Hi everyone! I work at a cloud integration company and we’re building a connector for Workday. The problem is we can’t get our hands on a test environment since Workday only sells to big enterprises. Does anyone know how smaller companies like us can get access to a Workday sandbox for testing? We just need to make sure our integration works properly before we release it. Any tips or contacts would be awesome!
Been there, done that. Workday makes it ridiculously hard to get sandbox access unless you’re already a customer or partner.
Try reaching out to their partner program directly. They’ve got a developer portal where you can apply for limited sandbox access if you’re building real integrations. No guarantees, but worth trying.
Another option: find a Workday implementation partner who’ll let you use their demo environment for testing. That’s what we did initially - found a consulting firm that let us test our connector on their sandbox in exchange for some technical docs.
Also check if any existing clients use Workday. Sometimes they’ll let you test in their non-production tenant if you explain what you’re doing.
This video breaks down the different Workday tenant types pretty well - helpful when you’re contacting them.
Worst case: build your integration based on their API docs and cross your fingers until you get a real customer to test with. Not ideal, but that’s reality with enterprise platforms sometimes.
Try Workday Partner Connect. I dealt with this same headache two years back when building our HRIS integration. The trick is making yourself look like a real tech vendor, not someone just wanting sandbox access. Here’s what worked: I made a detailed tech spec showing exactly what we’d integrate - which web services, data flows, security protocols, the works. Workday’s partner team actually listens when you prove you know their platform inside out. Here’s another angle most people miss: hit up Workday’s sales engineering team directly. They’ll sometimes give you temp sandbox access during proof-of-concept if they smell potential revenue. Sell it as building something that’ll boost Workday adoption. Fair warning though - their sandboxes have brutal time limits and data restrictions. Map out every single test scenario before you get access because getting extensions is basically impossible.