Workday® 2022 R2 has arrived!
We’re proud to present our top highlights for the Workday 2022 R2 release!
Have questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out. The Commit team is available to answer your R2 questions.
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Absence
Absence User Interface
Updated verbiage & terminology for a consistent user experience
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This update will be a welcome addition for customers in the EMEA or APAC regions, where the term “Absence” is more commonly used to describe time off from work. This will help provide a more intuitive and simplified user experience for employees in these types of regions.
- This can be transposed onto reports, tasks, and worklets
- Mobile applications will be updated as well
- Especially useful when used in translating to other languages
Time Off and Leave of Absence Setup
Assign Case Numbers to Leave Events with the Sequence Generator
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This is especially helpful for customers that have internal/statutory requirements to track & report on leave events with unique case numbers. The sequence generator will now allow us to automatically generate these case numbers, which will reduce the administrative effort of creating and tracking these case numbers manually.
- Can be used for Additional Field display on Leave Types & can be used in reporting
- Workday also delivers a new report field, “Case Number” (BO: Leave Request Event)
Benefits
Benefits & Pay Hub
A single place for all things Pay, Benefits, and Compensation
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Improves employee experience by introducing a new worklet for benefits, payroll, and compensation, giving workers a convenient hub to view and change related information.
- Add special announcements (with optional condition rules), suggested links, and related reports
- Replace the existing Pay and Benefits
- Unfinished benefits events and open enrollment events display in the Overview section automatically
- All tasks and reports continue to follow the user’s security groups
Initiate Open Enrollment by Schedule
Launching Open Enrollment can now be automated
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Users can now schedule the initiation of their open enrollment. Administrators no longer have to launch open enrollment at the moment they wish open enrollment to start, reducing manual effort.
- Initiate open enrollment for one or multiple benefit groups in the same schedule
- Initiate multiple open enrollment events in separate schedules
- Schedules may be viewed, edited, suspended or deleted in the Open Enrollment Status Report
Close Open Enrollment by Schedule
Closing Open Enrollment can now be automated
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Users can now schedule the closure of their open enrollment. Administrators no longer have to close open enrollment at the moment they wish open enrollment to end, reducing manual effort.
- Schedule the closure of open enrollment to run once OR on a recurring basis
- The Run Once in the Future option allows you to close open enrollment with a specific Open Until date
- Be sure to select a scheduled start date that’s later than the event end date
- Scheduling open enrollment is done through the Open Enrollment Status Report
- In the example below, open enrollment ends on 8/15
- The scheduled closure will happen on 8/16/2022 at 12:00am
- The closure of open enrollment may also be scheduled on a recurring basis to capture reprocessed open enrollment events
- The recurring option can be used to close past due enrollments regardless of submission status or to close submitted enrollments regardless of whether they have reached their Open Until dates
- You cannot use this functionality to close past due and submitted enrollments in one schedule
- You cannot enter today’s date as the schedule end date for recurring schedules
- This functionality does not allow the scheduling of the finalization of the open enrollment events – This will continue to be a manual process
HCM
People Experience Home Page
People Experience is the new default for all users
Availability: Forced Update
Why this is important: With this release, Workday’s People Experience Home Page is officially the new standard. The new interface provides a more intuitive way for employees to navigate, while customizable displays add flexibility and personalization for all business needs.
- The People Experience Home page simplifies & streamlines how you surface information to your employees
- The new Your Top Apps section allows you to highlight your top 4 apps from the Global Navigation Menu
- View All Apps now directs you to the Global Navigation Menu
Working Time
Automatically populate scheduled and default weekly hours
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: The new Working Time update improves data accuracy related to FTE calculations by enabling you to create country specific eligibility rules. Creating and maintaining the new Working Time eligibility rules allows you to set up defaults based on business needs related to scheduled and default weekly hours.
Note: This feature is currently only supported on staffing related events.
- This updates expands the criteria on which you can default scheduled weekly hours beyond the location’s time profile by creating Working Time Eligibility Rules and configuring country specific defaults
- Fields related to Working Time are now broken out into a new section
- Previously these fields rolled up into the “Additional Information” section.
