What's New for WD 2021 R1: HCM Cross

Author Nicolás MullerNicolás Muller
Date March 12th, 2021

Let’s discover the new features and updates for the HCM Cross Module. These new features are aimed towards improving accessibility, providing information about the data flow processes and security, as well as modifying existing data. Some necessary changes can optimize your company’s information management while improving overall user experience. 
With this new release, Workday improves accessibility, performance and usability. Org Studio and Workday assistant have been updated. Therefore, the chatbot can now provide information on time off requests and purchase requisition while also providing notifications for Microsoft teams. In this same way, there is an option for building new notification templates.
People experience has been enhanced by having the administrator console available for  creating journeys, search experience is also significantly better and should run faster. Questionnaires can be configured to add follow up questions and duplicate information can be handled better before creating a new prospect (this is also supported in Workday Student). 
Reporting issues such as Duplicate XML Alias, and “Do not use items” usage can be easily addressed now. 
Other new features in detail:

  • Mini Conclusions
    This topic gives us the capability to see a conclusion when the bp is finished.
  • Manage Security Settings Home
    It’s possible to use a new task Manage Security Settings to provide a single point of access to pertinent security-related information and tasks.
     
  • Exclude Business Process Steps from Inbox
    It’s possible to avoid notification of high volume in these steps Action, Approval, and To Do. This way now is possible to get the focus on the important notifications.
     
  • Drill To Reports 
    Enabling you to access drill-to report links from
      Calculation field, you must first drill down on a calculation value.
      Summary row, you must drill down on a summary value, then select a View By field from the matrix subreport.
  • Decimal Precision on Currency Exchange Rates
    Now is possible to increase the number of displayed decimal places on currency exchange rates, enabling you to more precisely represent very small currency exchange ratios. This new feature also it’s going to affect the Workday Web Services.
     
  • Lookup Related Value Calculated Fields
    Workday enhances report performance by optimizing Lookup Related Value calculated fields and improving how Workday processes your reports.
  • Parsing External Data in Prism Analytics 
    With this release, we include these options for parsing external data when you create or load data into a table.
     
  • Dataset Names
    You now have more than 1 way of identifying your datasets in the Data Catalog. We enable you to:
       Create a display name. You can change this name at any time.
       View the dataset API name. This is the unique name that Workday uses to reference the dataset in the API. You can change the API      name only once when you first create or copy datasets.
    For pre existing datasets:
        Workday automatically populates the display name field with the API name.
        You can’t change the API name.
  • Automatic Data Updates for Discovery Boards
    With this release, workday expands analytic capabilities for discovery boards by providing a way to control live updates of data while editing a discovery board. Live update control improves performance by reducing continuous queries against the data, especially for very large data sources. How I do that? To turn off the live updates for an entire board, click the menu next to the board name and select Turn off auto-updates for all vizzes.

  • Field Indicators for Discovery Boards
    Improve the performance for discovery board creation using fields optimized for performance.
  • Drill By and Show Details for Discovery Boards
    Workday improves ad hoc analysis for discovery boards by enabling you to select the fields that display when drilling on data and select the fields to drill by on measures in visualizations.
  • Discovery Board Visualizations
    Workday expands analytics capabilities for discovery boards by providing new viz types, enabling you to create specific types of charts more conveniently. The new viz types will be available to anyone that has access to create a discovery board but is not possible to make exports as a custom report.
  • Implement Adobe OAuth 2.0
    Workday enables you to configure Adobe OAuth 2.0 for use in the REST API that authenticates Adobe Sign electronic signature. When you configure Adobe Sign for Workday, you no longer need to enter an integration key.
  • Sandbox Doesn’t Display Incorrect Business Processes
    Workday no longer displays completed business process events routing documents for approval with DocuSign or Adobe Sign that were copied from production to sandbox environments. Users can’t access these events from their inbox or perform any action changing the business process conclusion.You can confirm if eSignature configuration is enabled by viewing the Tenant Setup Business Processes > eSignature
  • Duplicate Management Framework
    Workday continues to improve the Duplicate Management Framework by enhancing the match and merge process and providing more detailed information on matched records. This can help you better understand matched records and gives you the flexibility to manually search for duplicate records that you need to merge.
  • Domain Security for Reviewed Documents
    Workday updates the worker profile Reviewed Documents grid by now securing it to additional domains. Expanding domain security enables you to display documents generated with BIRT and triggered from a Review Documents step. This release also provides more consistent security and document viewing for standard and generated documents, while enabling users who aren’t part of an associated business process to access reviewed documents.
  • Non-English Custom Labels
    Improvements on the user experience for non-English custom labels are available within the new release so you can easily continue to customize Workday and reflect the terminology of your organization.
  • Workday Assistant for Change Job Templates
    We continue to improve Workday Assistant, enabling you to initiate Change Job templates by having a conversation with the Workday Assistant chatbot. To use Workday Assistant, you must sign the Innovation Services form and opt in using the Innovation Services Opt-In task.
  • User Preferences on Mobile
    With Workday 2021R1, we enable you to change preferences such as preferred language, locale, currency, and more on the Workday mobile applications.
  • Switch Between Tenants on Mobile
    We add versatility to the Workday mobile applications by enabling you and your users to conveniently switch between tenants using a new button. As a preview tester, you can switch between Sandbox and Production environments. Currently there are a number of tenants that the user can add, using manage organization to add or remove the organization defined.
  • Pay On -Demand
    Workday delivers a solution to help you support frontline workers living paycheck to paycheck in times of hardship. With this release, workday provides the ability for workers to request and obtain payment prior to traditional payment dates. Workday also automates the payroll process for pay on-demand, making employee payments available for settlement as soon as possible.

BNB Team recommends:
Some features will significantly improve the user experience in terms of information displayed (for example when drilling into specific areas of dashboards) , and support through the Workday Assistant. It is recommended that you take the time to make sure these features are well understood by your employees.
We recommend that you plan ahead and access the information provided by BNB to reduce the possible impact of the new update. Some new features require setup in order to take effect on the tenants.
Furthermore, we remind you of the Feature Release Guidebook  and the What’s New Posts available in Workday Community.
Are you prepared for the 2021R1 release? Contact our team of experts for more detailed info about it #WdayExperienceYouCantrust
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