinds of gaps are there every time you test. Perhaps there are no hires, or maybe you have seasonal events that are critical but won 't happen during the Update window (for example shift patterns during the holiday season, annual bonuses, etc). To cover the gaps and ensure that your integrations, reports or payroll continue to work as expected, you need to create a set of repeatable tests that include all of your critical scenarios because you shouldn 't be scrambling every time you need to test, asking yourself 'What will we test this time? ' Each scenario should start with the creation of a new worker (via the hire process) followed by a set of key transaction(s) on the newly hired worker (for example hire a worker and then perform change payment elections). This approach has three benefits:

• Any time you need to regression test, you have ready-made tests that you can execute with little or no effort.
• You can reuse these test packs during Workday Updates and as part of ongoing regression testing of configuration changes to your tenant.
• You don 't need to spend valuable time hunting around your Workday tenant to find employees that meet each of your scenarios.

It 'll be a huge time saver, and you 'll have confidence that you always have 100% coverage of your key scenarios.