Loftware Workday API Splitting Print Jobs

Target Audience: Advanced User, IT Manager, Basic User

Article #:13590

Summary

When a Workday client sends a multi-label print request to Loftware Cloud, each label can print as its own separate print job with a quantity of 1, instead of all labels printing together as a single job. This happens when the Workday Print Connector or the outbound HTTP transport is configured to call the PrintFromXml operation of the Loftware Cloud Workday Integration API instead of PrintFromXmlBatched. This article applies to Loftware Cloud’s Workday Integration API (v1) and any Workday integration using the Print Connector / Report-as-a-Service (RaaS) delivery method to POST XML print requests to Loftware Cloud.

Situation and Symptoms

Workday sends a single XML payload containing multiple label records (e.g. multiple Par_Location_Data, Goods_Delivery_Ticket_Data, etc. elements) in one POST request.
Instead of producing one combined print job, Loftware Cloud creates a separate print job for each individual record in the payload, each with a quantity of 1.
Labels intermittently appear to go missing, especially on larger batches, even though Workday confirms only one payload was sent.
Print jobs take noticeably longer to fully print and queue compared to when the same data is sent through the batched endpoint.
All records in the payload share the same Label_Printer and Label_Template values.

Explanation

The Loftware Cloud Workday Integration API exposes two separate operations for submitting print requests:

PrintFromXml – Each label record in the XML payload is processed as its own independent print request. Loftware Cloud returns one response record for each printer/label-template pair, meaning a payload with 15 label records targeting the same printer and template still generates 15 separate print jobs, each printing 1 label. There is no batching or combining of records into a single print stream.
PrintFromXmlBatched – Loftware Cloud combines all compatible records in the payload (same printer and same label template) into a single “session print” job, sending one print stream to the printer instead of many. This is the operation intended for multi-label Workday payloads.

No field inside the Workday XML payload itself (e.g. Number_of_Copies) controls whether records are combined into one job – that behavior is determined entirely by which API endpoint the request is sent to. If the Workday outbound transport is pointed at PrintFromXml, every record in the payload becomes its own job by design, regardless of how the XML is structured.

Solution

Identify the endpoint currently configured in the Workday outbound HTTP transport (Integration Tenant Setup, or the transport definition tied to the print custom report / Print Connector).
Confirm whether the URL path ends in /PrintFromXml or /PrintFromXmlBatched.
If it is set to PrintFromXml, update the transport to call PrintFromXmlBatched instead. The endpoint accepts the same XML payload structure, subscription key, and integrator key – only the path segment changes.
Test with a representative multi-label payload (same printer, same label template across records) and confirm in Loftware Cloud Control Center’s job/document history that one combined job or print stream is generated instead of one job per record.
Note: with PrintFromXmlBatched, a failure anywhere in the batch can cause the entire session to fail to print. Test with a deliberately malformed record included to understand and communicate this behavior to the client before rolling the change out to production.

Image 1: For majority of Workday implementations, use “Batched” to prevent individual print jobs for each label:

Additional Comments

Issue Found: Multi-label Workday print requests generating one print job per label instead of one combined job, due to the outbound transport calling PrintFromXml instead of PrintFromXmlBatched.

Inspired By: Client-reported missing labels on multi-label Workday print jobs.

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Appendix A – Definitions

PrintFromXml – Loftware Cloud Workday Integration API operation that processes each record in an XML payload as an individual print request/job.
PrintFromXmlBatched – Loftware Cloud Workday Integration API operation that combines compatible records (same printer, same label template) in an XML payload into a single “session print” job.
Subscription key – Key issued from the Loftware Developer Portal that authorizes API access; passed as Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key.
Integrator key – Key generated in Loftware Cloud Control Center under Cloud Integrations, linked to a Developer Portal subscription to authorize that subscription to access a specific Control Center account.