Read time: 10 minutes
Hey there! We’re yet another week closer to ushering in a new era of Workday…
As the countdown to Workday’s 2025 Release 1 continues, today, we’re sharing another clarity-packed breakdown of features, rated and reviewed 💎
Welcome to Well Built’s coverage of 2025R1’s upcoming Platform and Product Extensions features.
These are the broad, cross-platform features that truly evolve the look, feel, and experience of Workday. In other words, you want these on your radar!
Here’s today’s rating scale…
😍 Game-changer
😃 Impactful
😊 Worth-a-mention
Did you miss our other 2025R1 newsletters? No sweat! You can check ‘em out here…
And with that, let’s dive right in 🌊
📧 Visiting from the link in your email? Click here to jump to impactful features.
The features, rated and reviewed…
The Platform and Product Extensions features we cover today are broad, cross-functional, and include the following sub-products…
Business Process
Data Access (Configurable) Security
Document Tools
Home Experience
Journey Paths
Media Cloud
Organizations
Search
User Experience
Workday Extend
So far, 2025R1 has 52 features within the Platform and Product Extensions category. However, many of these features overlap with specific product areas. Our list today focuses on the 26 Platform and Product Extensions features that apply across your system.
Here they are, rated (each section is in alphabetical order, by Release Item)…
Keep in mind… your organization is unique! You can use our ratings as a starting point to help determine what’s most impactful for you and your org.
The game changers…
First up, the 😍 game-changing features, reviewed in detail (listed alphabetically).
[1]
Feature: Automatic Advance of Business Processes when Integrations Fail
Product: Business Process
Setup Effort: Automatically Available
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: You can now set your business processes to automatically advance to the next step when an integration step fails. Previously, a failed integration would halt your BP, requiring manual intervention to push it forward. This feature is big for ensuring a failed integration alone doesn’t stall out a process!
Setup:
Click the related actions button on the integration step with your BP definition.
Hover over Business Process, and click Maintain Redirect.
Under the Automatic Actions section, check the Advance Automatically box.
When you check this box, Workday disables manual redirect actions, and if the integration fails, your BP is automatically advanced to the next step.
Notes:
If you utilize this feature, ensure you have a notification and/or audit in place to notify system administrators of a failed integration. While an integration failure shouldn’t always halt a process in its entirety, the failure should always be addressed.
[2]
Feature: Custom Conditions in Docs for Layouts
Product: Document Tools
Setup Effort: Automatically Available
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: Document layouts are going dynamic! 🤩 You can now create custom condition rules based on source report fields that control who can see which pieces of content on your document layout. This gives you much greater control over document layout outputs, directly within the layout.
Setup:
In edit mode, navigate to the Conditions tab on the right-side panel of your document layout.
Click the + button, and create a Custom Condition. Enter a name for the condition, select a Data Field, and select an Operator.
This Custom Condition below, for instance, ensures that the Completion Date for Learning Enrollments only displays if a Completion Date exists.
Notes:
You can now also filter your list of condition rules by type using the new filter button…
And recall that boolean (True/False) conditions based on the source report fields are already delivered and available for you to use on the Conditions tab.
[3]
Feature: Edit To Do Task
Product: Business Process
Setup Effort: Automatically Available
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: Finally, an easier way to maintain your To Do steps! 😍 You can now use the new Edit To Do task to directly edit a To Do step. Previously, you had to use the cumbersome “Maintain To Dos” task and scroll to find and edit your desired To Do—and you couldn’t sort or filter the table 😖. For orgs with a lot of To Dos (which is super common!), editing was a headache.
Setup:
Navigate to the new Edit To Do task. Select your desired To Do and press OK.
Edit your To Do as needed!
Notes:
You’ll still use the Maintain To Dos task to create new To Dos, or, create them directly from edit mode on a BP definition as you add a new To Do step.
[4]
Feature: Onboarding Experience on Workday Home
Product: Home Experience
Setup Effort: Setup Required
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: This feature accompanies the new Onboarding Experience (a major 2025R1 feature we’ll be covering soon 👀). You can now enable an “Onboarding Timeline” card on the home page that allows your onboarding populations to see exactly where they are in their onboarding process based on their assigned Onboarding Plan.
