Are your Workday processes destined to fail? 😰 How to know for sure...

Read time: 3 minutes

Hey there! Mia here. Here’s an unfortunate Workday scenario I’ve seen all too often…

A key administrator within HR or IT leaves your organization. Upon their termination, suddenly…

😯 Report deliveries fail.

😫 Processes shut down.

😰 Integrations error out.

😱 Everyone panics.

Has this happened to you?

While this situation is common—it’s entirely avoidable!

💡 To ensure your processes don’t break when key team members leave your organization, confirm that all of your scheduled processes are owned by an integration system user (ISU).

Here’s the logic behind this solution…

Every scheduled process in Workday (e.g. automated report output, integration, alert, etc.) has an owner.

When a scheduled process is run, Workday runs the process using the security privileges of the owner’s Workday account. The owner of the process must have the security access needed to run that process at the scheduled run time.

When a worker is terminated, they lose their security access. Upon termination, data such as position, roles, location, organization assignments, etc. are uncoupled from the worker’s profile. As such, the worker loses all security group membership (aside from user-based groups). Service steps within the Termination business process then typically disable the user’s Workday account and remove them from any user-based security groups they’re still in.

On the contrary, an ISU is a secure, automated, and permanent Workday account to which you can grant the security it needs to own and run your processes.

The bottom line? If employees at your company own your scheduled processes, those processes will stop firing if and when these employees a) leave your organization or b) lose the required security permissions for another reason (e.g. job change, security restructuring, etc.) 👎

An automated process failing to run can range from inconvenient to catastrophic. For example, a scheduled new hires report failing to deliver to your onboarding coordinator? A redeemable hiccup!

On the other hand, your Mass Submit Time process failing to run and no one catching it until payroll has been completed? Or a critical integration failing to fire? 😳 Biggg messes that will cost you and your organization big time (these are real examples from my work as a consultant, by the way).

Here’s how to check if your scheduled processes are at risk…

👉 In your Production tenant, run the WD-delivered Scheduled Future Processes report. Check the “Owned by User” column to determine which of your processes are owned by employees rather than ISUs.

Armed with the knowledge that these scheduled jobs, reports, and integrations will break if their owners leave your organization, you can now make plans to turnover-proof these processes 💪

While ensuring that an ISU owns all processes is straightforward in theory, it’s not always a quick fix. The process of creating ISUs to own your processes—and successfully transferring ownership of those processes to said ISUs—can be intimidating and tedious.

So, we’ll be back next week with a step-by-step breakdown of this process! We’ll cover:

• The 3 types of processes: Jobs, reports, and integrations

• Integration system users (ISUs)

• Integration system security groups (ISSGs)

• Transferring ownership of scheduled processes

• And more 😆

Stay tuned!

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

P.S. Ready for more?! 👉 Check out part 2.