Workday® 2026 R2 is here!
Another update from Workday has dropped — and 2026 R2 is packed with value. We’ve cut through the noise to highlight the most impactful updates coming to your tenant into one streamlined, functional-area guide, so you can quickly see what matters most.
See more highlights from previous Workday releases here.
Have questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out. The Commit team is available to answer your R2 questions.
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Our Rating Scale
For updates that require configuration, here’s what to expect in terms of Level of Effort.
Automatically Available updates are not assigned a Level of Effort
Absence
Donate Time Off: Time Off Bank
Enhance existing time off and leave functionality by allowing organizations to set up voluntary time off banks
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This feature will allow administrators to define bank names, units, and effective-dated settings. An administrator can now manually adjust a bank’s balance and and review the adjustments that have been made in the past.
Key Feature Overview
Donate Time Off: Peer to Peer
Ability for workers to donate their accrued time off to coworkers who may need additional time off
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: The feature provides flexibility for employees to assist one another while allowing administrators to configure and control donation limits and eligibility, ensuring compliance with organizational policies, such as U.S. Federal regulations, and financial liabilities.
Key Feature Overview
Assign Work Schedule Calendars by Position
Work schedule calendars can now be assigned by position
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: When you create assignments on the position level, Workday can more accurately calculate time blocks, validate absence requests against specific work schedules, and support complex multiple position scenarios in payroll.
Key Feature Overview
Adaptive
Columnar View on Cube Sheets
Toggle cube sheets between standard and columnar views
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Accelerates multi-dimensional planning by giving users a single sheet that pivots between cube view for aggregation and analysis and columnar view for rapid row-based entry — eliminating the modeled-sheet workarounds that high-dimensionality data has traditionally required.
Key Feature Overview
What do I need to do?
Grouped Filters, Hub Files, and Scenario Management for Hubs
Shared filters, a file library, and scenario control inside Hubs
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Keeps context intact across hub pages – fewer repeat filter changes, reference material stored alongside the pages it supports, and scenario management without leaving the hub.
Key Feature Overview
Workday for Google Sheets
Live Adaptive Planning data inside Google Sheets
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Brings live planning data and AI-assisted analysis into Google Sheets, cutting application switching and manual exports, and allowing planning updates to be written back from the spreadsheet.
Key Feature Overview
Adaptive Planning MCP Server
Connect your AI agents to Adaptive Planning data securely
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Customers can connect AI agents to Adaptive Planning without building custom point-to-point integrations. Agents can explore sheet data, metadata, versions, levels, dimensions, and modeled sheet data within the user’s permission scope, so teams can combine planning context with external operational or market data for narrative reporting, variance analysis, and driver-based insights
Key Feature Overview
Security
Benefits
Dependent Effective Dating
Effective-dated logic for more dependent info, allowing users to view/edit data as of specific date
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: This improves historical accuracy, eligibility tracking, regulatory compliance, and reporting while allowing effective dates to be corrected before submission without canceling and restarting the event.
Key Feature Overview
Impact of Future-Dated Dependent Changes on Beneficiaries
Corrected beneficiary event so future-dated changes to a dependent who is also a beneficiary are not displayed before effective date
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: This ensures beneficiary records accurately reflect current information, preventing confusion and reducing the risk of administrators relying on changes that are not yet effective.
Key Feature Overview
Custom Calculated Health Care Rates
Workday allows administrators to create custom health care rate calculations using factors such as salary, age, hourly rate, FTE, and scheduled weekly hours
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This provides greater flexibility for complex rate and proration requirements, improving premium accuracy and reducing the need for manual workarounds.
Key Feature Overview
Compensation
Stock Vesting Schedule Enhancements
You can now create dynamic vesting schedules to calculate the vested and unvested shares at any given time
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Workday can automatically calculate vested and unvested shares, removing the need for manual spreadsheets and reducing potential for error.
Key Feature Overview
Reporting
Percent-Based Bonus Plan Enhancements
You can now set bonus targets with more precision to the ten-thousandth decimal place
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: This will give you more precision and allow you to be more exact with bonus planning in Workday.
Key Feature Overview
Compensation Plan Rollout Process
Access and report on compensation plan rollout events
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: This feature will provide the ability to report on compensation plan rollouts, providing greater visibility into the rollout process.
