How do I find appropriate fields for creating Workday condition rules?

Fields for creating Condition Rules

While creating condition rules say for example in Business Processes, if a field that you are looking for is not available or it in one of the other related Business Objects,  then you can create your own calculate fields and bring it up to the Action Event Level. 

Remember that you Business Process is related to the action event. Also you can notice all the available fields and conditions that you can use in a particular BP.

Lets take an example of Termination BP - You can see a tab "Available Rules & Fields". Search here for the fields that you are looking for while creating the conditions. 

Also check  Workday Data Dictionary report to determine what fields are available for each business object.

Full Process Record on Business Process Event

Full Process Record on BPs

The Full Process Record on the Business Process Event gives you a great amount of detailing regarding what happened from the BP's initiation to the processing to any sub events triggered to the actions performed to the notifications generated.

Access any Business Process  and go to the related actions fo that BP event, In the below example we took an integration event. You could view on any Hire or Termination or any other BP that you need to analyze.

You can notice the below sections showing up all the tabs which indeed contains the detailed information about this event. Also notice Comments tab if there were any comments as part of the process. Below sample doesn't show up though.

Copy Custom Notifications

Copy Custom Notifications on Business Processes

Often there are times, where we should be creating multiple custom notifications may be on the same lines. Making the use of Copy Notification feature eases the creation of multiple custom Notifications.

So, make the use of Copy Notifications to lessen the burden of creating multiple notifications from scratch.

Access your Business Process and go to the Notification tab and see your existing custom notifications and click on the related actions on your custom notification and then

Business Process >> Copy Notification

Provide the Effective Date and notice the Workflow Notification that is being copied. On the next screen you will notice your custom notification being copied and you can now edit according to your need. 

Business Processes: BP Critical Errors

How to identify Business Processes with Errors & Fix?

Some times we see few of the transactions falling flat, saying Processing Error! You can rely from time to time on one report i.e.

Business Process Exception Audit - Report

Using this report we can find all the BP's that have Critical Errors and Alerts. If you want to see and address your Warnings as well, check the Include Warnings Checkbox. But Warnings won't hard stop you. Your main target should be to zero any critical errors.

This is a great report to identify all critical errors at one place and fix it individually.

Once you run the report, it results like below.

Highlighted in Yellow

Severity                          : Critical / Warning

A Problem Exists With : Shows which step your BP has problem or as a whole.

Problem / Solution        : Provides you with possible solution to fix the same. Follow this, it will help you in fixing the issue mostly.

For Example: Click on one of the A Problem Exists With item which will take you the respective BP to fix as shown below. It gives you a clear detail as what is missing in this BP.

The related actions menu in the A Problem Exists With column is the same as the related actions menu on an individual step on the BP's View Definition page.

If a business process is broken, Workday automatically sends a Fix Business Process task to Business Process Administrators and provides a link to correct the business process definition.

Business Processes: All types of Conditions Explained

Business Process Conditions

There are 5 different types of conditions that you will come across while working on Business Processes.

1. Validation Conditions

2. Entry Conditions

3. Workday Owned Entry Conditions

4. While Running Conditions

5. Exit Conditions.

Validation Conditions:  [ If ALL conditions are False, the step will exit and the process will continue ]

These type of conditions help you in validating the field values on you tasks. Widely used in Initiation step of BP.  Few action steps also allow this, but not all.

Example: Your condition Rule could be like 

1. Hire Date is Blank (Critical)

2. Zip code is Required  (Critical)

3. Employee Middle name missing (Alert)

Lets say in Hire BP, if you added the above three conditions for validation in the initiation step(a) of your BP, then All the three conditions should be false in order to proceed further. 

Where do I see these Validations? - When you are hiring an Employee, at the time of data entry say, you missed entering Hire date and try to save or submit. This is where your validation is fired. Till the time you fix this you can't Submit it. Relate this to the 1st condition in example quoted above. 

So you need to provide the desired values in order to make your condition False. Unless all your conditions are False, your BP will not go on to the next step or in other words Unless you fix all your errors you can't submit the process.

Severity:

You can set the severity of your condition by setting any of the below.

Critical  - Throws error, waits for you to fix the error.

Warning - Throws alert, will not wait for you to fix the alert.

You can Configure Validation Message on your Condition. (Navigation: Business Process Condition >> Validation >> Configure Validation Message )

Entry Conditions:  [ If All conditions are true, the step will be entered ]

Except your Initiation Step, you can use the Entry Conditions on any type of step. 

