The most trending topic in Workday currently is Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools also known as Workday BIRT Report Training. Its functionality lies in designing the documents generated through various reporting tools in Workday. There are various forms of reports that can be customized and designed in Workday such as composite reports, simple reports, transposed reports, nBox reports and trending reports. There are various important documents generated through these reports inclusive of invoices from customers, reports stating expenses, statements of merits to be deployed in the Workday tenant.

Using the Workday report designer, users can modify Business Form Layouts by running custom reports and modify it to make it user-friendly. Business form layouts are nothing but designs and customization that can be made on the report generated in the PDF form. BIRT being open source software acts as the foundation for building report designer through Workday Studio. Existing design can be custom made or manipulated using report designer tools inclusive of formatting text, images, page breaks, charts, application of headers and footers, tables and graphs. Thus, the composition of reports can be modified and converted into a presentable format as needed for the business.
Uses of the Workday BIRT Training Report Designer Tool
Though the report designer tool in Workday has plenty of uses which can be learnt in depth by enrolling in the Workday BIRT Training program, some functions have been ascertained as major tasks with the most commonly used features.
- Creating Custom Reports in Workday: Custom reports which have already been created in Workday by the user can be modified as per desired needs using the report designer tool.
- Standard Reports: Workday delivered report is also available which may need a little bit of tweaking and customization by overriding the standards in order to match it with the user specifications.
Creating Custom Business Form Layouts: Standard business form layouts can be copied to custom reports to recreate standard reports which does not have Workday delivered business form layouts.

Prerequisites for Workday BIRT Training Report Designer Training
Prominent institutes may offer this training without any specified prerequisites. But prior knowledge in any field never hurts. It is always an added advantage if you are familiar with familiar with Workday Studio or possess knowledge at least in Workday HCM before enrolling for the Workday BIRT Training Report program. Although the report designer tool comes along with Workday Studio, it is important to note that you do not need any kind of technical knowledge with regard to Workday Studio in order to undergo Workday BIRT Training. Mere functional knowledge in Workday will suffice.

Knowledge in programs like JavaScript is also a great addition, since advanced features in operating this tool may require some technical skills. In Workday, Report Writer and Calculated fields are concepts related to BIRT, the prior knowledge of which will be of great use for learning report designer. Creation of business form layouts using report designer is taught by ERP Cloud Training.
Advantages and Limitations of Workday Report Designer
If there are standard workday delivered layouts already available while running Workday reports, you do not need to install report designer separately. It is an optional and supplemental enhancement feature introduced to meet specific needs of customers. Workday studio is necessary for installing report designer as it assists in the building of integrations. The latest version is to be installed first after which report designer software can be additionally downloaded from its menu. Another prerequisite for the installation of report designer is the Java Development Kit (JDK) which would enable java scripts while using advanced functional feature of the report designer tool.
One limitation of this tool is that it cannot work with several reports at a time and can be used only for advanced custom reports. Both Studio and Report Designer are part of the eclipse based project pertaining to Business Intelligence and Reporting tools (BIRT) in Workday. Although they are part of the same project, you do not need to install the BIRT engine for this purpose. Merely installing Studio with JDK will suffice for using the report designer tool in Workday.

The Tenant Setup must be edited to override the standard reports in order to customize it using this tool. Custom layouts can also be used as a part of report steps under business processes in Workday. Security permission to view all the fields in the report is mandatory in order to generate the PDF for any report. In Studio integrations, PDFs can be generated by creating report designer custom layouts too.
But, the advantages regarding the use of report designers in Workday overpower the limitations. Hence, it is always advisable to implement the use of such tools so that you can deliver presentable and admirable reports in your Business with minimal efforts.