Faster innovation: We stay current with the latest UX technologies that enhance our mobile and web experiences.
No functional regression: Application developers do not have to refactor each time UX technology evolves, which keeps application functionality moving forward.
Consistency across applications: A generated UX delivers
a consistent look and feel across applications, lowers the learning curve, and increases productivity.
A Deeper Dive into User Interface Services in Our City Map
Now, let’s go deeper in describing the UI Services district to map the many services that support the Workday UI. The UI Services are reflected in the map in the green district. The core UI Service described above, that handles all user-generated requests,
is foundational to the Workday architecture. As Workday applications have evolved and our community has requested ways to open up Workday, we’ve added related services for extensibility and to manage an array of content types. Alongside the core Workday UI Service, Workday has added visual presentation services supported by the Canvas Design System, prebuilt UI components, SDKs, and Workday Designer.
The Canvas Design System provides UI designers with holistic guidance and best practices on how to build new extended and bespoke user experiences that look and feel like Workday. Prebuilt UI components, SDKs, and Workday Designer provide tools and utilities to simplify the development of those user experiences. Combined, the Canvas Design System and the UI development tools provide ways for customers and partners to extend the Workday UI while maintaining the consistent Workday look and feel.
In addition, we have expanded our UI Services to handle large media content types. Workday Learning was our first service to make extensive use of video content. These large media files are hosted on a content delivery network (CDN) that provides efficient access for Workday users around the globe. Recently, we added support for video content on mobile devices as well.
Now that we’ve explored User Interface Services, let’s take a look at Workday Integration Services.
UI Services Directions: Natural Language, Conversational UIs, and Workday Assistant
Person-to-person conversation is the first and most prevalent user interface, and users want natural, conversational interactions with their devices to get just-in-time information and insights. Alexa, Google, Siri, and Cortana are current examples of how AI and natural language processing deliver a simpler, more natural experience for end users. For example, iPhone users can simply tell Siri, “I am hungry” and Siri will recommend restaurants within their vicinity. These types of natural language interactions empower us as users to ask a bot to accomplish a task on our behalf, speeding the path to the end result.
On the other hand, enterprise applications have historically been complex to use. Users may lack knowledge of the full range of information that can be accessed or transactions that can be accomplished within the system. Workday believes this needs to change, with an approach to UX that is simple, clever, and fast. As part of this evolution, we are supporting conversational user interfaces and bots. The Workday assistant, a type of chatbot, will let users make requests in Workday using natural language in a conversational interface. Tasks that may have taken several clicks or swipes before, such as requesting time off or providing employee feedback, can be accomplished with a single request via the Workday assistant.
We also realise that the easiest place to get something done is where you already are, which is why you’ll be able to interact with the conversational language UI through other applications that integrate with Workday, such as Slack or other natural language workspaces.
UI Services: Let’s Talk Mobile
Informed by our experience with mobile design and delivery and inspired by innovation from the consumer internet, we have seen that a UX gets “stale” if design is not refreshed at least every other year. We’ve also seen that UX must be “right time”, meaning situationally appropriate, and consistent across platforms, including web and mobile. Mobile access is a given in modern applications, and not a separate product or platform. With Workday, mobile access is simply another aspect of UI Services, included and supported as part of every application.
Our mobile experience is consistent with the web and responsive to the target device. Each client’s user experience is optimised based on touch and form factors, so users don’t have to pinch and zoom to find fields, cards, or buttons designed for the real estate of a desktop browser.
Because the Workday mobile solution is simply an extension of the application, mobile users access the same data, business logic, and functionality as they do on a desktop, with the same security. For example, a dashboard built on the desktop can be accessed and modified on any mobile device, with no data persistent on the device. The only setup (other than application download) is to grant all appropriate users the ability to use mobile devices to access Workday.
Our UI Services support a wide array of mobile and browser-based clients. Today, the Workday UI is rendered using HTML5 and leverages a library of JavaScript widgets. UI Services are implemented in Java and Spring.
As mentioned in chapter 2, application developers design and deploy Workday applications using XpressO, a metadata-driven programming language that runs in the Transaction Service, which is part of Object Management Services (more on the Transaction Service in section 4 below). The Transaction Service responds to requests by providing both data and metadata. UI Services then use the metadata from the Transaction Service to select the appropriate layout for the target client device (such
as laptop, tablet, or phone), ensuring the experience is always
a best-fit for the target device technology and form factor. JavaScript-based widgets are used to display certain types of data and enhance the user experience.
Through this architecture, XpressO application developers can separate their application development focus from UI concerns. In parallel, Workday JavaScript and UI Services developers focus on building front-end components, enabling Workday to radically change the UI over the years while providing a consistent user experience across all applications with no refactoring of application logic. And, as new UI frameworks and technologies emerge, Workday architecture will continuously adapt.
Workday is guided by the principle of continuous change. In staying true to this principle, we separate the generation of our user experience (UX) from the definition of our applications. Through this approach, technologies supporting the UX evolve without impacting the applications themselves. Customers benefit from this approach when they experience UX innovation more quickly and without any corresponding loss of functionality in their applications.
Workday application developers don’t worry about coding for pixel-perfect screen layout or specifying exactly where a given field appears on a page. Instead, they focus on application functionality; for instance, defining fields involved in a transaction and developing how fields get grouped and ordered. It becomes the job of the Workday User Interface (UI) Services to generate the presentation of the transaction from this information.
We gain a number of key benefits from abstracting the UX from the application functionality:
Workday User Interface Services: the Green District
Workday Way
Automation Drive
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Building a Dashboard on an Apple iPad
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