🌞🏗 How to create open-worthy emails with Workday's Notification Designer

Read time: 8 minutes

Okay, so here’s the truth…

If you want to create ✨ gorgeous ✨ email notifications in Workday, you’re gonna need to use Workday’s Notification Designer. There! I said it 😳

Yep—you can forget about Email Templates if you want a truly sleek notification.

HOWEVER…

Only 22 notification types are currently compatible with Workday’s Notification Designer (ideally, more will be delivered in future Workday releases!):

In the meantime, if your notification of interest isn’t on this list (alerts, for instance), use Email Templates to create a decent-looking notification that includes logos and images.

(ICYMI, that’s why we sent out a step-by-step setup guide for Email Templates last week—they’re still valuable and crucial to know!)

Today, we’re rounding out our email aesthetics series with a deep dive into Workday’s fun and intuitive Notification Designer. Let’s get to it! 👏

Step 1: Enable Notification Designer in your tenant

If Notification Designer is already enabled (with security provisioned) in your tenant, skip to Step 2!

If it’s not, and you need help with setup, hit reply on this email and let us know—we’ll send you resources. We chose to skip setup here since most Workday customers already have it enabled (and for the sake of email length 😅).

Step 2: Create your notification template

🚨 Remember to complete all steps in a test environment first!

To access the Notification Designer, go to your Drive within Workday (Image A). Click the “+ New” button, and click “Notification Template” to create your new template (Image B).

Name your Notification Template. Let’s name ours “Custom Business Process Notification Template”.

Select a Layout for your notification template. The pre-built Layouts get you started with relevant “Data Rows” (e.g. an “Apply” button for job alerts or a “View Details” button for custom BP notifications). However, you can also select “Build Your Own”. Check the “Supported Notification Categories” section to see which notification type(s) each Layout supports.

For our example today, select “Custom BP Notification”.

With this Layout, Workday automatically includes:

• A “View Details” button. This is an Actionable Link Data Row that links to your notification’s business process event in Workday.

• A “Message Body Placeholder” section that will populate with your notification’s dynamic Body content.

As our first order of formatting business, customize the design for your “View Details” button. Use the control panel on the left to change your button settings. It’s pretty intuitive! I’m willing to bet you’ll get the hang of it in no time 😎

The settings on the left below give you a “View Details” button section that looks like this:

Now add a banner image at the top of your Notification Template. Click the “+” button above the “Message Body Placeholder” section and click “Image” (Image C). Upload your desired banner image from your computer (Image D), and you’re good to go!

Next, add a static text block that will appear on every notification. Click the “+” button above your “Message Body Placeholder” section, then click “Text”.

Add your desired text. Use the text editor and left control panel (highlighted below) to format your text section.

For example, set your text to “Subheading” with center alignment:

Alrighty… before we add more content to our template, let’s make our font a littttle more seaworthy 😜

To change the font throughout your template, click “Settings” on your top menu, click “Font”, and select a font. We’ll choose “Arvo” (it’s giving a bit more "Arghhh” ⚓️).

Next… these text sections are getting crowded—let’s break them up with Dividers!

Add a new section and click “More” (Image E). Select “Divider” and click “Insert” (Image F).

Note: Take note of your other choices within the “More” menu. Only Content and Data Rows compatible with your notification are selectable. For example, an “Invite To Apply” Recruiting Data Row isn’t selectable since our template already includes an “Actionable Link” Custom BP Notification Data Row.

After adding another Divider below your “Message Body Placeholder” section, your template will look like this:

Our white background and gray text is a bit boring, right? Let’s format our sections with a blue background. We’ll make our text white (Image G), and our Dividers a thicker, yellow dashed line (Image H)…

To perfect the spacing around your content, you can play with the padding settings. Padding determines how much free space there is around your content.

Once you test your template in a later step, you’ll see if more tweaks are needed here for optimal spacing.

Okay! Lastly, add 3 new columns at the bottom of the email:

1. Text

2. Your Krusty Krab Logo

3. Text with a link, formatted to our sea blue color

I bet you can figure out how to configure these text and image blocks 💪 Spend some time playing around with this tool, and you’ll get the gist.

Alright! Drum roll please 🥁🥁🥁…

Our final, gorgeous template looks like this! 👇

Now, how do you apply the template to your notifications? Read on!

Step 3: Deploy your Notification Template

First, you’ll need to publish your template. Click “File” and “Publish Template”. Or, click the “Publish” button in the upper right-hand corner of the Notification Designer.

Once your template is “PUBLISHED”, click the “Set Category” button to assign your template’s Notification Category. You won’t be able to use your Notification Template without assigning it a Notification Category.

Since we’re using the “View Details” button in our template (a Data Row only compatible with Custom BP Notifications), our only option here is “Custom Business Process Notifications”. Select it, and click “Save”.

Next, click the “Maintain” button in the upper right-hand corner, or run the task “Maintain Notification Templates”.

Within the “Business Processes” section, add the “Custom Business Process Notifications” Notification Type in the “Active for Notification Types” column for the template you just created:

After completing this step, your Notification Template is now available to select as the “Override Email Template” on your custom BP notification.

To apply your template to a specific custom BP notification, select it as the “Override Email Template” within the notification itself:

Step 3: Test!

You know the drill! Ensure you test your template (and make tweaks as needed) before deploying in Production. We won’t walk through custom BP notification setup and testing this week (stay tuned 😜), but here’s what your output looks like with a test notification from a Change Emergency Contacts event:

A gorgeous, open-worthy email notification is pretty darn satisfying, right!? 🤩

As always, thank you for reading!

We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳 

Until next time!

Ceci & Mia

Co-Founders of Well Built Solutions