Workday Docs
Available on additional HCM Business Processes
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Expanding Workday Docs to additional HCM related business processes allows Administrators to update and configure documents more efficiency within the system. Saving the amount of time needed to manually update and edit documents in Workday.
Note: Workday Drive must be enabled to use this feature.
- Workday Docs enables you to create templates for your documents in Workday, making it easier to make edits to your documents within the system. This also allows you to build in condition rules and include dynamic fields from the system, pull in tables, images, headers and footers for your documents.
- Add Academic Appointment
- Add Retiree Status
- Change Organization Assignments for Workers by Organization
- Change Organization Assignments for Worker
- Close Position
- Contract Contingent Worker
- Create Position
- Edit Hiring Restrictions
- Edit Position
- Edit Position Restrictions
- Edit Position Restrictions Additional Data
- Edit Worker Additional Data Event
- End Academic Appointment
- End Additional Job
- End Contingent Worker Contract
- End International Assignment
- Freeze Position
- Hiring Restrictions
- Mass Correct of Hire Business Processes
- Move to New Manager
- Move Workers (By Organization)
- Move Workers (Supervisory)
- Move Worker (Supervisory)
- Period Activity Pay
- Remove Retiree Status
- Remove from Matrix Organization
- Request Flexible Work Arrangement
- Service Dates Change
- Start International Assignment
- Switch Primary Job
- Title Change
- Update Academic Appointment
Payroll
Retro Differences from Current Tax Authority Change
Process Pay Differences for Retro Events from a Different Tax Authority
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Previously, all tax authority changes blocked otherwise-supported retro from automatically processing when a worker’s primary home or work location changed.
New Field on All Retro Worker Results
- Source Tax Authorities summarizes the worker’s tax authorities as of the affected period
Enable Retro Processing from Different Tax Authorities to On-Cycle Payroll
- New Edit Tenant Setup – Payroll checkbox allows retro differences to be processed in on-cycle payroll based on the worker’s current tax authorities
Manually Add Override Worktags to On-Demand Additional Payment
- Must match previous source tax authority
Run Retro Pay Complete for Subset of Workers
- Embedded within the Retro Calculation Processing Report
- Select Create Off-cycle Inputs and Exclude Retro Results Already Included in On-cycle
New Prompt
- Display Only Workers with Unpulled Retro Results identifies retro results without a target period
- If the new Edit Tenant Setup – Payroll checkbox is left unchecked, differences from the old/source tax authority do not have a target period. Use the report to identify these (and tax the payments using the old/source authority)
New Column
- Unpulled Reason is nested within the View Retro Results sub-report
Processing Position for Workers with Multiple Jobs
New Task for Processing Position Rules
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: For workers with multiple positions in the same pay group and company (with only one pay result), you can configure criteria to determine which position to use by default for taxation and costing.
Maintain Payroll Processing Position Rules
- Workday uses the primary position by default
Options for Position Override Rules
- Greatest Value: Calculated/Paid/Working FTE or Scheduled Weekly Hrs
- Earliest/Latest Date: Position Entry Moment, Position Start Date
Taxation Effects
- State withholding taxes use the processing position location
- State Unemployment Insurance (SUI) taxes continue to use the primary position location
Workday Recommendations
- Cancel all in-progress retro before configuring
- Use an effective date after the End Date of all completed, in-progress, or opened for off-cycle pay periods
Reset Federal Exempt Withholding Elections (pt. 1)
New Prompts on Expiring Exempt Tax Elections
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Administrators can determine who has an exempt election as of a specified date.
Administrators can also include or exclude terminated workers.
As of Date
- Returns workers with exempt elections as of the date entered
Include Terminated Workers
- Include or exclude terminated workers from the report at runtime
Reset Federal Exempt Withholding Elections (pt. 2)
New Task Available
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: The new report allows administrators to select workers to create new tax elections for, as of the date submitted, without navigating to individual profiles.
