Workday can model rich organizational and financial dimensions. The clock should present only the subset employees need to record time and labor accurately. For Workday customers, the practical question is not whether a clock can connect once; it is whether the complete collection environment can support accurate data, employee experience and long-term operations after go-live.
Start with the Workday business process
Determine which dimensions truly need employee selection and which can be derived from worker, position, organization, schedule, or default assignments.
Filter at the employee level
Large code lists create errors. Use assignments, hierarchy, location, role, or other approved filters to limit choices.
Design dependent selections carefully
If one choice determines another, the clock workflow should reflect that relationship rather than showing disconnected lists.
Validate effective dating and changes
Cost centers, projects and worktags can change. Test future-dated and retroactive changes and define what happens to offline devices.
The clock should not become a Workday navigation exercise
Workday can represent labor with rich organizational and worktag structures. The employee at a clock usually needs a much smaller decision: which job, department, project or activity applies right now.
The design should bridge those two worlds. Filter, derive or preselect what is known and expose only the information the employee must supply. That improves both usability and the quality of the time event sent back to Workday.
Options and when to use each approach
Employee selection
Present supported labor/worktag values at the clock.
Useful when employees know the correct assignment and it changes frequently.
Assignment-derived default
Use Workday/other authoritative assignment to preselect labor.
Reduces clicks for stable assignments.
Filtered choices
Show only values relevant to the employee/site.
Essential when the enterprise has large worktag sets.
Hierarchical/step selection
Guide the employee through related dimensions.
Useful for complex labor structures; keep steps minimal.
Manager correction
Capture a simpler punch and allow downstream correction.
May fit rare labor changes but shifts workload to managers/payroll.
A practical decision framework
- Decide what must be true after go-live, not just what works in a demo: Keep Workday’s labor richness in Workday; make the workforce-edge choice small, relevant and hard to get wrong.
- Resolve this design question early: Can worker/location context filter the choices?
- Agree on support and change-control responsibility for this decision before the design becomes harder to change.
Common design mistakes
- Displaying every worktag value to every worker.
- Using Workday technical labels employees do not understand.
- Ignoring how worktag changes are propagated to the clocks.
Questions leaders should ask
- Which Workday dimensions actually need employee input?
- Can worker/location context filter the choices?
- How often do labor assignments change within a shift?
- How are inactive/new worktags synchronized?
- What happens when required labor data is missing?
Workday Can Be Rich. The Clock Should Be Selective.
Workday supports worktags in Time Tracking for costing and other purposes, including required, defaulted and allowed-value behavior. Third-party imported values can also take precedence in Workday time entry. That makes point-of-collection design consequential: the employee should be offered the right value, not merely every technically valid value.
Test Effective Dating and Change
Labor structures change. Projects close, cost centers move, workers transfer and scheduled worktags can change with a shift. Test what the clock displays before, during and after those changes, including what happens when a device is offline or a synchronization is delayed.
Keep Workday Sophistication Behind a Simple Employee Decision.
Workday supports rich worktag behavior for Time Tracking, including required values, defaulting and allowed-value controls. That power becomes more useful at a shared clock when the employee sees only what is relevant to the transaction. ZKTeco WFM’s approach is to use Workday context and TimeTrack workflow design to reduce unnecessary choices at the workforce edge. Depending on the approved customer configuration, the clock can support labor selection such as jobs, departments, cost centers or other mapped values while CirrusDCS maintains the Workday-specific data flow. The design objective is not to reproduce Workday’s full navigation model on a time clock. It is to capture the right labor context with the fewest employee decisions and preserve that value accurately into Workday. This is especially important at high-volume sites, where every additional search, scroll or ambiguous label becomes an operational cost.
Workday can maintain a sophisticated labor model without forcing employees to navigate that complexity at a shared clock. Filter, default and sequence choices so the worker sees only the decision needed for the transaction, then preserve the selected labor context accurately into Workday.
Too Much Workday Labor Complexity Reaching the Clock?
Talk with ZKTeco WFM about filtering, assignments, worktags and a TimeTrack experience that keeps labor capture usable.
Talk to an Expert