Read time: 5 minutes

Hey there! If you feel overwhelmed, lost, or unsure when it comes to business process notifications in Workday…

You’re not alone!

There’s a lot to consider when setting up business process (BP) notifications 😵‍💫

This week and next, we’re sharing a two-part series to take you from confusion to clarity. After this series, you’ll design and deploy your BP notifications with confidence 💪

Whether you’re new to BP notifications, or you’re a seasoned pro, we hope you learn something new in today’s newsletter 😎

Here’s the agenda for our two-part series…

And with that, let’s dive in! 🌊

There are two types of BP notifications: System Notifications and Custom Notifications…

System Notifications are bare-bones, email-only notifications sent to the owner(s) of inbox tasks—think, those familiar “A Task Awaits You” emails.

Workday automatically enables System Notifications based on the steps configured within your business process. If you add or remove steps to/from your BP definition, Workday updates your BP’s System Notifications accordingly.

Custom Notifications, on the other hand, are created and built from scratch. They offer a wide range of customizability, from condition rules and triggers to delays and recipients. By default, business process definitions don’t come with any custom notifications.

In today’s newsletter, we’re focused on System Notifications. For a truly #wellbuiltworkday, maximize your use of System Notifications before opting for Custom Notifications. Today’s guide will prepare you for our Custom Notification deep-dive next week 🤿

In the image below, you can see there are 3 steps within our Preferred Name Change BP definition—(a) initiation, (b) a review action step sent to HR Admin, and (c) an approval step sent to the Manager.

You can see that Workday automatically sets up 3 System Notifications that correspond to steps a, b, and c…

Workday only sends a System Notification when an inbox task is sent to a specific Group. So—while you’ll see a System Notification listed for step a, initiation, no notification will be sent.

Here are what the default System Notifications look like for steps b and c, respectively…

Pretty lackluster, right? Well, there actually are a couple ways to spice up your System Notifications that you should know…

There are 2 ways to give your System Notifications a bit more “oomph” 💥

Your first customization strategy is an Email Template.

In recent editions of the Well Built newsletter, we covered both Email Templates for Alerts, and Notification Designer (linked so you can check em’ out if you missed them).

If you read those guides, you may recall that Notification Designer is available for Custom BP Notifications, but not System Notifications. Legacy Email Templates, however, are available for both Custom and System BP Notifications.

To spice up your System Notifications with images, logos, hyperlinked text, etc., you can create an Email Template…

Once your template is ready, use the task “Maintain Email Template” to set it as the default for the Business Process Email category. This will automatically apply the template to all System BP Notifications…

Here’s an example of an Email Template applied to a System Notification…

While Email Templates don’t pack as big a design punch as Notification Designer, this System Notification has some life now thanks to our template! Better than before, right!?

The second way to customize your System Notifications is with a lesser-known Workday delivered task—Configure Content of Business Process System Notifications.

With this task, you can…

This task is powerful because it allows you to add dynamic fields to the subject and body of your System Notifications—something Email Templates can’t do.

⭐️ BONUS: If you want to create calculated fields to use as dynamic fields here, build them on the Event Record Business Object.

Check out this configuration example within the task 👇

This configuration yields the System Notification below👇

Now, combine these two customization strategies (an Email Template and subject/body customization) and…

…you’ve got a pretty great System Notification—without going anywhere near Custom Notifications!

Now that you’re sold on utilizing System Notifications 😉 Here’s how to make sure they get sent out!

Run the task Edit Tenant Setup - Notifications. Scroll down to “Notification Delivery Settings”, and click on the “Business Processes” category. Here, you can review the Notification Routing Rules for different types of BP notifications…

ℹ️ For more on Notification Routing Rules, check out the end of this post.

If you want to shut off your Workday-delivered System Notifications altogether, even after customization…

Use the “Maintain System Notifications” button on the Notification tab of your BP definition to disable all or some of your BP’s System Notifications.

Alright! At this point, you should have a solid understanding of what you can and can’t achieve with System BP Notifications…

Which types of BP notifications are set up in your tenant? Are you utilizing System Notifications as well as you can?

If you’re ready for more…

Check out part 2 here!

As always, thank you for being a reader!

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

Until next time!

Ceci & Mia

Co-Founders of Well Built Solutions