Glossary of Terms

Designated participants in a business process, with a defined responsibility in this type of event, indicate they approve the proposed action. (The business process can proceed to the next step.)

The My Workday landing page displays a grid of worklets such as Inbox and My Requests. You should enable My Workday only for administrator and professional roles, not for Employee Self Service or Manager Self Service. Workday recommends that you keep the number of worklets on My Workday to a minimum. The number of worklets on My Workday affects display performance.

You can create 3 types of custom reports: simple, advanced, and matrix. A simple report provides straightforward design options for the beginning or occasional user to create reports quickly and easily.

A domain security policy is a collection of related securable elements of different types and user-specified security groups that have access to elements of each type.

You can assign positions to organization roles. Depending on your staffing model, a position may or may not necessarily have a worker specified.

The My Workday 2.0 landing page is home to the Workfeed worklet. It is designed to optimize performance, and therefore is limited to displaying the Workfeed plus 4 additional worklets. This limit ensures that users cannot place a large number of worklets (some of which may be computationally intensive) on a page that is frequently accessed. It is recommended that you use the Dashboard landing pages for additional analytical worklets that users might need.

Standard reports are reports that come delivered with Workday. They are developed by Workday and are delivered to all Workday customers. Depending on the reporting requirements, standard reports may be defined using the Workday Report Writer or in XpressO (Workday's internal development tool). Standard reports that were designed using the Report Writer can be copied to create a custom report and then modified according to your requirements.

Matrix reports enable you to drill down to see underlying data. When you click on a drillable element (such as a drillable field in the table view or a column, line, or pie segment in the chart view), a context menu appears that enables you to select a new View By field. If the Enable Drilldown to Detail Data check box is selected on the Advanced tab of the report definition, you can also select Details associated with the selected report element.

Workday stores your data as business objects—organizations, workers, positions, and so on—which can be thought of as database tables or worksheets in Excel. Just as a database table or worksheet has columns and rows, a Workday business object has fields and instances. A business object is composed of a set of related fields, similar to how a table or spreadsheet is composed of a set of related columns. Instances of a business object in Workday are like rows in a table or spreadsheet, with each instance representing a unique occurrence of that type of object such as an organization or worker. A business object can have no instances, one instance, or many instances. Workday automatically links related business objects together. For example, purchase order lines are linked to a purchase order header, the purchase order header is linked to a supplier, the supplier is linked to a company, and so on.

An organization security group is one whose members are any workers assigned to that organization.

Subfields are additional details about a field, like a master/detail relationship. Subfields are used when creating reports using Report Writer.

A transaction that occurs within your organization, such as hiring or terminating an employee.

The set of tasks that need to be completed for an event to occur, the order in which they must be done, and who must do them. Workday includes a number of predefined business processes for different purposes. You can edit the default definitions for your organization. You can also create different versions of the same business process for different organizations.

When defining a report, the primary business object is the business object returned by the data source.

The object that a business process operates on. For example, for business processes that deal with an employee record, the target is the employee. For business processes that deal with a financial object, such as an accounting journal, the accounting journal is the target. Since the target determines the organization, it controls which business process custom definition Workday uses.

In a Report Writer report, a field contains data related to a particular primary or related business object.

A business process that the initiator has started. For example, the Hire Employee for Organization X business process definition becomes an instance when the initiator uses it to hire a particular applicant.

Workers are assigned to the predefined security groups through a business process. These groups cannot be changed except by reversing the business process or executing a new business process, such as applying for a position, or being hired. Examples include: Employee, Contingent Worker, and Applicant.

A business process step that you must complete. For example, task alert notifications are triggered by steps in a business process.

Sorts out undesired data, used when creating reports with Report Writer.

A business process security policy secures the initiation step, step actions and process-wide actions including view, rescind, cancel and correct. It specifies which security groups that have access to each action.

A Report Writer report can be defined so that it prompts the user for filtering criteria when they run the report. Report prompts can also be "built in" to a data source.

You have the option to make any custom report temporary. When creating or copying simple report types, you can select the Temporary option when creating the report, resulting in automatic deletion of the report after 7 days. Similarly, for advanced and matrix report types, you can set the Temporary option when creating the report, and by default the report will be deleted automatically after 7 days. You change the default deletion date on the Advanced tab of the report definition.

Any item you want to track, from company vehicles to software licenses and access cards. For capital resources, you can capture the acquisition cost and record depreciation based on the depletion schedule attributes. You can also track resource custodianship.

In Workday, a credit memo is a customer invoice adjustment that decreases the amount due. A credit memo for suppliers is a supplier invoice adjustment that decreases the amount owed.

When you set up expense items and purchase items, you assign a resource category. It is a classification in procurement and resource management that provides a logical grouping to search and report on acquired items and services. It can also be used to drive different accounting behavior as it is a dimension in account posting rule types used in procurement and resource management.

In Workday, a debit memo is a customer invoice adjustment that increases the amount due. A debit memo for suppliers is a supplier invoice adjustment that increases the amount owed.

When you set up sales items, you assign a revenue category. It is a classification in customer contracts and billing that provides a logical grouping to search and report on items and services you sell. It can also be used to drive different accounting behavior as it is a dimension in account posting rule types used in customer contracts, billing, and accounts receivable.

Determines how a resource will be depreciated, and specifies the depreciation method and depreciation start date. Each resource category is assigned one depreciation profile, and each resource depreciation profile is defaulted by its resource category.

A group of items to be paid (such as supplier invoices and expense reports), and payments (paychecks and ad hoc supplier payments) that is treated as one unit when selecting and settling payments.