Add Workers US Tax Election for Expiring Exempt
- Same prompts as Expiring Exempt Tax Elections report
- Shows effective date of current exempt election
- Default elections created via this task default to Single or Married filing separately and 0 deductions
Reset Federal Exempt Withholding Elections (pt. 3)
Optional Alert #1 – Instruct Employees to Create New W-4s
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: When administrators do not want to create new W-4s on an employee’s behalf, the alert framework can send a message to an employee’s inbox with a direct link to the relevant task.
The What’s New post demos the configuration of new alerts that reference the updated report
Copy Expiring Exempt Tax Elections
Run the Configure Alert task
- Reference the report copy
- Schedule for Run Now
- Add the Add Federal Withholding Elections task to the alert
- Add Worker for Tax Election as the recipient
- Use Subject and Body sections to request them to fill out a new W-4
Reset Federal Exempt Withholding Elections (pt. 4)
Optional Alert #2 – Notify Employees of Tax Elections Updated on Their Behalf
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: When administrators want to notify employees of changes made on their behalf, the alert framework can send a message to an employee notifying them of the changes to their profile.
The What’s New post demos the configuration of new alerts that reference the updated report
Copy Expiring Exempt Tax Elections
- Add Last Updated as a report field
- Add Last Updated By as a report field
- De-select Do Not Prompt at Runtime for the All Elections prompt
- Filter on Effective Date and Last Updated By
Run the Configure Alert task
- Reference the report copy
- Schedule for Run Now
- Add the Add Federal Withholding Elections task to the alert
- Add Worker for Tax Election as the recipient
- Use Subject and Body sections to request them to fill out a new W-4
Time Tracking
Flexible Time Bands for Time Calculations
Configure Time Bands for flexible work arrangements
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This will be helpful for remote workers with flexible work arrangements. With Time Bands, we can define how their work schedules should behave with more detail and pay them more accurately for time worked.
- Ex: Monday – Friday 10AM – 3PM Core Hours
- Ex: Monday – Friday 7AM – 10AM Morning Flex Hours
- Ex: Monday – Friday 3PM – 6PM Evening Flex Hours
- Set up Flextime Calculations to account for Time Bands
- Run Time Calculations to update time blocks with new calculation tags
Time Accumulator
Configure time regulations based on company/statutory policy
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This is a massively helpful update, especially for customers with worker populations in places such as Japan or France; these locales have monthly time worked requirements, which can now be more easily accounted for and audited through time accumulators.
- These thresholds are highly customizable and can be defined over any amount of time (ie. monthly thresholds, yearly, quarterly, etc)
- Rolling Periods (ie. Rolling 12 week period)
- Static Periods (ie. Every 12 months)
- By Period Schedule (ie. By Pay Period)
- We can also define eligibility for thresholds; we can specify which worker populations have which threshold
- Can also be used in Time Entry Validations
Recruiting
Rich Text Formatting for Questionnaires
Users will now have more control over how questionnaire text displays
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Prior to this update, users would have little to no customization over the formatting/text included within questionnaires
- External Applicants
- Internal Applicants
- Questionnaires included on BPs routed to Internal Candidates
- Internal Career site for Non-Workers
- Questionnaires on the Complete Questionnaire step configured on a business process routed to External Candidates
Candidate Notes
Workday adds notes to the candidate profile that can be shared with members of the Recruiting process
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Users can now add notes to the prospect/candidate profile wholistically instead of at the Job Application level
- New “Notes: Candidate” collaboration panel on the candidate profile
- Ability to add candidate notes on the Candidate and Prospect Profile
- Ability for members of the recruiting team to collaborate with each other within the candidate profile
- Reduces the need for 3rd party software and collaboration outside of Workday
- New “Candidate Notes” that can be used to report on this item
Note: Secured separately from Candidate Job Application Notes and will not affect existing functionality
Welcome Page for Candidate Home
The Candidate Home page on the external career site has been redesigned to improve navigation
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: The new configuration of the candidate home will make it easier for candidate’s to complete action items and view job application statuses.