Users can click to view their Onboarding Plan content from this card…
Setup:
Configure an Onboarding Plan via the new Onboarding Experience, then within the Home Page Settings, toggle Enable Onboarding to “On”. Note that you can simply search “Home Page Settings” in the search bar and it takes you to that page within the new System Admin hub.
[5]
Feature: Routing Modifier Support on the Request Business Process
Product: Business Process
Setup Effort: Automatically Available
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: You can now comfortably use the Request Framework for workers with multiple positions 👏 Why? Well, previously, workers with multiple positions had their approval steps on the Request BP routed to both their primary position manager and their additional position manager(s). This created a clunky experience, deterring admins from using Requests with multi-position workers.
Now, Request approval steps are routed to the most relevant manager based on your configuration of the new routing modifiers for Additional Position(s) and Primary Positions!
Setup: Select a routing modifier on your approval step within your Request BP definition. You can choose to send the step to the Group related to the worker’s Additional Position(s) or Primary Position.
[6]
Feature: Saved in Global Navigation Menu
Product: User Experience
Setup Effort: Automatically Available
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: This feature packs a PUNCH 💥 2025R1 delivers a new Saved menu that aggregates all your saved content from across your Workday tenant. Previously, your favorite shortcuts, reports, drive items, learning, etc. were scattered across different saved areas. Now, Workday centralizes your frequented content in one universal location. Included items are…
Shortcuts
Favorites
Drive Favorites
Learning - Saved for later and Paths
Career Hub - Saved Plan
Setup: Access Saved from your global menu, or simply search Saved in your search bar.
Here’s what a fully populated Saved area can look like…
[7]
Feature: Security History for Users Audit Report
Product: User Experience
Setup Effort: Automatically Available
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: Workday delivers a new standard report, Security History for Users Audit Report. This report conveniently enables you to view all user-based security group assignments for selected users and/or organizations within a selected time frame. This is a major upgrade from the Security History for User report, which only gives you part of this information for one user at a time.
We love that you can use this report to pull all user-based security group assignments (and un-assignments) for your entire organization if you want to, thanks to the “Include all subordinate organizations” prompt. And, you can copy the report to customize as needed!
Don’t confuse the new report for the old Security History for User report.
You can select multiple users and/or multiple organizations.
The output is quite nice and easy to read!
Notes:
This report only includes user-based security groups for now, however, Workday plans to expand included security groups in future releases. If Workday can ultimately include all security group types in this report… now that would really make SOX audit preparation a whole lot smoother 🤩
If you need to audit role-based security, don’t forget that Workday delivered the handy Role-Based Security Audit Report with 2024R2.
[8]
Feature: Shared Navigation Items in Hubs
Product: User Experience
Setup Effort: Setup Required
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: Previously, if you added a piece of content to one Hub, you could no longer add it to a different Hub 👎 Now, you can add the same pieces of content, like reports, dashboards, and Extend apps, across multiple Hubs! This allows you much greater flexibility and customizability as you build out Hubs for your organization.
Setup: Add your custom items to your Hubs, noting you can now add the same item across multiple Hubs!
Notes: If you do add an item across multiple Hubs, when you navigate to the item directly from the search bar, Workday takes you to the item on the Hub that comes first alphabetically.
[9]
Feature: System Admin Hub
Product: User Experience
Setup Effort: Automatically Available
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: Fellow Workday admins, you’re gonna LOVE this one 🙌 With 2025R1, we get a centralized location for frequented administrative content called the System Admin Hub. Just look at this gorgeous hub…
Admin convenience, supercharged 🚀 You can maintain hubs, feature opt-ins, global setup, and so much more all from one, convenient location.
We recommend exploring this Hub quite a bit, and don’t forget—you can customize this new Hub to make it your own!
Setup: Any user with access to at least one item on the System Admin Hub can find it with the search bar—just search “System Admin”.
Notes: The System Admin Hub is available automatically, but you can opt out until 2025R2 via the Maintain Feature Opt-Ins task.
