Workday Integration
Designing third-party integration to unify cross-platform workflows and preserve enterprise data integrity.
Role
Product Designer
Company
Zendesk
Timeline
12 weeks
Starting point
Efficient workforce scheduling and time-tracking across different systems have been a persistent challenge for Zendesk Workforce Management users.
The lack of integrations with third-party HRIS solutions, such as Workday, forced users to perform redundant manual time-off management tasks by entering the same data in both the HRIS and Zendesk platforms.
This drawback caused competitive parity. The need was clear: a seamless integration to streamline processes, reduce manual work, and improve accuracy in time-off and payroll reporting.
Journey
The design work covered two distinct layers: integration setup and management (focused on the System Admin persona) and end-user experience (focused on the CS Manager/Team Lead persona).
As the first-ever integration for our product, extensive discovery, definition, and ideation were the most critical parts of the process. I intentionally placed the setup within Zendesk Admin Center to ensure a cohesive experience aligned with existing global integration patterns.
For the WFM interface, cross-functional alignment with Product Managers was essential to map complex user actions, understand system dependencies, and assess technical risks. I proactively tackled critical edge cases, designing a creative solution to prevent duplicate data entries and ensuring accurate schedule representations for complex scenarios like partial time-offs.
Outcome
The successful launch of HRIS functionalities vastly improved operational efficiency and reporting accuracy for Zendesk users, saving valuable time by eliminating manual data entry.
Crucially, by designing around strict technical constraints like a one-way data sync, we successfully brought Zendesk Workforce Management to competitive parity with industry standards.
This project allowed me to showcase strategic systems thinking, ultimately laying a scalable foundational framework for future third-party integrations.