As the name suggests, the Entry Conditions are used to set the conditions as when to enter the step. If the condition that you set is true then it is going to enter the step otherwise it will be skipped. (During the progress of your BP you will typically see as Not Required if your condition failed.)

Example: Your condition Rule could be

1. Country is not Canada?

2. Worker has Workday Account? 

Lets say you set the entry condition 1 shown in above example on your Step c, if the proposed country is USA then it enters the Step c, and if the proposed country is Canada then it will skip Step c and moves to Step d.

Workday Owned Entry Conditions:  [ If All conditions are true, the step will be entered ]

These conditions are same as your Entry Conditions, but these are owned by Workday. You can not edit these conditions if you come across in some of the Action steps. 

If you have Workday Owned Entry Conditions, you can add your own Entry Conditions to the step. Both Entry type conditions should be true in order to enter the step.

All the conditions should be true in order to enter the step. 

While Running Conditions:  [ If All conditions are true, the approval chain step will be routed ]

While Running Conditions are applicable only for Approval Chain step. This is just like an entry condition for each of the approver in the approval chain. 

Example: 

Lets assume, Your organization approval chain for an employee looks some thing like below. Notice 4 levels of approvals in this approval chain. Manager B is manager of Worker A, and Manager C is manger of Worker B and so on.

Worker A --> Reports to Manager B --> Reports to Manager C --> Reports to Manager D --> Reports to Manager E

It compares the next approver to some value, and if the condition is true, the step is routed to that approver. If the condition is false, it skips the current approver and moves on to evaluate the next approver in the chain.

Exit Conditions:  [ If All conditions are true, the approval chain may exit ]

Exit Conditions are applicable only for Approval Chain and Integration steps.

This conditions are used when to stop or when to exit the chain. 

Example: Condition 

Lets assume, Your organization approval chain for an employee looks some thing like below. Notice 6 levels of approvals in this approval chain. Manager B is manager of Worker A, and Manager C is manger of Worker B and so on.

Worker A --> Reports to Manager B --> Reports to Manager C --> Reports to Manager D --> Reports to Manager E --> Reports to Manager F  --> Reports to Manager G

Condition Examples: (Until)

Management Level = VP ?

Management Level > 4 ?

 

Your conditions rely mostly on Management Level field. In above condition Management Level > 4 when the approval chain reaches Management Level 5 then it exits.

The exit conditions say at which level you want to exit the chain. The exit condition works while the chain is running, when the condition is met, the Exit condition exits the step.

For Integration step the exit conditions are used to test the response from the external service before the step can exit.

Business Processes: Mass Cancel To Dos

To Do's

To Do's are typically used in the Business Processes. Also used in Checklist, again with in Business Processes.

To Do's won't have much priority when you compare with other BP Step types, so users comfortably skip them if they were optional.

The task Mass Cancel To Dos helps in canceling the To Dos which you don't want to visit anymore and complete them and which have been long pending.

Select the To Do events and cancel.

Other Tasks and Reports related to To Dos that you can check out:

To Dos

Maintain To Dos

Create To Do is the task that you see in the Business Process Step Type - To Do.

Integrations: Notifications Sample

Integrations- Notifications Sample

We use Notifications on the scheduled Integrations specially to monitor if there is any abnormal behavior like the process getting aborted or failed or other below reasons. Once you set up the notification you can receive an email with the configured message.

Most commonly used Integration Statuses in Production are:

Aborted

Completed

Completed with Errors

Failed

Not Run due to Exceptions on Future Process

Some of the Fields that you can use on Notification while building your message:

 

• Integration System
• Integration Event
• Integration Event Status
• Integration Attachment
• Created from Integration Process Event

Sample Email:  Try to build with the below sample. Using Text and External Fields (Bold) 

Subject:

 

Integration System : Integration Event Status

 

Body: 

 

Integration System is Integration Event Status

 

Line break

 

Integration Event URL is Integration Event

 

Line Break

Business Processes: How to exclude the Notification details link

How to exclude the Notification details link - Business Process

In business Processes, you know that you will be able to configure the custom notifications. Usually you will see the link in the notification that gets generated. There could be different reasons ( like security, don't need to give extra details) as why you don't want to show up the link to the process. 

Go to Edit Workflow Notification and check the check box as shown below. This helps in not showing the link details.

Business Process: BP Step Types

Business Process Step Types

For better understanding on Business Process Step types, below shows the categorization of the same. 

User Input                     : Needs an input from the user (You see these typically in the inbox as tasks )

Approval                       : Needs approval from a specific security group (Manager, HR Partner, etc.)

Background Processing: These step types does not need any user intervention. Taken care by Workday.