Key Feature Overview
Financials
Revenue Contract Agent
AI agent that extracts data from uploaded contract documents and populates customer contracts in Workday
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Saves time and effort by automating customer contract creation and giving you real-time, AI-powered answers about the contract you’re viewing.
Key Feature Overview
Schedule Tax Declaration Run
Schedule tax declaration runs to happen automatically instead of launching them manually each period
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Saves time by letting you schedule runs up to 2 years in advance, with notifications and visibility that help tax teams avoid missed or delayed filings.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Projects Security: Changes to Role-Based Access Rights
Updates security so access to a project hierarchy no longer automatically grants access to the projects within it
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Makes security behavior consistent throughout Workday, enhances protection of sensitive project information, and gives you more control over routing business processes to the correct approvers.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Multicompany/Multicurrency Journals from Recurring Templates
Recurring journal templates can now generate journals spanning multiple companies and currencies
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Reduces the need to manually create and approve separate journals for each company/currency combination.
Key Feature Overview
Recurring Services on Non-Catalog Requests
Create non-catalog requests for recurring services, with automated requisition and PO line generation
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Automates the creation of multi-line requisitions for recurring purchases and ensures costs are spread accurately across the service duration, streamlining recurring procurement.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
HCM
Change Job 2026R2
Get Ready for the Enhanced Change Job Experience with 2026R2
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Adopting the enhanced Change Job experience now helps organizations prepare for the mandatory transition in 2026R2 while taking advantage of a more streamlined and efficient process.
The enhanced Change Job experience provides a more intuitive and efficient way to manage employee job changes, helping users complete transactions with fewer steps and greater confidence. Moving to the enhanced experience now allows organizations to take advantage of these improvements while proactively preparing for the mandatory 2026R2 transition and retirement of the legacy experience.
Overview
Worker Profile User Experience
Improved Accessibility and Navigation for Worker Profiles
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Creates a more accessible and intuitive worker profile experience, making key personal and professional information easier to find and manage. The updated navigation and profile views also give users greater control over how they interact with their information.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Time Zones
Global Time Zone Accuracy
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: This update automatically opts your tenant into the Time Zones feature released in 2025R1.
First released in 2025R1, this enhancement affects how Workday handles transactional timestamping, allowing for better tracking of event timing outside of the Pacific Standard Time.
Essentially, events, reporting, date-driven warnings, etc. now respect the local time zone for the user, as opposed to always being driven by PST.
Key Feature Overview
Tenant Themes Branding Configuration
Customize Your Brand With Flexible Tenant Themes
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Enables organizations to create a more consistent and personalized Workday experience through configurable themes and branding. Administrators gain greater control over how branding is applied across different users and experiences.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Integrations
Web Authentication & Passkeys
Web Authentication and Passkey Support
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: These updates allow you to strengthen your security posture by enabling phishing-resistant authentication methods.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Time Tracking Time Zone Support
Date Time Zones for Time Tracking REST and SOAP APIs
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This update prevents payroll inaccuracies, such as underpayment or overpayment, and helps maintain compliance and fair compensation by ensuring precise calculations for work hours across all time zones and DST boundaries.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Report Trailing Payments to Prior Pay Groups with PECI
PECI Prior Pay Group Payments
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: With this update, you can now report trailing one-time payments to the payroll company even if a worker changes pay groups. This eliminates the need for manual tracking and input, as the integration can now report retro changes affecting a prior pay group.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Workday Data Cloud
Workday Data Cloud
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Workday Data Cloud reduces integration maintenance, accelerates data access, minimizes data replication, and supports advanced analytics — all without time-consuming ETL processes.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Workday Wellness (New WD Product)
Transitioning from Templates to AI-Powered Data Exchange
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Workday Wellness is a new AI-powered product from Workday that fundamentally changes how organizations
manage benefits connectivity. It replaces the traditional Cloud Connect for Benefits (CCB) model with a real-time,
API-driven ecosystem that embeds wellness partners directly into the Workday platform.
Key Feature Overview
Learning
Modernized Learning Course Overview and User Experience
Workday Learning updates the learner course overview page and more consistent workday learning landing page
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: It gives learners a more premium, clean, and intuitive course page — key facts like duration, delivery method, and skill level are easier to scan in a compact summary strip instead of hidden in secondary tabs. Primary actions are anchored next to the title and image so the next step is clearer, and course images are handled so both high-resolution and older uploads remain usable.
