The ISC continually updates Workday to better meet UBC’s needs, based on community feedback and collaboration with different units, faculties, and departments. Working with Central Finance, Central HR, and Payroll, we make changes to deliver value to UBC as well as faculty and staff who use Workday.

A Workday enhancement could be the addition of a new component or tool in Workday, a new feature within an application or component we already use, or a way to optimize a current Workday feature. Enhancements are prioritized by the relevant process owner (e.g. Central Finance, Central HR, Payroll) and the ISC supports them in evaluating and implementing these changes to align with UBC’s strategic priorities and operational activities.

Below are the current lists of planned enhancements for Workday Finance and Workday HR (HCM) and Payroll.

Upcoming Enhancements

Here are the some of the planned enhancements that are currently targeted for completion by March 31, 2023.*

Finance

• New Approval Routing for One Time Payments. For one-time payments to employees (e.g. honorarium), we will add an approval by the Worktag Manager to provide a higher level of budgetary oversight. A spend threshold will then determine if a second approval by the Finance HCM partner in the relevant department would also be required, based on the amount of the payment.
• Establish Evaluation Framework for New Spend and Revenue Categories. Currently, there are no clear criteria for when a new spend or revenue category should be created. To help review these requests and to improve clarity around the process, the ISC will work with the Budget team, Financial Reporting, and others to create a decision-making framework. This will ensure individual requests are evaluated in an organization-wide context, and support a strong FDM structure in future.
• Explore Using Internal Catalogs for Internal Service Delivery. Workday's internal catalog functionality may allow us to improve how internal service providers (e.g. IT, Facilities) and the faculties/ departments who pay them for their services track this spending in Workday. Currently, all internal service delivery (ISD) transactions use one ledger account and spend category, which may not always be the most appropriate one depending on the service being purchased. Using internal catalogs is one potential way for these expenses to be more accurately categorized.

See all Finance Enhancements

HR (HCM) and Payroll

• Streamline Process to Change Position Compensation Type (Hourly/Salaried). Currently, when an employee’s current position changes from hourly to salaried or vice versa, a new position with the correct compensation type must be created and the employee moved to the new position. Adding new options to the Change Job process will enable Managers to simply update the compensation type on the current position. This will be more efficient and will maintain the employee’s 'Time in Position' in Workday. This process will also include steps to ensure benefit eligibility is accurate.
• Add CWL usernames to Employee Profiles in Workday. In collaboration with UBC IT, including the IEC and IAM teams, the ISC is exploring adding employees' CWL username to their Workday profile. This would be helpful in many scenarios, such as when a Manager needs to fill out an IT help request on behalf of a new employee.
• New Daily Summary Option for Workday Notifications. The ISC is testing a new option to help people manage Workday notifications. This new option would allow employees to choose to have one daily notification of all of the WD tasks and notifications, instead of a notification for each item. This set-up may work better for administrators and others who have a high volume of tasks and notifications.
• Update the Onboarding Dashboard for New Hires. To help improve the experience of new UBC employees, we are updating and expanding the resources available on the onboarding dashboard. Working with UBCV and UBCO representatives from HR whose roles include orientation and onboarding, we are using customized content by campus, as well as adding key Workday resources by role.

See all HR (HCM) and Payroll Enhancements

The summaries above are updated quarterly, and were last updated on February 8, 2023. Completed enhancements that are important for the community are announced through Workday This Week. For the latest information on all enhancements, please see our complete lists on SharePoint (CWL required).

*Timelines and details of the enhancements are subject to change.

Questions or Suggestions?

To suggest a future enhancement, such as a way to improve an existing process, or to inquire about a planned enhancement, please submit a Workday support request and include the word ‘Enhancement’ in the short description. If you have submitted an enhancement request, you can check the current list for its status, or follow up on your original Workday support ticket by email or through the UBC Self Service Portal.