Workday Financial Management and Orderful integration

What moves between them

The main flow is Workday to Orderful. Supplier invoices (810_INVOICE) and purchase orders (850_PURCHASE_ORDER) are polled from Workday at your chosen cadence (typically 15 to 60 minutes for active accounts). Each record is mapped to the corresponding Orderful EDI schema and routed by sender and receiver ISA identifiers (the unique identifiers for trading partner interchange). Purchase order acknowledgments (855_PURCHASE_ORDER_ACKNOWLEDGMENT) and invoice acknowledgments flow back from Orderful into Workday as confirmations, keeping the PO and invoice states synchronized. All records are created in the production stream ('live' in Orderful terms, or 'test' during setup).

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores Workday credentials (ISU username and password, or OAuth2 refresh token) and the Orderful API Key encrypted, then handles the different auth mechanics on each side. On the Workday side, it refreshes the OAuth2 access token before every request and polls supplier invoices and purchase orders using date-range filters to avoid re-fetching. It maps Workday supplier master data to Orderful's sender/receiver ISA identifiers, so each document carries the correct trading partner code. On the Orderful side, ml-connector creates documents via the /v4 endpoints (for create and inbox operations), setting the stream field to 'live' for production. Orderful delivers the translated EDI to each trading partner's preferred channel (AS2, SFTP, HTTP, or VAN). Inbound acknowledgments from partners are retrieved via polling (/v3 polling-buckets) and written back to Workday as PO and invoice confirmations. Rate limits are respected, and every transaction carries a full audit trail for reconciliation if a delivery fails.

A real-world example

A mid-sized distributor uses Workday Financial Management for supplier invoices, purchase orders, and GL accounting, and needs to send orders and invoices to suppliers and customers across EDI networks (AS2 and SFTP). Before the integration, the finance and operations team manually exported invoices and POs from Workday, used translation software to convert them to X12, and sent them via different channels to each partner, then manually imported acknowledgments back. With Workday and Orderful connected via ml-connector, each invoice and PO created in Workday automatically flows to Orderful, is translated and routed to the correct partner on their preferred channel, and acknowledgments come back without manual steps. The operations team now spends no time on document translation or routing, and finance can close the month knowing every invoice and PO is in both systems and delivered to partners.

What you can do

• •Automatically poll supplier invoices and purchase orders from Workday and send them to Orderful as EDI documents (810_INVOICE, 850_PURCHASE_ORDER) for translation and delivery to trading partners.
• •Map Workday suppliers and trading partner master data to Orderful ISA sender/receiver identifiers, ensuring each document routes to the correct partner.
• •Support multiple EDI formats (X12, EDIFACT) and delivery channels (AS2, SFTP, VAN, HTTP) without custom channel logic.
• •Retrieve purchase order and invoice acknowledgments (855, 812) from Orderful via polling and write them back to Workday to keep PO and invoice states synchronized.
• •Handle OAuth2 token refresh for Workday and static API Key authentication for Orderful, with full audit trail and error replay on every record.

Questions

How does ml-connector handle the different API styles between Workday and Orderful?

Workday uses SOAP/XML (primary) or REST/JSON (secondary), while Orderful uses REST/JSON only. ml-connector abstracts both: it reads from Workday using the appropriate API (REST for simpler reads, SOAP for complex bulk operations), maps the data to Orderful's EDI schema, and POSTs it to Orderful's /v4 create/inbox endpoints. Credentials are stored encrypted and refreshed independently on each side.

What happens if a purchase order acknowledgment comes back from a trading partner via Orderful?

ml-connector polls Orderful's /v3 polling-buckets every 5 to 10 minutes for new documents, including 855_PURCHASE_ORDER_ACKNOWLEDGMENT. When an acknowledgment arrives, ml-connector parses the EDI and writes a matching confirmation back to Workday (updating the PO state), so Workday and Orderful remain synchronized without manual intervention.

Does ml-connector require webhooks from Orderful, or does it use polling?

ml-connector uses polling by default for reliability, querying Orderful's polling-buckets every 5 to 10 minutes (up to 100 documents per request). If you configure Orderful webhooks to push documents to ml-connector, polling serves as a fallback to catch any missed messages, ensuring no acknowledgments or invoices are lost.