Workday Student will replace Sage, Brandeis’ student information system. It will become the system of record where students will go to view information and access tools related to personal and contact information, financial aid, student account information, academic records, academic planning and records, and registration.
Brandeis has used PeopleSoft to manage student services for decades. Sage, our Brandeis-branded name for PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, has become highly customized over the years, adding layers of complexity to our administrative systems and resulting in challenges when applying system upgrades and modifications as well as disruption to staff and their work.
Workday Student will become the university’s student information system and will be integrated with the HR and Finance system. This will provide a comprehensive, single system of record and one-stop shop for the Brandeis community. In addition, it will enable students to access all of their academic records and student employment records in one place - from anywhere and at anytime.
Workday Student provides a streamlined system for students as they engage with Brandeis throughout their academic careers, enabling them to:
After a multi-year and inclusive review process, Brandeis determined that Workday’s cloud-based system is most suited to support the university’s operating goals and administrative system needs. The Workday@Brandeis Program will result in significant benefits to the university, representing important progress in campus modernization and risk management.
The university transitioned to Workday for HR, Finance and Payroll in summer 2019 as the first phase of the program which also established a foundation for the Workday Student project. As Workday Student functions are implemented and ready for production, they will join the HR, Finance, and Payroll functions forming one central system, enabling faculty, staff, and students to use Workday for administrative needs. Workday is cloud-based, unlike PeopleSoft, which enables us to keep up-to-date with new versions and functionality more efficiently. Lastly, the online, modernized system allows us to run operations in a more secure environment using Workday’s strict security protocols.
A small number of Workday Student functions, such as processes to add approved new courses for fall 2021 to the system, will be going live in Fall 2020. The majority of these changes will be used by faculty and a small subset of staff. In Spring 2021, more functionality, including course registration and academic advising, will go live with a greater impact to the Brandeis community. Additional functionality will become available through the summer and fall of 2021, in alignment with the processes of our academic year. We will continue to provide updates and information about upcoming changes and their impact.
We anticipate that students, faculty, and staff will find that some Workday Student functions can be performed with little or no training. We will be supporting our community’s adoption of all Workday Student functions by offering a variety of training opportunities!
Depending on the functionality released in each phase and groups affected, we will provide training through how-to guides (also known as job aids), video tutorials, FAQs, instructor-led training (with online options), and self-directed training.
We will announce these training opportunities well in advance of functions going live, along with registration information for live or self-directed training sessions.
You will continue to log into Workday as you currently do! Workday Student functions available to you will be added to your Workday home screen, joining any Human Resources (HR and Benefits), Finance, and Payroll applications that you may currently use (e.g., request time off, submit time). There is no separate Workday Student “system” but rather one centralized Workday system that will be expanded as features become available.
Sage will be used by faculty, staff, and students for processes related to the current academic year (2020-2021). Functions related to the 2021-2022 academic year will be performed in Workday Student. This may mean that during some periods, you will need to access both Sage and Workday Student; for example, in April 2021, you will access Workday Student to register for fall 2021 courses, and in May 2021, you will access Sage to view your spring 2021 course grades. Once the fall 2021 semester is underway, you will no longer need to access Sage; all functions will be performed in Workday Student.