Workday at Brandeis

September 18, 2024

With Workday's September 2024 release, they are introducing a new simplified search capability for Workday users. By toggling the "Simplified Search" button to "enabled," search results will be condensed to the "Top Results" and organize your results by category.

September 16, 2024

PhD Students will be able to find their dissertation committee members listed on their Workday profile. A pilot program for History and English PhD programs is currently being conducted by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Academic administrators and Directors of Graduate Studies will be able to add dissertation committee members - including external members - to Workday. Instructions on how to add members to committees are available on the Workday website.

May 14, 2024

Beginning May 22, Workday users with the Department HR Partner role will have the capability to update and maintain office locations, mailstops, and phone extensions in Workday. Workday will be the system of record that supplies office locations and phone numbers to the online office and people directories.

February 23, 2024

Twice a year, Workday releases updates to all customers to streamline and improve the Workday experience. This March, users will see changes to their Global Navigation menu that includes the removal of the Benefits and Career applications (also called worklets). These applications will be replaced with new applications Workday calls Hubs. The Careers Hub (pdf) will be the new place for the Brandeis community search for jobs and refer candidates. The Benefits application will become the Benefits & Pay Hub (pdf) where all your compensation and benefit data is contained in a central location.

Other changes coming as part of the release include:

• Workday Announcements are moving back to the top of your Workday homepage
• Updated screens when requesting time off
• An enhanced registration experience to ensure students are adding the correct course section to saved schedules
• An improved course waitlist experience for staff and faculty
• My Tasks replacing the Workday Inbox

January 31, 2024

Through a collaboration with users in the Dean's Offices and Finance, new Period Activity Pay worktags have been set up to improve reporting on the activities in PAP. These worktags will allow you to be more precise about what type of work you are paying faculty, staff and students for. Job aids have been updated to show how to add the worktags in PAP. To view the specific use cases for which worktags to use and when, take a look at our Activity and Worktag Use Cases list.

January 31, 2024

As part of their semi-annual release, Workday will be changing the Inbox feature to My Tasks.

My Tasks offers enhanced search functionality and task management. If you have previously set up inbox filters to manage your Workday tasks, all of your filters will carry over.

Look for My Tasks to debut at Brandeis this February. If you have any questions regarding this change, please open a Help Desk ticket and ask it to be assigned to the ITS Change Management Office. Learn about My Tasks.

Workday's second 2023 semi-annual feature release took place the weekend of September 9, 2023. This release has some backend improvements not visible to most users. However, users will see some changes that will enhance your Workday experience. Here are some of the notable changes:

• Managers will have a new homepage featuring more information about upcoming important dates for their teams and easier access to their team profiles. 
• Users will have the options to select more than one choice for pronouns and gender identity in their personal information.
• Org charts are more customizable and allow you to see the manager chain without clicking through multiple screens. You can also remove or add contingent workers and open positions from your org chart view.

Brandeis is committed to increasing the compositional diversity of its employees. To measure our progress, we must have accurate and up-to-date demographic information. We can help meet these goals by simply updating our demographic profile in Workday.  Understandably, there may be questions around this request. 

• What happens with this information?
  Demographic information in Workday is secure and not open access. The Office of Human Resources has oversight of this information and carefully keeps your individual data private. In general, more complete data allows for better record keeping and benchmarking against our peer institutions as well.
• Who has access to it?
  The only people who have access to your demographic information are the staff in Human Resources. Even your manager is not automatically granted access to your demographic information.
• How does the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI) use these data?
  ODEI only seeks to have access to aggregated demographic data. The purpose is to measure progress toward DEI goals and to discern impacts on different communities at Brandeis. ODEI will never have access to your individual demographic data.
• How does the Office of Institutional Research (OIR) use these data?
  OIR uses the aggregate data to support the work of ODEI and others to support the goals of increasing diversity at Brandeis. This office also reports on these data to external agencies in aggregate.

For questions or more information, please contact the Offices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or Human Resources.