- Active and inactive job applications
- Outstanding and completed tasks
- Similar and suggested jobs
Compensation
Self-Service for One-Time Payments
Updated ability enabling employees to request a one-time payment for themselves
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This update gives Employees the freedom to request a One-Time Payment, while allowing you to control the security and Workflow separate from the standard OTP process
- Workday now provides the new “Request One-Time Payment for Self” business process, allowing an employee to request a one-time payment for themselves
- The new business process gives you the flexibility to customize the security, business process flow, and any validation rules you would like to set up.
Custom Modifiers for Bonus Proration Segments
Added ability to apply employee-specific modifiers to the bonus proration calculation
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This update gives us a lot more options for prorating bonus and provides much greater flexibility. We can now set up proration at the employee level, and maintain new proration modifiers in a very custom way.
- Workday provides a new task called “Maintain Compensation Review Custom Modifiers” to create custom modifiers, that can then be used to set proration percentages for specific employees
- These modifiers are essentially custom proration criteria, where we can set the percentage result on the individual level
- Using the new task called “Maintain Compensation Review Custom Modifier for Employee,” you can set proration percentages for each modifier selected. For each proration segment, you can add any of the custom modifiers, along with a custom modifier percentDeferred Bonus Percent
- This will let you add a new, custom proration criteria in addition to the WD-Delivered criteria that you could previously choose from
- This new modifier will be employee specific, but there is a new EIB delivered to load this into Workday for multiple employees at once
Reporting
Dashboard Run History
Enhancement for data on usage statistics
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Previously, clients needed to rely on self-reported data from their end-users regarding the value and usefulness of both delivered and custom dashboards. Workday now provides a report to show the run history of dashboards so we can collect data on how much and who is leveraging our dashboard reporting tools. This helps color the decision of what information is most valuable to end-users, and what we need to focus our reporting efforts on going forward.
- Workday has released a Dashboard Run History report that provides data on helps users analyze dashboard usage statistics
- We also enable users to filter and view dashboard run history results from the previous 6 months
- Dashboard Run History data is only captured for the past 6 months
Discovery Boards Worklets
Increase Discovery Board accessibility & Improved User Experience
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: In the past, navigating to discovery boards was limited to searching for them in drive. With this update users have quick and customizable access to discovery boards right on their home page to drive engagement and increase ease of access.
- With this update, users can now enable Discovery Boards as worklets and place them on the Workday home page, so users can access under their Apps instead of having to search within Drive
Talent & Performance
Employee Review Help Text
Guided Experience improvements to help text & expansion for additional reviewers/managers
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: It’s common to have different directions for Employees vs. Managers. Previously, both sets of directions had to appear for both groups in one large, overwhelming text block. Now that we can configure Employee and Manager specific help text within each section, we can cater streamlined instructions to these groups without concerns about audience or overall confusion.
- Workday now provides the ability to configure separate help text within the sections of your review templates that is specific to employees and managers
- Help text, in general, is now accessed via a “Configure Help Text” button on the main page of the template
- The UI for Guided Experience now extends to any additional reviews & additional managers involved in your employee reviews
Calibration Comments
Activity Stream Comments in Calibration
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Calibration is an inherently collaborative process, and this collaboration has not always been easy to capture within Workday. With the incorporation of the Activity Stream specific to Calibration, it is now easier to collaborate within Workday and keep track of discussion points. Calibrators can now tag and leave comments directly on workers within the inbox task without having to repurpose the “Notes” field specific to Potential.
- Individuals involved in calibration are now able to leave comments on individual workers when Activity Stream for Calibration is enabled in Edit Tenant Setup – System
- Only employees with the security to view a worker’s calibration event can view these comments or be tagged
- The UI for Guided Experience now extends to any additional reviews & additional managers involved in your employee reviews
Learning
Fixed Recurring Expiration Dates
Configure recurring expiration periods for courses
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Learning Admins can now automate expirations dates and retraining. With this update, you can create courses that have an expiration date and a recurrence frequency.
