Workday Student Training Resources & Support

Academic Unit Overview

Academic units are vital components of the Workday Student system, representing schools, colleges, universities, or other organizational units within Gallaudet University. They play crucial roles in student recruitment, admissions, and program offerings. Within Workday, academic units also oversee academic appointments. However, it’s important to note that while Workday stores academic appointments within academic units, supervisory organizations remain responsible for managing Workday HCM functions such as compensation and job profiles.

Academic Unit

To effectively structure academic units within Workday Student, you can utilize subtypes such as schools, departments, institutes, centers, colleges, or programs. Once defined, create academic units that align with these subtypes to reflect your institution’s academic unit structure in Workday accurately.

Academic Level 

Academic levels and Academic Units can control essential functions such as student admissions, financial aid configuration, course and program offerings, and prospect recruitment. This allows for streamlined management of these processes within each unit. Configurations set at a higher academic unit level can be inherited by lower-level units, reducing the need for redundant setup work and ensuring alignment with the overarching academic structure. These benefits contribute to a more organized and efficient management of academic units within Workday Student. As a result, this enhances the overall functioning of the institution’s academic operations.

*Here is an example of the academic unit structure at Gallaudet University. Note that not all academic units are present in this image.

Effective dating is a feature in Workday that offers several benefits for configuration management. Firstly, it allows making changes that will come into effect in the future, which means that strategic planning can be done without causing disruptions to current operations. Secondly, it saves time by enabling changes to be made in advance and offers greater flexibility in updating configurations as needed. Thirdly, it maintains a version history of configurations, providing a clear audit trail of changes over time for accountability and compliance purposes. However, effective dating can also complicate transactions, especially when dealing with overlapping or conflicting effective dates. Therefore, it requires careful management and attention to detail.

Overall, effective dating in Workday enhances configuration management by providing a structured approach to managing changes over time, balancing the need for flexibility with the requirement for accuracy and compliance.

Examples of Effective Dating in Workday:

• Business Process (BP) changes to add a new step condition in the future

• New pre-requisites for a course for a future academic year

• A student has been processed to take a Leave of Absence (LOA)

Business Processes

Business processes in Workday offer several key benefits. They provide a structured workflow for completing tasks and achieving business objectives, ensuring consistency and efficiency in operations. Workday assigns tasks to appropriate roles based on their security group membership, enforcing security and business rules and ensuring that tasks are completed by authorized personnel. Any user with the right role can initiate a business process, allowing for flexibility in starting processes and promoting user autonomy. Business processes also notify responsible users at each step and progress based on their feedback, enabling real-time tracking of process status and facilitating timely decision-making. Additionally, business processes in Workday can be customized or copied to suit different organizational needs, providing flexibility and reusability of process definitions. Subordinate organizations inherit the business process definitions of superior organizations, promoting consistency across the organization unless customized definitions are specified. Overall, business processes in Workday help organizations streamline their operations, enforce business rules, and ensure that tasks are completed efficiently and effectively.

Business Process Definition

The business process definition in Workday is a list of tasks and responsible roles that make up the process. Workday offers a graphical view of these processes for communication and confirmation purposes. You can’t change the step type of existing steps in a business process definition, but you can remove and add steps as needed. When copying or linking to a business process definition, the effective date cannot be set before the original creation date.

Business Process and Security

Each step in a business process definition in Workday is linked to a security group determining who is responsible for that step. The business process is governed by a business process security policy, dictating who can start the process, perform action steps, act on the entire process, approve or cancel steps, and reassign tasks. Audit trail entries are generated when you tag a business process and modify its security policy. The Audit Trail Report records multiple entries when a security policy is edited for the first time without changes. Even before activating the change, an entry is logged for any security change to the policy. Updating security policy permission prompts is reflected in the Lineage column of the report, showing the path to the section on the policy but not the specific change. When inactive security groups in your tenant are associated with actions no longer available in the policy, you can remove them using the “Remove Inactive Security Groups from Unavailable Actions” task found under Business Process Administration, Security Activation, and Security Configuration.

Examples of Student Business Processes:

• Program of Study Event

• Financial Aid Action Item Event

• Student ISIR Event

• Add Program of Study Event

• Student Onboarding Event

When you interact with the “Submit Button,” you are working with a Business Process in Workday.