[10]
Feature: View Additional Organizations on Org Chart Side Panel
Product: Organizations
Setup Effort: Setup Required
Targeted Production Date: March 15, 2025
Summary: Workday adds a new side panel within the org chart view and people view on which you can view both a worker’s supervisory and matrix organizations. This new view offers a broader and more easily understandable view of the organizations that a worker manages or is a member of.
You’ll see the side panel icon if the worker falls into at least one of the following populations…
Manages or is a member of an active matrix org
Managers more than 1 active supervisory org
Has multiple positions
And don’t forget… 2025R1 also delivers the ability to remove workers from matrix orgs en masse, and 2025R2 delivered the ability to add. With those updates and the visibility that this new feature offers, matrix orgs are looking a lot more usable these days 😏
Setup:
Run the Edit Tenant Setup - HCM task. Scroll down to the Org Chart section, and in the Always Hide input, remove “Additional Organization View”. Press OK to save.
Remove this input to opt in to this feature.
You can give workers access to click the name of an org to view more details about it, and to see the organization icon, by adding them to these domains:
Manage: Supervisory Organization for supervisory organizations
Reports: Organizations for matrix organizations
Notes: This feature isn’t available on mobile, and you can only view the side panel data as of the current date—not past or future dates.
Next up, impactful features…
Here’s a sentence or two on each Platform and Product Extensions feature we rated 😃 Impactful (listed in alphabetical order) to help you determine what you’d like to look into further.
Note that all of these features are automatically available…
AWS GovCloud Support for Integration Files (Platform and Product Extensions)
You can now retrieve and deliver integration data files to S3 buckets in an AWS GovCloud region without needing to transfer those files to intermediary servers first.
Enhanced Rich Text Editor (Platform and Product Extensions)
Workday delivers user interface improvements to the Rich Text Editor throughout your tenant. You can expect a modernized feel, separate hyperlink and mail-to-link buttons, and more. The new editor automatically applies throughout your tenant with the exception of job descriptions, AI-generated content, and templated text. And, opt out is available!
Home Workspace in the System Admin Hub (Home Experience, User Experience)
Home Page Settings and the Home Cards Workspace are relocated to 2025R1’s new System Admin Hub on desktop. These Home configuration pages used to live in the People Experience Workspace, and will no longer be found there.
Latest Event Record Moment for Reassigned Business Process Tasks (Business Process)
When you reassign a business process step, Workday now displays the latest date and time at which that reassignment was completed on the Event Record. This gives you more accurate event data. Previously, reassignments were inaccurately stamped with the date and time of the previous update to the event.
Printable Attachments for Docs for Layouts (Platform and Product Extensions)
You can now add image and PDF attachments to printed documents that use Docs for Layouts.
Real-Time User Preference Updates (User Experience)
This one’s exciting! Tasks like “Change Preferences” are now updated in real-time—i.e., you don’t have to sign out and log back in to see your updated settings applied, such as language, currency, etc.
Set Table Row Height in Docs for Layouts (Document Tools)
You’re now able to set a fixed height for table rows in document layouts. This gives you more control and customizability when choosing how to display content in your document layout tables. Find the new Auto and Fixed height options on the Format tab on the right panel of your document layout.
What's New in Workday Publication Synchronization (Platform and Product Extensions)
Workday fixes the 1-week update lag between the Release Center’s Release Notes and the What’s New in Workday report in your tenant. The Friday updates to feature release notes on your What’s New in Workday report will now align with each Friday’s Release Center Release Notes. The updates are synced for features only, and the sync is only for a limited time (our guess is for the duration of the preview testing window).
Honorable Mentions 🏅
Lastly, a list of our 😊 Worth-a-mention Platform and Production Extensions features…
Global Navigation Menu Categories Opt-out and Configuration (User Experience)
Graph API Support for Business Process Delegation (Workday Extend)
Graph API Validate-Only Header (Workday Extend)
Guidance Workspace (User Experience)
Illustration Replacements in Workday Journeys (Journey Paths)
Media Security (Media Cloud)
QuickTip Sample Library Suggested Links (User Experience)
Tasks and Reports in Search (Search)
As always, thank you for being a reader!
We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳
Until next time!
Mia & Ceci
Co-Founders of Well Built Solutions
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Say hi 👋 on LinkedIn — @ceciblomberg, @miaeisenhandler
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