Example: A course is due on September 1st, with a recurrence of every 6 months
- New Option: Recurrence Frequency
- New Section when creating/editing courses: Retrain Window
- New Check Box: Delete Expiration Rule
- The new feature does not affect existing offerings with expiration dates
Virtual Classroom Integration with Microsoft Teams
Allow learners to join instructor-led training directly through Teams
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This integration will improve your workforce’s learning experience by allowing learners to easily join virtual led training directly from Microsoft Teams
- Ability to automatically generate Microsoft Teams links for learners to join training directly from Workday
- When setting up the Virtual Classroom, Admins can choose to use the new Integration System or to Add Link Manually (existing behavior)
- When viewing the course overview page, learners can see all course details and access the virtual classroom directly from the tenant
Content Import & Tracking for Coursera
Import and track progress/completion for Coursera courses
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Enhance your learning catalog by making Coursera courses available for consumption. Admins and Managers will easily be able to track learners’ progression and completion in near-real time.
- Progress is recorded automatically
Security & Cross App
Workday Messaging
SMS Text Messaging sent from Workday to prospects, internal, candidates, and external candidates with US cell phone numbers
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: Improve your engagement with candidates using Workday’s native messaging capability and eliminate the need for additional vendor contracts and integrations with 3rd party vendors.
- Recruiters can now send ad hoc text messages directly to candidates or setup Message Templates to automatically send to candidates during critical touchpoints in the recruiting process
- Candidates can choose to Opt-in or Opt-out of SMS messaging
- You can include any report field in the SMS Message template
- The character limit for a SMS message is 160 characters, but messages over 160-characters can be received by candidates over multiple messages
Organization-Based Routing for Approval Chains
Route approvals steps in business processes based on Organizations
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: It is now easier to route approvals to the right people in your organization. This feature gives you flexibility to route approvals based on positions or organizations.
- You can now choose to route the approval chain for specific bps through the Organization Hierarchy instead of Management Hierarchy
Integrations
Automatically Available Updates
Automatic Updates for this release
Why this is important: This set of three automatically available integrations updates should make the short list for any regression testing efforts, and by and large enhance the efficiency of the respective actions
- Workday adds support for new Bulk Import web service type which will enable multiple instances of importing Workday data by running multiple asynchronous web service requests in a same web service call.
- This update will be effective in Production on 9/9/2022
- New Workday web services now enable export of project templates from tenant. Note these are not supported via EIB
- Get Project Template
- Get Project Plan Template
- Get Resource Plan Template
Miscellaneous Enhancements
There are various small updates to Integrations in R2
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
Why this is important: This set of three miscellaneous enhancements are a high level of effort but include updates to functionality and updates to the worker business object with the intention to improve consistenty, reduce errors, improve troubleshooting efficiency, and comply with VAT reporting requirements.
- Functionality update for Date-based sorting and filename consistency
- Date format update for generated documents (yyyy-mm-dd)
- User’s locale no longer used to determine the date format
- Employees with Cases Pending Closure report field added to the Worker Business Object (Domain : Worker Data: I-9 Forms)
- Help comply with VAT reporting requirements
- Allows the submission of VAT numbers of UK-registered entities to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for validation
- Updated template functionality to deliver HMRC option in Launch Parameters
Export High-Volume Journal Lines
Journal Lines Exports
Availability: Automatically Available
Why this is important: Improved export process when exporting high volumes of journal lines
- Can add service for Aggregation and Summarization when using the Financial Journal Lines Outbound Connector
- Ability to configure data based on criteria such as ledger/budget period, company, or expense item
- Once service is enable, configuration of Group-By field
- Can select up to 8 dimensions to group by and aggregate your data
- Summary Journal Line Data integration field overrides and attributes
- New Detailed Journal Line option
- Extended field overrides for custom configuration
- New Field attributes for configuring addition details for Detailed Journal Line Data
- Ledger Credit Minus Debit
- Transaction Credit Minus Debit
H2 Functional Area (change to h2)
H3 Name of Update
H4 Subheading
Availability: Set Up Required
Level of Effort
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As always, you can find more information about the Workday 2022R2 update on Workday Community.
