Workday Spring Update (Workday 2024 R1): What’s New

Workday is a Cloud-based ERP solution, launched in 2005, that provides seamless HCM and financial systems to corporate users worldwide. Workday has emerged as a leading option for operations and workforce productivity.   

Workday is a Cloud-based ERP that streamlines important workflows in your core business activities, such as HR, Payroll, and Finance. Workday releases mandatory Weekly Service updates and  Biannual Feature releases. The newest is Workday Feature Release 2024R1, which brings new enhancements for the Human Capital Management and Financials modules. 

So, what’s the big deal? Testing Workday's biannual updates is not always simple, especially with business processes on the line. You'll need a robust Workday testing plan to ensure that your business processes are unaffected. 

This blog will give a high-level summary of all impacted functionalities for the Financials and HCM modules. 

For detailed information about the release, we encourage you to read our advisory document on the Workday 2024 R1 Release. 

Workday provides product features and services in two ways: 

• Weekly Service Updates occur over the weekend maintenance window and provide timely fixes and enhancements that have no impact on consumers. 

• Feature releases occur over a 6-month cycle and include many new features and capabilities that may require uptake. 

Workday’s Feature Release 2024R1: What’s New? 

Overview of Workday 2024R1 Updates in Human Capital Management Module    

• With this Workday release benefit billing status can now be designated to employees in case they have insufficient funds to cover their benefit cost
• Benefit Program communication cards containing job details can now be directly created in Workday.

• Many new features added with the Workday 2024 R1 release including “Compensation Element selection prompt” which will improve the speed and performance of the task by returning only the specified category of compensation elements.
• End users can now configure leave types and time offs that impact step progression and assign grace periods to steps

• Workday 2024 R1 allows customers timely fixes such as adding effective dates to service date changes. This enables you to accurately track service date changes for workers in Workday, reduces downstream impacts to calculations, and improves reporting.

• Workday 2024 R1 update include many new features such as allowing users to opt in for redesigned Hire Employee user interface.
• Many improvements in the hire business process have been enabled to configure workflows and approvals for creating or editing a job profile.
• You can now configure pre-hire contact information fields to be required for all users or security groups to ensure employees receive their contracts and important information they need on their first day of work and throughout the calendar year.
• Consent preferences can be asked from resources for processing of their personal data providing them a transparent process.

Talent Management

• Paradox AI chatbot has been introduced for external career sites. External candidates can have a conversation with the chatbot to receive job suggestions, assistance, and additional information about completing applications.
• You can now create and manage virtual, in-person, and hybrid recruiting events to enhance candidate engagement.

Workforce Management

• With this Workday release, you can now configure the worktag types for time offs to enable allocation of these hours effectively
• You can now change compensation for Workday customers by adding the “Request Compensation Change Process” step at the time of assigning or ending a collective agreement.
• Unit HR administrators who hire people in Workday will see a handful of cosmetic updates to the Hire Business Process user interface, including

• The "First Day of Work" and "End Employment Date" fields will now be located at the top of the page, alongside another essential date field, the "Hire Date."

• Workday Release 2024 R1 allows workers to use a calendar view that enables them to enter time for an entire pay period at once, simplifying the time-entry experience and reducing errors.

The Workday 2024 R1 release comes with more features and enhancements in the HCM module. Check out Opkey's Advisory Document for the Workday 2024 R1 Release to get complete details on these updates.

Learn more: A Practical Guide to Workday Testing

Overview of Workday 2024R1 Updates in Financials Module

• Workday users can now configure 1 or multiple Review steps in the Accounting Center Summarization Event Business Process, enabling you to approve or deny accounting center summary journals before they are posted to the ledger for Primary Source batch types

• Enhancements has been done to Revenue Driven Budget Rules functionality such as

• Floor can be defined as the amount of revenues to be recorded before the budget spending authority increases

• Ceiling on the maximum amount can be defined for the budget spending authority that can be increased from the recorded revenue source.

• Intelligent Machine Learning Prompt recommendations have been provided for

• Sales item and revenue categories on customer invoices

• Expense Item and defaulting for corporate credit card transactions

• Tax attributes on supplier invoice lines

• The Remittance framework has been extended to support remittance advice creation for third-party payroll payments and supplier invoice payments in PDF format.

• Payee Bank Account Validation Override task has been enhanced by delivering new configurability for bank account types, enabling you to create custom displays for your country-specific account type needs for both payment election and settlement bank accounts.

• Workday users can now change the status of cost reimbursable spend lines that fall outside the dates on your award lines from Pending Award Line Date Review to Ready to Bill. This enables you to bill sponsors for pre-award expenditures and for expenditures that vendors bill you after awards end without the need for workarounds.

Adaptive Planning

• What if’ scenarios have been introduced. What does this mean?

• Test data can be changed in separate scenarios without affecting the data in your plan version.

• Reports and dashboards also support scenarios, enabling you to build reports and charts to compare and analyze your changes.

• Code fields has been provided that can be changed for metadata throughout the model.

• Predictive Forecaster, powered by machine learning (ML) has been introduced which has enabled report users to schedule live and snapshot matrix reports, eliminating the need to manually select and share recurring reports with select users.

• Report users can now schedule live and snapshot matrix reports, eliminating the need to manually select and share recurring reports with select users.

• You can now explore a selected report cell in a new worksheet within the context of the model.

• You can manipulate the data in the new worksheet and generate new reports without disrupting the existing report.

You can expect many new changes in the Workday Financial module, read Opkey’s Advisory document to get complete information.

All you need to know about the Workday 2023R2 Release

Opkey for Workday Testing

Opkey's Workday test automation platform provides a number of features that make it the best choice for businesses wishing to streamline their Workday update testing.

• No-Code Workday Testing: Opkey is one of the Industry’s leading test automation tools that requires no coding. It is easy to use for business analysts, end users, manual testers, and stakeholders who lack technical coding skills. Furthermore, Opkey's built-in intelligence analyzes test steps and generates automated scripts with a single click.

• Change Impact Analysis: Opkey automatically generates a change Impact Analysis report that provides customers with the precise scope of what needs to be tested with each Workday update, allowing them to prioritize testing on the elements that need attention. Self-healing capabilities enable damaged test scripts to be healed automatically.

• Pre-built test accelerators: Opkey offers accelerators for functional, regression, performance, and security testing to reduce the workload on subject matter experts. Business users no longer have to start from scratch, which cuts test script design time and effort by more than 70%.

• Improved risk coverage through test discovery: Opkey's test discovery functionality mines your specific Workday environment for previously executed tests (both manual and automated). Identifies gaps in your Workday business and provides optimal testing coverage.