Before you accessing OData for the first time, you must go to Profile and click the Apps sub-tab of the Settings tab. Here, you can review the OData setup for your account. The OData section in the Apps sub-tab of the Settings tab displays if you have at least one role with access to the HCM Anywhere OData feature.
You must specify the default role that OData should use to access reports used to secure data. The View Stream As option list will allow the user to select a role from a list of roles that have access to the OData feature and are currently available to them. Selecting a default role is necessary because the OData connection doesn't support the Dayforce concept of roles, and unless a selection is made, OData will not know which role to use.
A URL and the user’s Dayforce-specific credentials are used by the external application (Excel or Power BI) to retrieve report data. The instance-specific OData Stream URL is provided in the OData section of the Apps screen, and the user can copy this value onto their clipboard and paste it into the analytical tool when they establish their OData connection.
Expanding the OData Streams Setup Instructions section will expose step-by-step instructions for establishing an OData connection between Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Power BI, as shown in the next image.
You can then expand the OData Streams Setup Instructions section and follow the instructions there for establishing an OData connection between Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Power BI.
After the role- and user-level configurations are complete, you can follow the instructions in the Apps sub-tab to establish an OData connection with Microsoft Excel or Power BI. After you successfully authenticates with Dayforce, a list loads that contains reports available to your default OData role, as shown in the next screenshot:
Clicking a report will generate a preview of the data to give you an understanding of the information the data source will provide. When you click Load, Microsoft loads the data into a new tab. The following screenshot shows an example of data loaded from the EMPLOYEE_PAY_SUMMARY report:
In the above image, the user has renamed the tab Dayforce Raw Data to clearly indicate the data in the tab is populated from a connection to Dayforce.
You can then set up pivot tables, visualizations, and so forth, in the external application to meet your individual reporting needs.
Microsoft Excel and Power BI are designed to store all of the contents when the file is saved. Saving the file will create a point-in-time view of the data and analytical components. At a future point, the user an open the file, click Refresh All to refresh the data from Dayforce and save the file with a new name to create a more recent point-in-time view.
It is critical to consider whether data in the workbooks should be included if they're to be distributed to other users. The workbooks might contain sensitive data that should be secured by each user’s access to employees and their data. Prior to distributing analytical tools, you can select the populated range in the tab created by OData and press the Delete key to remove it. Recipients of the workbook can create their own OData connection and then click Refresh All to populate the Dayforce data based on their security rights in the application.