Read time: 9 Minutes

Release season starts with the same feeling every time: hundreds of items in the Release Center and uncertainty about how many are actually relevant to you 🥲

In this issue, we break 2026R2 apart by note type, product area, and setup effort, so you walk into your next planning meeting way clearer about what's headed your way.

And this time, we're adding something new.

We've run this same analysis for four releases now, so you're also getting a look at what's changed.

Let’s get to demystifying it 😎

If you pull the raw 2026R2 Release Notes from Community, you'll find 424 items consisting of Features, Fixes, Retirements, and Coming Soon notes.

Workday buckets each Release Note into 1 of the 4 following "Release Note Types"…

Here are 2026R2's 424 Release Notes broken out by type…

The majority of your release testing focuses on new Features.

Today, Features make up 70% of all 2026R2 Release Notes — though that share will shrink as Workday adds Release Notes every Wednesday and Friday leading up to the release delivery date.

Typically, the majority of Features are added the day official documentation becomes available on Community (last Wednesday, August 5th), so your Feature count is already close to final. Fixes are the ones that keep piling up.

Now, here's what the past 3 releases side-by-side can tell you 👇

Overall, Features are shrinking. 368 to 323 to 296, about 8% fewer each release, three releases in a row.

But Retirements aren't! They jumped to 75 last release and landed on exactly 75 again this release.

So Workday's shipping less new functionality each cycle while removing just as much as last time.

What’ll be most interesting is the content in these notes — they’re definitely not all created equal. Some include one measly update that makes you shrug, others unveil an absolute game-changer that impacts your org tremendously. If you want that kind of deep dive, those release ratings & reviews are on deck and will live on Premium 🦄

Now, let’s keep going with the birds-eye view 🦅

Workday’s Release Notes don’t categorize items by the broad product areas that most of us are familiar with…

Instead, Workday lists one or more sub-categories under a “Products” heading on each Release Note. Workday has used over 100 sub-categories in its 2026R2 categorization effort so far. Frankly, this level of specificity can make it difficult to understand which product area a Release Note actually impacts.

In case you were curious 😜 Here’s how Workday categorizes Release Notes using its product and sub-category groupings…

We don’t know about you, but this list makes us dizzy 😵‍💫

So, to help clarify and contextualize what’s included in 2026R2, we bucketed all 424 items into 19 broad, recognizable product areas…

A bit more digestible, right? It certainly helps us wrap our heads around the release more easily!

Using Well Built’s product categorization to more easily capture the essence of 2026R2 at a glance, here are the 2026R2 Features broken out by product area…

This view alone provides a great deal of demystification! 🌤️

Immediately, you can see Workday focused most of its product development on Financials, Payroll, and Core HCM. Together, these items make up 55% of all 2026R2 Features revealed thus far.

In absolute terms, the number of Features that make up the top three over the past 3 releases has barely moved: 175, then 165, now 164 Features. But its share is climbing (it was 48% two releases ago) because the other Product Areas all together are thinning out from 193 Features down to 132.

The other piece that changed is who's in it. Student held third for two cycles at 40 and 31. This release, Core HCM takes the spot — not because of its own growth, but because Student dropped to 21.

Analytics and Reporting shows the shrinking most clearly: it went from 25 to 14 to 5 Features over three releases. If you're a report writer, this is a lighter release for you.

Most importantly, with this view, you can also gauge what percentage of the Features are relevant to your organization.

For instance, if you don’t use Financials or Payroll, you can remove 132 Features (45% of all Features so far!) from your test list.

Seeing Features by Product Area also helps you gauge the workload your product area owners will bear. This release, your Financials, Payroll, and Core HCM leads have more to work through. Meanwhile, your Scheduling lead has 3 Features to their name, and Peakon didn’t get a single one.

Zooming out a bit, we also take a look at the breakdown of Release Note types within each product area…

Here's what caught our eye: look at Core HCM. It has 32 Features and 22 Retirements. Compared to previous releases, its Feature count remains flat, while Retirements climb from 2 to 8 to 22.

So your Core HCM lead doesn’t have the luxury of a standard release. They’re actually having a completely different one, where 22 Retirements means taking inventory of what could possibly break when functionality goes away on Workday’s timeline.

The mandatory enhanced Change Job Templates conversion is the perfect illustration of this. So far, 5 Features, 1 Retirement, and 1 Fix are dedicated to this one transition; it’s a big project with a ticking clock, touching your UI, templates, and security on September 19th.

We're walking through the whole thing on Premium 🦄, step by step, so that you're crystal clear on your settings, your options, what to test, and how to end up with something well built before the deadline.

One more thing this view surfaces: Financial Management carries 117 total Release Notes. That's 28% of the whole release, nearly double Payroll's 64, and it includes 25 of the release's 45 Fixes so far (more than half). Y’all Financials folks have a big job ahead of you once again.

Expect this view in particular to change over the next several weeks as Workday publishes more Release Notes, the majority of which will be Fixes.

This may be the most important release Feature variable to assess: setup effort!

Does the Feature require setup or opt-in, or is it automatically available? Here’s the breakdown so far for 2026R2 👇

While this has been the most even split we’ve ever recorded, don’t read too much into it — this number stays within reasonable bounds. Automatically Available has been 52%, then 55%, now 51% across the last three releases. There's no serious trend hiding in there.

Why does assessing the setup effort matter so much?

Think of the Automatically Available Features as your testing list. Every single one lands in your tenant whether you evaluated it or not, so testing is a higher priority — you don't control the timing.

Setup Required Features are your evaluation list. By and large, nothing happens until you make it happen! Your job there isn't to necessarily test all of them, it's to read through and decide which ones are worth your org's time and get it on your roadmap if they’re material to you.

And here’s how that breaks out within each product area…

There are two ways to read this chart, which point at different people.

Absolute burden. Financials (34) and Payroll (24) carry the most Setup Required Features by a wide margin. Those leads have serious configuration work ahead of them for the Features that make a difference to their org.

Proportional burden. Benefits has just 8 Features, but 7 of them require setup. Core HCM leans that way too — 19 of its 32 Features need setup, one of the few Product Areas where Setup Required comes out ahead.

In addition to testing effort, this view helps you assess testing timeline. Based on the number of Features that are automatically available versus require additional setup, how much time should product area owners budget for testing?

📊 📊 📊

Seeing the release summarized and broken down from these different angles helps us wrap our heads around where Workday is taking its products — and consequently, where Workday is taking all of us.

A few weeks ago, we shared everything you need to know to prep your Workday tenants for the release. There’s still time to complete your round 1 checklist in PROD if you haven’t already — you’ve got until this Friday, August 14th!

If you're eager to get started… send us an email at [email protected] with the subject 2026R2, and we’ll send you Well Built’s (new and improved!) downloadable 2026R2 Feature Release Checklist Excel doc to help you check these checklists off your to-do list asap 🤗

Or, you can also find Workday’s version of the checklist buried at the bottom of this Community page.

Wishing you a smooth and successful 2026R2!!! 👊

Did this issue help you out? Make you laugh? Did we miss any mission critical or helpful details?

Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to know your thoughts 😊