One of the perks of being on a cloud-based system like Workday is the frequent updates and enhancements. Workday releases two updates per year in March (R1) and September (R2). These releases are an opportunity for Workday to regularly improve functionality based on input from their customers. The R2 2020 release went into production on September 12th and is available to campus on Monday, September 14th. 

How does Workday choose what to include in a release? 

Workday sources input from their customer base for upcoming releases via the online Workday Community. Every Workday customer, including Georgia Tech, is a part of the Community and has the ability to raise and vote on enhancement requests.  

Each release varies. One release may contain many enhancements that impact the user experience while the next may be more focused on backend updates that helps the Institute to better configure processes. 

How does Georgia Tech choose what to implement? 

There are many factors to consider when the Georgia Tech Workday team evaluates the release items to choose what will be implemented. For example, some release items are only applicable if also using other Workday products such as Workday HCM or Workday Inventory, would not fit the way security is configured at Georgia Tech, or are related to financial concepts not applicable to higher-ed such as corporate credit cards. 

There are two types of release items: 

• Automatically Available – Cannot opt out and may still require some configuration  

• Setup Required – Optional functionality, requires additional configuration 

The Workday team works together with the Central Offices to identify which of these items to uptake. Some will go live on the day of the release while others may be postponed in the event additional configuration or changes are needed. 

What is included in the 2020R2 release? 

The 2020R2 release includes a mix of user interface updates as well as some backend enhancements. Key campus impacts include a new My Shortcuts feature to improve navigation, some UI changes to expense reports, and a new line memo feature for accounting adjustments. 2020R2 consists of many optional and behind-the-scene features scheduled for future implementation. 

The Workday team hosted a 2020R2 release webinar prior to the release. During this webinar you can learn more about the applicable changes coming to campus along with demos of the key campus-facing updates. Download the slides to see an appendix of all the available release items for the Institute and access the webinar recording.