Reusing an existing report in a new report is accomplished by including the existing report as a subreport. This embeds the entire report into the new one, so you can reuse its data retrieval logic and formatting without rebuilding it from scratch. In Workday Report Writer, adding a subreport lets the new report display the subreport’s results as part of its own output, which promotes consistency and reduces maintenance because updates to the shared report propagate wherever the subreport is used. The other ideas don’t fit how reuse works here: you don’t copy a data source schema to reuse logic, and exporting and re-importing data isn’t how you connect or reuse reports within Workday.

When two data sets are joined, the relationship between them determines how rows combine. If the join uses keys that aren’t unique or the wrong type of join for the data’s real relationship, rows multiply. A single row from one side can match several rows on the other side, so the same item appears multiple times in the results—duplicates become the clear symptom. For example, joining a customer to their orders on customer_id will naturally produce multiple rows for customers with multiple orders, which is expected; but when the intention is a single-row view per entity, those extra rows signal an improper join. Latency might increase as data volume grows, but that isn’t the defining symptom, and the result shape will change (duplicates surface) rather than staying the same.

Understanding how business objects relate to each other is essential for building accurate reports. The component that presents an overview of the object model by displaying relationships among business objects is the Business Object Details. This view shows the specific object’s attributes and, importantly, how it connects to other objects—revealing parent-child relationships, cross-object links, and available navigation paths. With this perspective, you can quickly see which objects can join together in a report and how data is structured across the model, guiding proper joins and data lineage. The other options serve different purposes: tagging and organizing reports, listing created reports, or defining where a report’s data comes from, none of which provide the holistic view of the object relationships.

Reusing a report by referencing its published data inside a new report lets you pull the original report’s dataset into another report without duplicating the report itself. This approach treats the published report as a data source, so you can build on its existing logic and security, and ensure data consistency across reports. It’s preferable to other options because you’re using live Workday data already defined by that report, rather than importing external files or recreating the definition. Importing a CSV would bring in static data outside Workday’s live data framework; copying the report definition manually creates duplication and drift from the original; reuse is allowed and designed to work even when the source report is published.