Can You Access External Job Descriptions in Workday? Here’s How CloudApper hrPad Fixed It Without Rebuilding Everything

A few months ago, our HR team faced a frustrating challenge: we had a well-organized library of job descriptions — but no one could actually find them when they needed to. Why? Because they lived outside of Workday. Enter CloudApper hrPad —an ESS solution we didn’t know we needed.

At the time, we managed our job descriptions through a shared drive that had grown over the years. It wasn’t broken, but it wasn’t searchable either. And while Workday was handling our talent management flawlessly, we couldn’t make those external job descriptions visible or usable from within the system.

That’s when the questions started rolling in from department heads, recruiters, and even employees:

• Where can I find the latest version of the sales manager role?
• Do we have a written description for this new operations position?
• Is there a standard document I can review for the remote work policy?

We thought linking PDFs to a custom dashboard inside Workday would help — but it only made things worse. Workday users had to scroll through endless documents, manually opening each one to find the right fit. It became clear that while Workday was handling our structured data beautifully, we needed something more for the unstructured job documentation.

Discovery: Not a Workday Replacement, but a Complement

What immediately stood out about hrPad was that it didn’t require us to migrate data into Workday or rebuild our entire library. Instead, it allowed us to upload our existing documents into a separate interface that still felt connected to Workday.

More importantly, hrPad indexed every word inside those job descriptions. That meant if someone searched for remote eligibility or reporting duties, they’d instantly see all documents that included those terms — even if they were buried deep inside a multi-page PDF.

Setup Was Surprisingly Simple

We worked with the CloudApper team to categorize our documents by department and location. Within days, everything was uploaded, indexed, and organized. We set access levels so that only HR partners and hiring managers could view certain descriptions, and opened up others for general employee browsing.

No IT overhaul. No changes to Workday’s configuration. Just a smarter layer of document access that now works hand-in-hand with our HCM system.

Immediate Results

Once hrPad went live, the impact was felt right away:

• Recruiters stopped emailing HR for job descriptions.
• Managers preparing for performance reviews had what they needed in seconds.
• HR could ensure that everyone accessed the most current version of each document.
• And most importantly, users stayed inside the Workday workflow instead of bouncing between apps.

One team lead even told us, “This is exactly what I expected Workday to do — I’m glad we found a way to make it happen.”

What We Learned

We realized that complementing Workday doesn’t mean changing it — it means enhancing it. CloudApper hrPad filled a very specific gap without disrupting the platform we rely on every day. It gave us the flexibility to maintain our external documentation process while delivering the access experience our teams needed.

And now, when leadership asks if a job description is searchable and accessible — we can say yes, confidently.

Conclusion

If you’re still managing external job descriptions and wishing Workday could surface them more easily, you don’t need to start from scratch. You just need the right companion.

CloudApper hrPad bridges that gap, giving you full-text search, access control, and user-friendly visibility — all while working in harmony with Workday.