Data Viz

Resources

• Analytics Figma Library - Caution: colors are not accurate to Canvas standard. Be sure use Data Viz color tokens in canvas-kit.
• Storybook
• Discovery Work (including cross-platform examples): Miro Overview, Figma Audit

Understanding Chart Types

Key terms:

• Categories/Dimensions: Qualitative data used to group or label items (e.g., regions, product types).
• Metrics/Measures/Values: Quantitative data used for calculation (e.g., sales, temperature, profit).
• Data Points: The individual plotted observations.

Available Chart Types

Workday supports twelve standard chart types across standard UI tooling:

• Donut
• Line
• Bubble
• Column - Clustered
• Column - Stacked
• Column - Stacked to 100
• Bar - Clustered
• Bar - Stacked
• Bar - Stacked to 100
• Area - Overlaid
• Area - Stacked
• Area - Stacked to 100

About Stacking Options

• Grouped/Overlaid: The amounts for each element will correspond directly to the axis value.
• Stacked: These elements stack on top of each other for each axis group, so the max height of each bar shows the total for the group.
• Stack to 100: The effect is the same as Stacked, but the numbers have been converted to % of total. The way the calculation is done is particular and can create odd results if data doesn’t fit expected outcomes, e.g. the presence of negative numbers can be offset with positive numbers that go larger than 100%.

Additional Chart Types

These charts are available in Workday tooling but their availability is still irregular and may not be possible in most areas of the platform.

• Scatterplot
• Waterfall
• Heatmap

XO Layouts

There are a few data viz that while still available in XO layouts were never updated to match canvas visual standards. These are currently demo-able in dev tenants. However, Alligator and Skyline are not found in search results, but they are testable with task 2998$25846.

Acquisitions and Alternate Platforms

P-Suite (Worksheets/Slides), Adaptive Planning, Peakon (and maybe a few others) have distinct libraries and components. Their components are not typically interoperable with Workday application components.

A reasonably complete survey of all capabilities can be browsed in this Miro: Miro It does not yet include anything from Paradox, Sana, or WSS.

Color

There are two ways to map color into a data visualization: Categorical Color and Quantitative Color.

For a deeper dive on how color works in data viz, see Overview of Color in Data Viz.

Categorical Color

When a categorical attribute is assigned to color, each distinct value or grouping will be assigned a distinct color. If using this arbitrary color mapping (dynamic, based on order of the data), then Workday’s standard charting palette is the current standard.

Colors are assigned corresponding to the sort order of the data (e.g. alphabetical).

An example of Workday’s current color palette in use:

Custom Color

Using specific colors instead of the provided palette is possible in a bespoke application, but not currently in standard tooling. Custom color makes sense when the data that is mapped to color is consistent and predictable (when the values/functions are controlled by the system). Applications that define custom color should utilize the available color swatches from canvas while meeting expectations for 3:1 contrast against white to support accessibility.

Workday does not currently support customer branded or fully customized palettes.

Example of using custom color mappings:

Quantitative Color

The behavior for mapping quantitative data to color is significantly different. The charting engine generates a gradient based on 2 or more seed colors, then maps the numbers within the data’s range to colors within that gradient. Currently, only Workday’s Heatmap supports Quantitative color.

While Aurora has numerous palette options for quantitative color, the blue default palette is visible in our defaults today.

Blue gradient default for quantitative color

Additional Display Features

Target Lines

These can be shown in all Bar chart and Column chart variations. The can be configured to be a single line across the whole chart or separated to correspond with the categories on the axis.

Pattern Fill

Intended to create a backstop for users with color perception difficulties. Pattern fills are used to discern the color groupings with or without the ability to see color. This feature is exposed to Report consumers ad-hoc on a chart-by-chart basis, found under Configure>>Advanced>>Show Fill Pattern.

Tooltips

1. Data Point: Hover, Select
2. Axis Values: Hover, Select
3. Axis Title: Hover, Actions

Hover shows a tooltip, while the effects of Select will differ depending on the implementation. In Workday Reporting, selecting a data point reveals a sticky tooltip that can have interact-able elements like drilling into numbers or linking to objects elsewhere in the system.

