Read time: 5 minutes

Hey there! Ceci here.

Release season hits the same way every six month.

You're digging through what's new, what's retiring, and what actually matters for your org—on top of everything else on your plate.

So in today’s issue, we're giving you a breather from all that.

No deep dives, no release ratings. Just a quick, satisfying tip for something every HRIS team has experienced at least once: accidentally working in the wrong tenant 😳

Let's get into it.

You’re deep in your Workday config when you get a ping 🔔

“Can you hop into PROD and check something real quick?”

Most definitely! You love to be helpful.

So, you jump tenants, fix the issue, tab back, and start clicking again…

Then think, “wait a second, that’s not where I left my calc field…”

You freeze.

You scan the top of your screen in hopes of seeing that orange or green bar—safe and sound in a testing tenant—before you go any further…

…But you’re still in PROD 😭

This is a rite of passage mistake for every Workday configurator—but not one you need to keep repeating.

All it takes is one rushed click in the wrong tenant for your afternoon to explode 😵‍💫 (like that time you nearly “tested” that mass Termination EIB in Production instead of Sandbox).

Good news: there’s a quick, low‑effort way to make it almost impossible to forget which tenant you’re in—and have a little fun along the way 😏

Use Branding Rules to make Sandbox look so different from Production that you can’t miss it.

Setup takes about 10 minutes. All you need is a handful of boolean condition rules, access to Tenant Branding in the System Admin Hub, and a tiny bit of creativity…

A sneak peek at where we’re going in this quick lil’ guide 🤭

We covered the big picture of tenant branding and dynamic use cases a while back in our Well Built guide, Boost user adoption with dynamic, custom branding.

Think of this article as the mini sequel. We’ve taken that foundation and pointed it straight at a very real problem for HRIS teams: making sure nobody forgets which tenant they’re working in.

Step 1! Access your tenant’s branding setup page, by navigating to the System Admin Hub—your home base for system admin work. Click the Branding tab and expand the section Desktop and Mobile Web to open your tenant branding settings.

(Alternatively, you can run the task Configure Tenant Branding to navigate straight to this page.)

Before we jump into creating the branding rule, here’s what the finished setup will look like…

What this setup produces: When an HR Admin logs into the Sandbox tenant, the tenant color is orange, immediately reassuring you of your location.

The new color appears throughout your Sandbox tenant’s navigation, icons, task page, headers, apps, etc. You can set up similar logic for your implementation tenants, using a green color instead.

Recall that a Branding Rule is a boolean condition rule you can use to apply different logos, banners, and/or colors to a user’s Workday experience based on certain worker or global criteria.

The only way to create a Branding Rule is with the task Create Branding Rule. For this setup, you want your special branding to show only when:

✅ You’re in your SANDBOX tenant, and…

✅ The current user is a member of the HR Administrator security group.

Here’s your branding rule to achieve that!

The first line of logic is built with all Workday-delivered fields. For the source field, select Current OMS Environment and for the comparison value, select SANDBOX.

The second line of logic is powered by a Lookup Related Value calculated field. For source field, select CF LRV Current Worker User-Based Security Groups, and for the comparison value, select HR Administrator.

Here’s what that calculated fields looks like…

Even if you’re a one‑warrior show, it’s worth setting up the condition rule so that your special branding doesn’t show up when you proxy for testing or you grab screenshots for documentation 📃

The goal is: your team sees the fun, helpful branding, while your test users and screenshots stay clean. It draws a clear line between ‘my testing world’ and ‘my workforce’s real experience.’

Now with your freshly created branding rule in hand, let’s wrap this up 🎁

Back within the task Configure Tenant Branding, route to the grid labeled General Branding Color:

For your color, pick anything that is not close to your real brand color. We went with orange because it matches the sandbox bar color, and it’s a stark contrast to our custom purple-blue hue (what we call our Primary Purple 💁🏻‍♀️).

It’s important to list the new branding rule first, because—like many other grids in Workday with condition rules—it evaluates logic from top to bottom and stops at the first true condition.

If you’re really type A, you can use a color picker to grab the exact HEX code for Sandbox orange. No judgement—promise 😉

You already went through all the trouble of creating this condition rule to change the tenant’s color—why not add a fun banner for even greater differentiation?

Simply repeat the steps above in the grid labeled Branding Banner.

Save it, and… voila! ✨

We’re partial to a desert theme banner for Sandbox 🐫

Another could-be disaster avoided, all thanks to your heroically proactive efforts 💪

With branding rules in place, you can sit back and enjoy the new scenery—or keep exploring ways to make your team's Workday experience feel a little more like yours.

Happy (safe) configuring!

As always, thank you for being a reader!

We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳

Until next time!

the Well Built Team 🌞🏗️