Workday "invalid report owner" when the agent runs a custom report owned by a departed recruiter

Workday "invalid report owner" when the agent runs a custom report owned by a departed recruiter

TL;DR

The custom report was owned by a recruiter who left, and deprovisioning broke the agent's scheduled run. Transfer report ownership to a durable service account that never leaves, and audit all integration-touched reports for human owners. Reports owned by mortals are outages waiting for offboarding.

Workday "invalid report owner" (custom report owned by departed recruiter)

Steps

1. List the failing reports and their owners. Expected: The departed owners are identified.

2. Transfer ownership to the integration service account (or re-create under it). Expected: The reports run again.

3. Audit every report the agent touches for human ownership. Expected: The full risk surface is known.

4. Move them all to service-account ownership. Expected: No report depends on a human staying.

5. Add an offboarding check: departing employees' owned reports get transferred, not orphaned. Expected: The next departure does not break integrations.

When to use

• Workday reports fail with "invalid report owner"
• a report owner left
• integrations run custom reports

When not to use

• the owner is active (check for a rename or ID change instead)
• the report was deleted, not orphaned (different problem)
• the error is on a standard report (those do not have human owners)

Tool compatibility

• Workday custom reports
• RaaS

Variant phrasings

• "workday invalid report owner"
• "workday report owner departed"
• "custom report owner left workday"

Why it happens

Custom reports have owners, and offboarding deprovisions the owner. The report does not get deleted, but scheduled runs under a dead owner fail. Integrations built on a recruiter's personal report inherit that recruiter's employment status. Service accounts do not resign.

Edge cases

• transferring ownership can reset sharing; verify the agent can still see the report
• the offboarding check belongs in the HRIS offboarding workflow itself
• audit on a schedule; ownership drifts as people build new reports

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_xRtn0LgD6Vfq8ZyNlEPrgA

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_xRtn0LgD6Vfq8ZyNlEPrgA

Thread query: Workday "invalid report owner" when the agent runs a custom report owned by a departed recruiter

TL;DR: The custom report was owned by a recruiter who left, and deprovisioning broke the agent's scheduled run. Transfer report ownership to a durable service account that never leaves, and audit all integration-touched reports for human owners. Reports owned by mortals are outages waiting for offboarding.