---
category: [Administration & Integrations, Platform and Product Extensions, Platform and Product Extensions/Integration, Administration & Integrations/Custom Integrations & Apps, Platform and Product Extensions/Workday Extend]
keyword: [Extend, Raas]
nav: wcp_docs
parent_url: /wcp_docs/
title: >- 
  Concept: Reports-as-a-Service (RaaS)
layout: subsection
---

## <a id="section_sjs_1dg_3jb"></a>Introduction to RaaS

You can enable advanced and search reports as web services. Workday Web Services enable access to report results through URLs, which you can use in:

-   Custom Workday Extend applications.
-   Integrations between Workday and external business services. Example: Payroll or benefits providers.
-   External reporting tools to access Workday data. Example: Microsoft Excel.


Output options for web services include:

-   CSV
-   GData
-   JSON
-   RSS
-   Simple XML
-   Workday XML


Before enabling a standard report as a web service, consider copying the standard report to a custom report. To avoid any disruption to your integration processes if Workday updates a standard report, enable the custom report as a web service instead.

To successfully execute GET RaaS requests for custom reports that are enabled as web services, ensure that the report owner’s username doesn't contain a backslash (\) character.

## <a id="section_N1005A_N1003F_N10001"></a>RaaS Namespaces

When you enable a custom report as a web service, Workday generates a unique RaaS namespace for the report, using this format:

`https://api.workday.com/raas/{user}/{report_name}`

By using this format, you don't need to update the URL when you migrate your app to another tenant.

To minimize disruptions to integrations that use the report output, the RaaS namespace doesn’t change when the report name or report owner changes.

You can edit the namespace for a custom report. However, consider:

-   Workday doesn’t verify that a RaaS namespace is unique.
-   If an integration uses the report as a web service, you must update it with the new namespace.


## <a id="section_i3z_n5w_g2b"></a>Output Options for Web Services

<b>CSV</b>

You can use the CSV output option when you want to import data into a spreadsheet as simply and quickly as possible. You don't need to know XML or schemas.

If you output data to a CSV file that uses UTF-8 encoding, append this query parameter to your web service URL:

`&bom=true`

This parameter ensures that other applications, such as Microsoft Excel, can correctly interpret the encoding and display the characters in the CSV file.

<b>GData</b>

You can use GData output for integrations with Google gadgets.

<b>JSON</b>

You can use the JSON output option in system-to-system integrations that require the JSON format.

<b>RSS</b>

You can enable any advanced custom report as an RSS web service, which users can subscribe to as an RSS feed. Users can monitor updates in a tenant through an RSS feed without logging in to Workday.

<b>Simple XML</b>

Simple XML simplifies Workday XML so that other desktop applications can process it.

Simple XML changes:

-   Single-instance fields to simple string-type elements.
-   Multi-instance fields to simple string-type elements.
-   Multi-instance fields within the primary business object to simple string-type elements, with a semicolon separating each value.
-   Data fields that only contain dates and don’t contain times to output dates only, with no times or offset from GMT.


You can use simple XML for basic desktop integrations with other reporting tools, such as Microsoft Excel or Crystal Reports.

The Simple XML output option provides these URLs:

-   <b>Simple XML</b> - The simplified XML output from a report.
-   <b>XSD</b> - The schema definition associated with the simplified XML.


<b>Workday XML</b>

The Workday XML option outputs the literal XML code from Workday. This option might be useful in REST- or SOAP-based integrations. Workday XML might be too complex for some integration needs. Example: Quickly creating a refreshable report with Microsoft Excel. In these cases, Simple XML might be more appropriate.

The Workday XML output option provides 3 URLs:

-   <b>Workday XML</b> - The pure XML output from a report that might be useful for REST-based integrations.
-   <b>XSD</b> - The schema definition associated with the Workday XML.
-   <b>WSDL</b> - Web Services Definition Language, often used with SOAP.


### Related Information

[Reference: Workday Extend API Gateways and Authorization Base URLs](/wcp_docs/dlh1653340161856.html)