UI updates are desktop only; for Workday Learning, powered by Sana customers, updates are already available in Production tenants.
Key Feature Overview
Course Replay Restrictive Controls
Workday Learning now provides a configuration option to restrict learners from reviewing blended and digital course materials after completion
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: It addresses strict regulatory, compliance, and academic integrity constraints for institutions where learners must not re-access testing materials or content after completing their attempts. Enforcing these boundaries natively across desktop and mobile helps organizations eliminate training presentation vulnerabilities, safeguard proprietary testing content, and reduce content maintenance overhead.
Key Feature Overview
Insights for Engagement Builder
A new Insights tab on the Engagement Builder report lets you view engagement performance metrics and visualizations
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: It helps provide in-depth analysis of the engagement. It can deep dive into the details for engagement processing status, New Assignments Today, Errors, and Notifications Distributed Today.
Key Feature Overview
Campaigns to Engagements Migration
We can now migrate audiences and campaigns created using a new Migrate Legacy Campaigns to Engagement Builder task
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: It provides an automated self-serve migration tool to streamline the transition to Engagement Builder, and retains historical setup by migrating audiences, campaigns, and message templates along with their associated translations.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Learning Courses Linking to Development Items
Workers can now link Learning catalog courses to development items using a dedicated learning field
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: It gives employees a clear path to connect development goals with specific training opportunities, helps managers support team development and review planning by seeing which courses workers plan to take, enables organizations to report on planned training for compliance and budget planning and improves HR efficiency by connecting development planning and learning in a single workflow.
Key Feature Overview
Paradox
Job Search
Olivia AI’s Job Search allows candidates to immediately match to jobs based on location or job title
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Job search more accurately matches candidates to jobs based on locations set in Workday.
Key Feature Overview
Conversational Scheduling
Conversational Scheduling allows candidates to quickly book an interview with Olivia AI based on recruiter’s calendar availability
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: We’ve highlighted the biggest updates since January 2026 – Conversational scheduling Paradox has improved flexibility and customization options through greater automation.
Key Feature Overview
Paradox Assist
Paradox Assist is an internal tool used by Paradox users for more efficient navigation and guidance
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: We’ve highlighted the biggest updates since January 2026 – Paradox Assist improves recruiters access to Olivia’s AI chat abilities anywhere in Paradox .
Key Feature Overview
Payroll – Core
Attachments for Payroll Processing Checklists
Store supporting documents within a checklist
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Eliminates the need to manage payroll processing files outside of Workday.
Key Feature Overview
Proration Based on Work Schedule Calendar
Pay Component Proration Enhancement
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Improves payroll accuracy for workers with irregular schedules or multiple jobs.
Key Feature Overview
Pay Accounting Reallocation (PAR)
Process Accounting for Retro Costing Allocations
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Simplifies correcting accounting on completed payrolls when differences are due to costing allocations.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Reporting
Payroll – US
Enhanced Direct Deposit
Populate payment election from external financial partners
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Reduces the time and errors involved in manually entering account information.
How It Works
California State Disability Deductions
Aligns CA SDI wages with SUI wages
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Calculates wages more accruately by selecting the specific Tax Authority.
How It Works
Minimum Wage Analysis Skill for the Payroll Agent
Support for U.S. Locals on Minimum Wage Analysis Skill
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Improves efficiency by making it easier to find local minimum wage data in Workday and address issues that may affect payroll.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Payroll – Canada
Canadian Tax Form Access via Self-Service Agent (SSA)
SSA for Tax Documents
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Reduces administrative effort by giving workers secure, real-time access to their tax document details through a conversational interface.
Key Feature Overview
Peakon
Flexible Listening Question Model
Simplified, Research-Driven Question Model with Consolidated Question Library
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: A foundational shift in how Peakon questions are structured and scored. A simpler methodology, clearer terminology, and a refreshed question library give admins much more control over their listening strategy – but existing tenants need to plan for the eventual mandatory migration.
Key Feature Overview
Enhancements for Flexible Listening
Tailored Survey Cadences with Real-Time Schedule Visibility and Manual Mode
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Puts survey admins in direct control of cadence and content. Fixed frequency rules are gone, a live summary sidebar shows survey length as you configure, and a manual mode enables curated, campaign-style surveys – reducing configuration errors and survey fatigue.