Programs of Study Overview

The Programs of Study at Gallaudet University offer several benefits. Firstly, they provide structured educational paths for students, ensuring that they meet the educational objectives set by the university. Secondly, these programs represent the educational objectives offered at Gallaudet University, providing students with a clear understanding of what they will achieve by completing the program. Thirdly, Programs of Study drive the student’s academic experience, offering a curriculum that is relevant to their chosen field of study and interests.

Program of Study Types Overview 

At Gallaudet University, the study programs offered are classified into four different types, each having specific characteristics:

• Certificate: This type of program grants credentials and has a program focus. It provides specialized training in a specific field or skill set.
• Major: A major program grants credentials and has a program focus. It represents the student’s primary area of study in their undergraduate or graduate program.
• Program: This type of program grants credentials and has a program focus. It refers to a structured course of study at the undergraduate and graduate, leading to a degree or certificate.
• Non-Credit: This type of program does not grant credentials and may or may not have a program focus. It is often used for non-degree courses or workshops. 

At Gallaudet University, undergraduate students are admitted into an Undeclared major and declare a major later in their academic experience. Graduate students, on the other hand, are admitted into a major upon matriculation, indicating their primary area of study from the beginning of their program.

Educational Credentials 

Educational Credentials are the credentials that students at Gallaudet University receive upon completing a program of study, such as a Bachelor of Arts.

Academic Calendars

Academic Calendars are made up of Academic Period Types, Academic Calendars, Academic Years, and Academic Periods. In Workday Student, an academic calendar is a structured framework that defines the organization of academic periods within an academic year. It includes details such as the start and end dates for each academic period, such as semesters, quarters, or terms, as well as any breaks or holidays. The academic calendar serves as a reference for scheduling academic activities and helps ensure consistency in the timing of events across the institution.

Academic Period Types

Academic period types are predefined date ranges that align with key periods in the academic year, typically corresponding to major semesters like Fall, Spring, and Summer. These periods provide a framework for organizing and reporting academic activities and schedules.

Academic Periods

Academic Periods in the Workday can be fixed or dynamic academic periods. Fixed periods have a set start and end date. For example, when using Fall 2024 as a fixed period the system will view the start and end dates for that period. Dynamic period entry allows you to select a specific date instead of a predefined academic period.

Non-Standard Academic Periods

Nonstandard periods in Workday Student are academic periods that do not align with the main periods of the year, such as intercessions or express periods.

Academic Years

An academic year is a period of time that typically corresponds to the duration of the academic program or course of study. It includes multiple academic periods, such as semesters or quarters, and encompasses the start and end dates for each of these periods. The academic year serves as a framework for organizing and scheduling academic activities, including classes, exams, and breaks, within a specific timeframe.

Example of an Academic Year Structure 

In Workday Human Capital Management (Workday HCM), you can use academic units to manage appointments and keep track of someone’s academic career at Gallaudet University. There are different types of appointments, like active, terminated, emeritus faculty, clinical faculty, contingent workers, and visiting academics. Sometimes a faculty member can have more than one appointment at the same time, like being a Professor in the Biology department and also serving as Dean.

Academic appointments are used to keep track of someone’s time at Gallaudet University and their relationship with an academic unit over time. Even though it’s not a job, you can link an appointment to a filled position if you want.

Workday has three business processes to track academic appointments for paid and unpaid academic members, which include important dates, academic unit affiliation, rank, title, and tenure status. You can also record other types of appointments, like administrative, adjunct, and courtesy appointments, as well as participation in centers, institutes, and programs.

The academic appointment business processes are available as related actions on Academic Units, Academic Workers, Academic Affiliates, and Students.

Workday Security refers to the system and processes used to control access to data and functionality within the Workday platform. Workday Security ensures that users have the appropriate level of access to perform their job duties while protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access. This includes defining roles and permissions, managing user access, and ensuring compliance with security policies and regulations. Workday Security plays a crucial role in maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data within the Workday system.

Role-Based Security: This is the foundation of security in Workday. Roles define a set of permissions that determine what actions a user can perform and what data they can access. Users are assigned roles based on their job responsibilities.

User-Based Security: User-based security allows administrators to define additional security settings for individual users, such as restricting access to sensitive data or functions.