Pan and Zoom

When hovering over the chart, a set of controls appears that allows the user to zoom in to make portions of the chart larger in the viewport, similar to interactions commonly found in maps.

1. Zoom In: Zooms incrementally inward towards the center of the viewable area
2. Zoom Out: Zooms incrementally outward
3. Zoom Marquee: User can drag to select an area of focus; chart zooms into the selected area
4. Reset Zoom: The view resets back to 100%; only available if zoomed in

Additional Data Views

While data viz is useful on its own, typical use cases require interactivity with visualizations to inspect details about the data involved. This can include representing the data numerically (instead of graphically) or to ‘drill’ to deeper levels of the data to seek more detailed breakdowns of the data.

See related product examples and related patterns: Drill Down and Drill to Additional Detail

Underlying Data

Sometimes described as the “table view” of a chart or “looking under the hood, the ability to see underlying data is a crucial tool to view the data that powers a viz. It’s the exact same information, but in a structured tabular format.

In Workday reporting this is accessed through “Show Details” when clicking on an individual data point.

Drill-Down and Detailed Data

Many charts represent summarized data, where each charted point represents a total (Sum) or an average of many other data records.

The ‘detailed data’ are the data rows that are summarized.

For a chart that is summarized, the detailed rows likely represent 1 or even many orders of magnitude more data than is shown in a chart (e.g. a chart with 12 bars could represent the summation of hundreds or even many thousands of records).

A drill-down from a chart or table represents going to the next level of detail, but also including a filter on whichever attributes were the subject of the data point that is the target.

An example: if the user clicks on a bar chart for ‘California’ and chooses to drill down on an amount, the system will respond with a table or chart that shows the detailed data for the total California amount. The result in this example is a list of cities or counties within the state of California that made up that total.

Download to Excel

In most situations, users appreciate the ability to explore their data in alternative ways and will often hit dead ends when trying to explore the data in the system.

For Workday, this is ideally as a last resort because it takes data out of the system (removing Workday’s security management and knowledge of data context, moving to a format that does not update automatically, and disconnecting from interactions in the Workday system). Even so, it can be critically valuable to let users work with their data freely.

Data Viz Components

Most of these components are currently supported by the Aurora chart library, which renders using the proprietary Aurora technology. Aurora is a proprietary graphics engine acquired through acquisition in 2016. It was designed for supporting highly responsive interactions on thousands of data points.

See Anthology Storybook for interactive demos (Alternate link).

There are three main ways to currently serve Data Viz into Workday UI.

Note: Developing with Aurora as a standalone solution is not recommended: Different use cases will require the need to support multiple rendering libraries in a single component rather than rely solely on Aurora.

There is an alternative code path in active development but are not yet prioritized to replace Aurora for some use cases. As well we will need to consider a broader solution that integrates many different visualization needs.

Component Capabilities

* Cards Framework Bug: ‘Stack to 100%’ are not stacked, and not to 100%.

THEORY: Cards Framework not performing the same data manipulation that Discovery Boards and Report Writer do to adjust the rendering behavior. See UIC-70266.

** Cards Framework Bug: Bar Chart examples are rendering as Columns. Should instead be horizontal.

THEORY: Cards Framework not including Aurora’s orientation parameter. (orientation: horizontal) See UIC-70266.

Accessibility Challenges

Note that none of the standard tooling choices are currently accessible.

There are a number of remediations required including easier ability to read the underlying data in a table and a more accessible color palette (either by default or as an easy option in more implementations).

Alternative Development Approaches

The current direction is to investigate Highcharts while abstracting the access to these assets through the universal charting component by the Reporting Experience team.

In Fall 2025, only two charts are supported here: scatterplots and funnels (the net-new chart types for Workday). In FY27 there is likely to be investment to move existing standard charts from Aurora to Highcharts. However, there are licensing fees involved for using Highcharts outside the Reporting team’s tooling (you will need to confirm with the team whether licensing fees will apply.)

ModulR has prioritized a new charting implementation here based on Aurora. As well, the Discovery Boards product offers all of the same options available in Aurora standalone, but the tooling is not available for use outside of Discovery Boards.

Product Examples