Workday Financial Management and IBM Sterling integration

What moves between them

The primary flow moves from Workday into Sterling. ml-connector extracts supplier invoices and purchase order acknowledgements from Workday on a schedule (every 15 to 60 minutes for invoices, daily for supplier reference updates) and translates them into EDI 810 and 855 messages. These messages are routed into Sterling's partner mailbox for each trading partner, where Sterling handles translation to the partner's preferred EDI standard (X12, EDIFACT, or TRADACOMS) and transmission via AS2, SFTP, or file pickup. Journal entries and GL account dimensions are extracted from Workday daily and can be routed through Sterling for audit logging and downstream analytics. Incoming purchase orders (EDI 850) from trading partners arrive in Sterling and can be extracted back to Workday to keep procurement master data synchronized.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores Workday OAuth2 credentials and refreshes the access token when a call returns 401, using REST for lightweight reads and SOAP for full journal and invoice batches. It accepts the Sterling host, port, and HTTP Basic credentials per customer, as each Sterling instance is on-premises and there is no shared public endpoint. Because both systems are polling-only, ml-connector maintains a watermark of the last successful extract timestamp from Workday and the last mailbox message ID from Sterling to ensure no duplicate transmissions. Before translating a Workday invoice to EDI 810, ml-connector validates the supplier, GL account, and any worktags against the Workday master data so malformed records fail fast. It then routes the EDI message to Sterling, specifying the correct trading partner and routing rule so Sterling applies the right TLS certificate or SFTP credentials for that partner. If Sterling returns a 4xx response, ml-connector does not retry; if it returns 5xx or times out, it backs off exponentially and retries up to three times over several minutes. Every record move is logged with full context (source record ID, Workday timestamp, Sterling mailbox ID, partner name) for audit and replay.

A real-world example

A mid-market distribution company uses Workday for finance and procurement and operates a network of fifteen trading partners (manufacturers, fulfillment centers, contract logistics) that receive orders and send invoices via EDI. Before the integration, the supply-chain operations team exported invoices from Workday as CSV, manually reviewed them against PO matching rules, packaged them as EDI files, and uploaded them to Sterling's web UI for transmission. Invoices were often delayed by 2-3 days, and discrepancies between Workday supplier names and Sterling partner master data caused routing failures that had to be hand-corrected. With Workday and Sterling connected, each supplier invoice in Workday automatically flows to Sterling as an EDI 810 on a nightly schedule, routed to the correct partner with no manual touch. GL posting and match-on-receipt validation happen in Workday; Sterling handles translation and delivery. The operations team now spends time on exception management rather than file staging, and partner invoice receipt times have dropped from 2 days to same-day.

What you can do

• •Route supplier invoices from Workday to Sterling as EDI 810 messages, formatted for each trading partner's preferred EDI standard and transmitted via their configured protocol (AS2, SFTP, or FTP).
• •Extract purchase order acknowledgements (EDI 855) from Workday and forward them to trading partners through Sterling to confirm receipt and ship dates.
• •Synchronize supplier reference data, GL account codes, and cost center worktags from Workday to Sterling routing rules and trading partner dimension tables.
• •Validate supplier, GL account, and cost-center dimensions against Workday master data before transmission to prevent malformed EDI documents.
• •Archive all invoice and PO flows with full audit trail (Workday timestamp, Sterling mailbox ID, partner name, transmission status) for compliance and replay on failure.

Questions

Can Workday and Sterling exchange purchase orders bidirectionally?

Yes, but primarily inbound. Workday receives purchase orders that arrive in Sterling as EDI 850 messages, and ml-connector can extract those orders from Sterling and write them to Workday's PO module via SOAP. The outbound direction (Workday POs to Sterling to partners) is also possible using the same routing rules. Bidirectional sync requires careful watermarking to avoid retransmitting the same order.

How does ml-connector handle Sterling's on-premises deployment and per-instance configuration?

Each Sterling instance is deployed on the customer's own infrastructure with a unique host and port. ml-connector accepts those details as configuration per customer (e.g., sterling-prod.acme.local:10075) and stores Sterling HTTP Basic credentials encrypted in the cell database. On each request, it validates that the host is reachable and the credentials are still valid; if Sterling is unavailable, ml-connector backs off and retries with exponential jitter over several minutes.

What happens if a Workday invoice fails to translate to EDI or Sterling rejects the routing rule?

ml-connector validates Workday supplier and GL codes against the master data before attempting translation. If validation fails (e.g., supplier is inactive), the record is marked as failed and logged with the reason, and a manual review step is required. If Sterling returns a 4xx error (bad partner code, invalid routing rule), ml-connector does not retry; the operator must correct the Sterling configuration. 5xx errors trigger exponential backoff retry (up to 3 times over several minutes), and the full error context is logged for troubleshooting.