How do I speed up a custom report that times out?
Problem
An advanced report on worker or journal data runs for minutes or fails to complete.
Solution
Filter at the data source level, avoid calculated fields inside filters, and index your prompts. Data source selection is the single biggest performance lever.
Report performance in Workday is almost entirely decided by the data source and the filters applied to it. A report built on All Workers that then filters down to a single supervisory organisation will always be slower than the same report built on Workers for an Organisation and Subordinates.
Move filters as far left as possible. Filters on the data source are evaluated before rows are retrieved; filters on calculated fields are evaluated per row after retrieval, which is where most timeouts originate.
Where you cannot avoid a calculated field, cache the value using an indexed field or a scheduled report output. Add required prompts so users cannot accidentally run the report tenant-wide, and consider scheduling large outputs to a report delivery instead of running them interactively.