Peakon Sentiment Agent
From Data to Insight, Instantly
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Pinpoints critical employee insights automatically, giving leaders instant clarity and confidence in where to focus. A conversational interface lets leaders interrogate the data to uncover the “why” behind their scores, with personalized prompts guiding what to explore next.
What’s New
Set Up
Considerations
People Experience
Team Highlights Updates
Improved manager view on the Workday Home page
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Replacing the Team Highlights card, managers will now have access to a new My Team card with more relevant information.
Key Feature Overview
AI-Generated Journeys
Generate Journeys based on prompts entered directly into Workday
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Journey Administrators can now focus on delivery strategy with reduction of time spent on content creation.
Key Feature Overview
Journeys Conditional Progression
Workday allows for control in Journey progression
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Journeys can now be configured to control the order in which a user progresses through the step groups within a Journey.
Key Feature Overview
Recruiting
Candidate Document Upload
Additional Application Attachments and Document Categorization
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Allows candidates to upload their own documents ad hoc with categories. Especially helpful for clients who want to have candidates upload employment verification before being hired.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Candidate Grid
Improved Configurable Candidate Grid
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Workday now makes the candidate grid far more information driven in one flat view; as opposed to many different tabs on their grid.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
WhatsApp Messaging
Candidate Conversational Messaging for WhatsApp
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Instead of just being able to use SMS texts, Workday now allows you to use a highly regarded messaging app for texting!
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Reporting
Composite Reporting Subtotals and Totals on Combine Data Rows
Automatic subtotals and grand totals now display on Combine Data rows
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Eliminates the need to manually build subtotal rows by automatically generating summaries across configured control fields, reducing maintenance effort and keeping totals accurate as data changes.
Key Feature Overview
Export Report Writer Charts as PNG
Download charts directly from reports and dashboards as PNG images
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Makes it easy to save, reuse, and share report visuals in presentations, emails, and documents exactly as configured, saving the time it would otherwise take to manually recreate them.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Custom Color Palettes for Report Charts
Define and apply a custom categorical color palette on individual reports
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Helps you apply your own company palettes to reports and maintain visual consistency across your chart output.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Scheduling
Work Schedule Calendars by Position
Workday now provides the option of assigning work schedules at the position-level rather than the worker
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Workers with multiple positions can have their shifts created and maintained more clearly as they connect exactly to the expected position.
Key Feature Overview
Persist Work Schedule Assignments for Static Scheduling Workers
This update allows flexibility in whether we tie work schedule calendar assignments to position or to worker, which complements the multi-position work schedule update that is also part of this release cycle
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Streamlines Static Scheduling by connecting work schedules to workers or to positions if they vary by position.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Position from Schedule on Time Offs
Workday will automatically show position information from a work schedule calendar or published shift from Scheduling while requesting time offs
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Organizations leveraging multi-positions will find greater clarity in how time offs connect to schedules. Workers with more than 1 position scheduled in a day can have their time offs segmented to align with each position scheduled.
Key Feature Overview
Talent & Performance
Prompt Updates for AI-Generated Development Items
Updates to AI-generated descriptions of development items
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This enhancement aligns the interface for AI-generated development items with other Generate with AI experiences in Workday and makes it easier for workers and managers to use AI-generated content independently or alongside their own contributions.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Skill Level Report Fields
New Report Fields for Custom Reports on Skill Levels
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Provides greater visibility into skill gaps by allowing comparison of worker skill ratings and source ratings with job profile skill requirements.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Employee Reviews: Skill Interests and Relocation Preferences
Employee Review Templates can now be configured to include interests
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: The ability to capture skill interests and relocation preferences within an employee review process allows organizations to capture additional data within a single review process.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Time Tracking
Consolidated No-Shows for Attendance Management
Generates a single no-show event for worker’s scheduled shift by preventing scheduled meals and breaks from splitting no-shows
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Enhances the accuracy of points-based attendance systems by reducing the volume of unnecessary attendance events.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Time Entry Validation Support for Multiple Positions
Provides greater flexibility and ensures time entry validations apply to the correct positions
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Significantly reduces incorrect time entries, which leads to fewer manual adjustments and overrides.
Key Feature Overview
How It Works
Time Tracking Tasks and Reports on Mobile
Enables Time Requests report and Revise Time Request tasks to run on mobile
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Access these tasks using the mobile application.
Key Feature Overview
