Your First 30 Minutes with Workday OfficeConnect

Install, sign in, build your first report, and refresh it — a complete onboarding path from zero to a live Workday OfficeConnect report in half an hour.
Tags:

This is the fastest path from “Workday OfficeConnect isn’t installed yet” to “I have a refreshable Excel report showing live Adaptive Planning data.” It threads together the canonical guides for each step so you don’t have to figure out the right order.

What you’ll have at the end: A working OfficeConnect installation, a tenant connection, and an Excel workbook with at least one live account/period/version intersection pulling from your Workday tenant.

What you’ll need:

  • A Windows PC running Excel (Microsoft 365 or Excel 2021 standalone) — Mac works too, see OfficeConnect on Mac
  • Your Workday OfficeConnect API client details from your Workday administrator (Client ID + two endpoint URLs)
  • Workday sign-in credentials with the Access OfficeConnect permission
  • 30 minutes

Minutes 0-10 — Install

1
Verify system requirements Skim System Requirements to confirm your Excel version is supported.
2
Install OfficeConnect Follow Install for End Users. If your IT team deploys OfficeConnect centrally, they may have already done this for you — check Excel’s ribbon for an OfficeConnect tab.
For admins & power users If you’re deploying to an organization rather than installing individually, jump to Install for Admins for the silent-install and registry-deploy approach.

Minutes 10-15 — Sign in and create your tenant

3
Open Excel and click the OfficeConnect tab The OfficeConnect tab appears between the standard Excel ribbon tabs after installation.
4
Sign in and configure your tenant Follow Sign In & Create Your First Tenant. You’ll need the Client ID and two endpoint URLs from your Workday administrator. The tenant configuration is one-time; OfficeConnect remembers it for future sessions.

After sign-in, the Reporting pane appears on the right side of Excel populated with your Adaptive Planning accounts, time periods, and levels.

Minutes 15-25 — Build your first report

5
Tour the Reporting pane Spend two minutes on the Reporting Pane Tour to understand the three tabs (Elements, Filters, Review) and how dragging works.
6
Build the report Follow Build Your First Report. It’s a 10-step walkthrough that produces a refreshable departmental expense report from an empty workbook.

Minutes 25-30 — Save and explore

7
Save your workbook Save as a standard .xlsx. The OfficeConnect formulas are preserved.
8
Explore a cell with Cell Explorer Click any data cell in your report, then click Cell Explorer in the OfficeConnect ribbon. See how the value is constructed from individual elements. This is your most-used debugging tool — see Cell Explorer / Drill Down.
9
Re-open the workbook tomorrow Close Excel, reopen the workbook, and click Refresh. The numbers update from current Adaptive Planning data. This is the core OfficeConnect loop — build once, refresh forever.

Result

You have a live, refreshable Workday OfficeConnect report and you understand the core build → refresh → drill workflow. From here, every other tutorial on the site builds on this foundation.

Next steps

Last modified May 19, 2026: Rename 'Get Started' section to 'Wiki' site-wide (6ebea16d)