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Workday Unveils New Technology Innovations, Redesigns User Experience to Help Customers Adapt in a Changing World

WDAY | September 13, 2022

Low-Code/No-Code Capabilities in Workday Extend Will Help Enable Developers to More Quickly and Easily Build Apps to Support New Needs

UX Evolves to Help Make Work Effortless, Delivering a More Seamless and Personalized Experience for Every Type of User

PLEASANTON, Calif. and ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced new technology and user experience (UX) innovations aimed at helping its customer community – which represents more than 60 million workers – to quickly adapt to meet ever-changing business and employee needs. These new innovations are being showcased at Workday Rising, the company's annual customer conference, and include low-code/no-code development functionality in Workday Extend to help simplify application development. In addition, the company is featuring a redesigned Workday UX, with intuitive capabilities to help make work as easy and effortless as possible for every type of user.

Simplifying App Development for the Lines of Business
Workday Extend enables organizations to create new capabilities without requiring IT resources or costly new technologies. Customers will be able to continue to innovate and create value with an even more connected, adaptable, and extensible Workday, using the following new capabilities:

App Builder, a web-based Integrated Developer Environment (IDE), now offers a more intuitive and cohesive build experience with visual and preview modes for business developers.
A low-code/no-code visual capability, which will be added to App Builder, will enable developers to create apps via a drag-and-drop user interface, without having to write any code.
Workday Graph API, a new tool for developers, will be made available to Workday Extend customers. Based on open-source API query and manipulation language GraphQL, this tool will help streamline the entire API experience to navigate and discover Workday APIs, reducing complexity and ongoing maintenance while improving responsiveness and developer productivity.

"Workday enables us to push boundaries and try new things so we can rapidly adapt to changing needs. With Workday Extend, we quickly built mission-critical apps which have helped to improve staff engagement and employee retention over the past year," said Megan McCartney, director of human capital management systems, St. Luke's University Health Network. "We've been able to glean even more value from our existing technology investment – simplifying app development without adding technology silos – all while improving the employee experience."

Keeping Pace With Changing User Expectations and Needs
Chief information officers (CIOs) and IT leaders are prioritizing employee engagement in order to reduce turnover and improve productivity. To meet customers in the moment and help them manage evolving user expectations, Workday is tailoring its UX to be more intentional for every user type – from employees (desk and deskless) to managers and professional users. By delivering simpler, more intuitive experiences driven by hyper-personalization and automation, and surfacing those experiences for how and where users prefer to work, Workday aims to empower people so they can take action easily.

"Elevating how we enable and support our workforce, which primarily consists of frontline workers, has been a collaborative effort across IT and HR," said Mark Griffin, chief human resources officer, BJ's Warehouse Club. "We've been thoughtful about how to best leverage the Workday mobile app to meet employees where they are, and we're already seeing increased engagement. We look forward to new UX functionality that will further enhance and streamline our employees' experience."

Workday continues to innovate in line with its broader experience strategy, which consists of three primary pillars – Workday Engage, Workday Everywhere, and Workday Empower.

Workday Engage is an initiative focused on making work effortless through frictionless experiences. Workday Today, the reimagined home page now live in production for the entire Workday user base, delivers a personalized experience across devices. In the future, Workday plans to provide a dynamic home layout with drag-and-drop functionality, enabling users to design and configure their homepage.
Workday Everywhere is an initiative focused on bringing Workday to where people prefer to work. Employees can now view required Workday Learning courses from workspaces such as Microsoft Teams or Slack and managers can quickly approve team learning enrollments within the flow of work. In the future, Workday plans to provide managers with more detailed team insights, further helping them to focus on employee satisfaction and success.
Workday Empower is an initiative focused on driving hyper-personalization through machine learning (ML). With the Manager Insights Hub, a people manager can see comprehensive team information, including worker skills, along with actionable, ML-driven insights to help engage and develop employees. In the future, Workday plans to deliver ML that will make recommendations based on past actions – for example, preemptively offering to download a report for viewing based on when that specific report is typically accessed.

Additional Comments on the News
"Our continuous innovation on the Workday platform – combined with our commitment to being an open, connected system – is solely for the benefit of our customers and their users to help ensure they have a technology platform that allows them to respond and pivot when the business requires it," said Jim Stratton, chief technology officer, Workday. "We will continue to deliver the next-generation capabilities that help organizations solve their unique challenges, while advancing the digital experience for all users."

"We're focusing on two key elements as we continue to execute on our vision for the Workday user experience – simplifying the digital experience while elevating the human aspect of that experience," said Jeff Gelfuso, chief design officer, Workday. "And when it comes to simplifying, we're designing Workday interactions to feel effortless. That means we're meeting every type of Workday user in the natural flow of their work, creating personalized experiences that work for them."

Availability
App Builder is currently available as part of Workday Extend; the low-code/no-code capability for App Builder and Workday Graph API are planned to be available to Workday Extend customers in the first half of 2023.

For More Information

Read the blog "Riding the Wave of Innovation to Deliver a Frictionless Experience," by Jeff Gelfuso, chief design officer, Workday.
Register and attend Workday Rising sessions in the Digital Discovery Program:

Office of IT: CIOs Earned Their Cape During the Pandemic—Now Fly Higher [RBVK2111], Sept. 13,12:00 p.m. EDT.
Workday User Experience: Strategy & Vision [PSV2130], Sept. 13, 1:30 p.m. EDT.
Employee Voice and Experience in Workday: Strategy & Vision [PSV2104], Sept. 13, 2:00 p.m. EDT.
Workday Technology: Strategy & Vision [PSV2129], Sept. 13, 2:45 p.m. EDT.

Watch this video to see how the Workday UX vision will make work effortless for every user.

About Workday
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management, and analytics have been adopted by thousands of organizations around the world and across industries — from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com.

© 2022 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are registered trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding Workday's plans, beliefs, and expectations. These forward-looking statements are based only on currently available information and our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. If the risks materialize, assumptions prove incorrect, or we experience unexpected changes in circumstances, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements, and therefore you should not rely on any forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including our Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2022, and our future reports that we may file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.