What's new in WD 2021 R1: Workday Adaptive Planning

Author Alejandro PonceAlejandro Ponce
Date March 12th, 2021

With Workday Adaptive Planning, your teams can collaboratively plan across the enterprise (functions, departments, industries and geographies) without manual spreadsheets or clunky legacy systems. Get business agility in a fast-moving world.
Workday Adaptive Planning is best in class, better in suite. It’s a powerful, secure and open tool designed to meet all the enterprise planning requirements.
Planning Requirements

  • Powerful: The modeling engine is intelligent, scalable, flexible and easy to use, allowing you to model as many scenarios as you want. When business conditions change, you’re ready to act. Workday Adaptive Planning is powered by Elastic Hypercube Technology (EHT), a robust in-memory modeling engine that delivers the performance you need, when you need it.
  • World-class security: Security threats are persistent and evolving—and so are the safeguards that Workday places on your data. Application security, comprehensive auditing, and encryption help ensure safe storage and access, always.
  • Open: The platform integrates with all your enterprise systems, no matter what they are. Rely on the automated data integration or use your own integration framework.
  • Non-stop innovation: Workday are committed to always delivering a world-class planning solution for every customer. And if you’re a Workday user, you’ll unleash the Power of One—a unified environment like no other.

News for Workday Adaptive Planning with the Workday 2021 R1
The Workday initiatives for the current and future enhancements in Adaptive Planning are focused in these items:

  • Data Base + Encryption
  • Power of One
  • Enterprise Readiness
  • Workforce + Sales Planning
  • Next Generation User Experience
  • Intelligent Planning

New features included in 2021R1 are classified in the following three areas: 

  • End User oriented features
  • Modeling User Oriented Features
  • Administrative User Oriented Features

The following tables give a short description of some of them and their value for the organization:
Area: End User Oriented Features

Feature Goal Value
Unified UI & Accessibility Provide a unified & cohesive experience when customers use core workday and planning.
Making pages Accessible
Scope for 2021R1: Overview page for Sheets
speed up adoption for Workday users
Dashboard Enhancement
Suppress Zeros You can now use the Suppress Zeros feature to focus your visualizations on relevant data points when you breakdown your charts by dimension. Suppress Zeros also suppresses null values. Ability to show cleaner and relevant data
Set default starting Time & Level Users can now override the default level and time perspective context filters.
They can set a specific time period or level as the starting default for a perspective
Enables further customization of the experience to end users and simplifies the end user
interaction.
Multi-select on Dashboards Users have the ability to select  multiple nodes in levels,  dimensions or attributes Ability to roll-up the data in any  combination for ad-hoc  analysis
Perspective context bulk filter Users have he ability to  choose values across  multiple filters and then  refresh the dashboard Improved time to data.
This feature ensures a proper sync between the different Perspective Context filter menus.
Auto-save perspective context filter settings The perspective will now  remember the user’s (per user &  browser) last chosen  perspective context settings.  Helps users pick up from where  they left off in the product
Multidimensional P&L – Sheets
Drill into Workday Sources from Cube Sheets Ability to drill-through to Workday  records from a Cube Sheet cell
Ability to set each account on y-axis  to drill into different Workday reports.
Ties Actuals records directly to  Workday records
Ability to support more direct multidimensional interactions for Income  Statements
Reordering Cube-Entered Accounts Reorder cube entered GL and  custom accounts as siblings to other  cube account types in cube sheets. Support for P&L layouts
OfficeConnect-Ad Hoc Analysis Ability to Expand All, Expand to Leaf  Level
Ability to set the direction of  expansion
Faster analysis while doing ad-hoc  analysis
Keep Only / Remove Only Refine the set of data you are  analyzing quickly and easily
Ability to apply dimension and  attribute containers to the worksheet Enables expansion on dimensions  and attributes
Derived Dimension Values on modeled Sheet Rows Dimension mapping rule used to derive dimension values for modeled sheet rows can now be specified at a parent level and inherited down the level hierarchy
In addition, we also enable overriding dimension mapping rule inherited from parent level at a child level.
Facilitate the process of assignment the dimension mappings


Area: Modeling User Oriented Features

Feature Goal Value
Data Entry Override for Calculated Accounts Enable data entry for specific versions for a  GL, custom, or cube calculated account
Data entry in actuals version and  calculation in plan
Data entry for historical budget version so  data can be imported
Better performance from less data density
Avoids need for duplicate accounts for  actuals and plan
Import Cube and Modeled Accounts Bulk import new accounts for modeled or cube sheet
Bulk update of account properties (including default formulas  and setting single links)
Eliminate manual time spent adding accounts via the UI
Faster implementations
Review export file for any formula errors instead of  clicking one by one
Printable view can be used for mass updates
Modeled account printable view now includes formula column
Merged Cube Sheets New sheet type that enables model admins to merge  data presence from source cube and modeled sheets  to create cube calculations that don’t need to be  triggered from cube standard accounts Automatically create common cube dimension  combinations
No longer need to create trigger accounts
Sheet is read only so changes to source sheet  flow through to cube join
Cube Entered Accounts Enhancements Ability to set a link for cube entered GL and Custom accounts Link cubed entered account can act as data presence trigger  for cube calculated accounts
Easier to maintain dimensionality from source accounts to  General Ledger
Can set link properties from either Account Admin or the Cube  Sheet Builder
Workforce Planning Actions Plan for new openings in Workforce Planning and publish that information to be used for creating  positions in HCM Supports both Staffing models in HCM: Position Management & Job Mgmt
Options to streamline & expedite the opening of Positions/Job Reqs directly from Planning or have downstream users review the  information in HCM
Reduced maintenance & improved user experience
Added support for incremental publishes to update/maintain published plan information
Reconcile newly created positions and/or job requisitions back into the modeled sheet
Extensible framework to support future roadmap use-cases

 
Area: Administrative User Oriented Features

Feature Goal Value
Attributes in Access Rules Use attributes as a dynamic reference to the  dimensions tagged with the attribute value.
Great for changing dimensions where attributes  serve as groupings of dimension values
It makes easier to manage your access rules.
Associate Users with Level and Dimensions Create associations between users  and level and dimension values that can be  referenced in Access Rules Workday Customers can  bring in their security roles
Less Access Rules needed  with less rows so less maintenance
Proxy Users Allow proxy users to log into Planning to  test user access
Supports user sync enabling customers
Enables customers to go live with proxy  users having successfully tested user  sync and related functionality
Increased flexibility to erase data  Integrations Erase plan and actuals data with finer  granularity in the loaders Erase plan or actuals versions
Erase only specific accounts and  levels

 
BNB Team recommends
We encourage you to take advantage of this type of long-range tool in order to prevent certain problems on time, but also to be ready to make the best decisions based on KPIs (Key Performance indicators). We recommend Adaptive Planning to adapt in the best possible way to the changing environment in which we live.

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.
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