Term Definition Audience
Application A compact report displayed as an icon on your Home page, providing easy access to tasks and information you
use on a regular basis.
Example: Applications include Pay, Personal Information, Benefits, and Expenses.
Employee
Approve An action in a business process that designated participants select to progress the event to the next step. Manager
Business Object Objects used to store data in Workday (such as organizations or workers). A business object has fields and
instances, which are analogous to rows and columns in a spreadsheet. Workday links related business objects:
a worker is associated with a position, the position to a job profile, and so on.
Example: Purchase order lines are linked to a purchase order header; the purchase order header is linked to a
supplier; the supplier is linked to a company, and so on.
Manager
Business Process Definition The set of tasks that need to be completed for an event to occur, the order in which they must be done, and who
must do them. Workday includes a number of predefined business processes for different purposes. You can
edit the default definitions for your organization. You can also create different versions of the same business
process for different organizations.
Manager
Business Process Instance A business process that the initiator has started.
Example: The Hire Employee for Organization X business process definition becomes an instance when the
initiator uses it to hire a particular prehire.
Manager
Cancel (business process) An action you can take on a business process. Canceling a business process stops the workflow in progress
and reverses changes made to data. You cannot cancel a completed business process; you must rescind it. A
securable action in a business process security policy.
Manager
Contextual Custom Report A custom report created from the Related Actions menu of a Workday object by selecting Reporting > Create
Custom Report. Simplifies data choices and fields to those related to the context of the object.
Manager
Correct (business process) An action you can take on a business process. Correcting a business process changes a specification or data in
the workflow while in progress. It is also a securable action in a business process security policy.
Manager
Dashboard A specialized landing page containing a set of preconfigured worklets for a functional area that you can copy or
modify. You can add additional custom worklets to dashboards using the Report Writer.
Manager
Data Source A data source defines a set of business object instances for reporting purposes. Allows reporting access to all
business objects related to those in the data source.
Manager
Delegation (business
process)
An action you can take in a business process if you have been assigned a task. You can request the task be
delegated. Requesting a delegation change is a business process that may require approvals. Delegation
functionality may or may not be included in your organization's configuration.
Employee
Deny (business process) An action you can take on a step within a business process. When you deny a business process, the business
process is terminated and all Workday data is restored to its state before the business process started. To
restart the business process, you need to submit the process again, and redo all previously completed steps.
Manager
Drilldown A feature to view more data in a matrix report. When you click on a drillable element (such as a drillable field in
the table view or a column, line, or pie segment in the chart view), a context menu appears that enables you to
select a new View By field. If the Enable Drilldown to Detail Data checkbox is selected on the Advanced tab of
the report definition, you can also select details associated with the selected report element.
Manager
Event A business process transaction that occurs within your organization, such as hiring or terminating an employee. Manager
Field (reporting) Contains data related to a particular primary or related business object within Report Writer. Manager
Filter A clickable icon used to narrow down data. Clicking this icon will create a row on your report where you filter
data to display from one or more columns.
Manager
Cross Apps
Functional Area A collection of domain or business process security policies that are related to the same set of product features,
for example, Benefits or Compensation.
Example: Workday HCM includes functional areas such as Benefits, Talent & Performance, Absence, and
Manager or Employee self-service. Each of the Workday solutions (like Workday HCM and Workday Financial
Management) is grouped into distinct functional areas.
Manager
Home Your default page containing applications, search, notifications, Inbox, and your Profile Menu. Employee
Initiation Step The first step of a business process. Manager
Initiator The user that initiates the business process instance. Employee
Instance One unique occurrence of a business object.
Example: Your executive management organization, or the worker John Doe.
Manager
Matrix Report A custom report forming the foundation for custom analytics. It summarizes data by 1 or 2 fields that contain
repeating values. The resulting matrix is displayed as either a table or chart that users can drill through to see
the associated details. You control the specific detail data users should see when they drill down by selecting the
desired fields when defining the report. Matrix reports also provide features such as filtering, run time prompts,
worklets, and report sharing.
Manager
Modify (permission) The permission to view and gain direct access to securable items through the Workday user interface. It
includes view permission.
Manager
Reassign Task (business
process)
An action you can take on a business process where you request for a task to be reassigned. This may require
further approvals.
Employee
Related Business Object When defining a report, fields that return objects related to the primary business object are said to contain
related business objects. These related objects may have their own set of fields that can be included in the
report.
Example: You create a report using employee as your business object. To find the total default annual
compensation defined for an employee's position, you need to access a related business object off of employee,
which would be position.
Manager
Rescind (business process) An action you can take on a business process to completely reverse all changes made to Workday data in a
completed business process. A task must be successfully completed to perform this action.
Administrator
Roles A group of people with specific responsibilities and permissions. When a business process runs, the role for
each step includes all of the workers in that role in the business process target organization.
Manager
Security Group A collection of users, or a collection of objects that are related to users. Allowing a security group access to a
securable item in a security policy grants access to the users associated with the security group.
Manager
Target The object that a business process operates on.
Example: For business processes that deal with an employee record, the target is the employee. Because the
target determines the organization, it controls which business process custom definition Workday uses.
Manager
Task A step, either standalone or in business process, that you must complete.
Example: Business process steps trigger notifications or Inbox alerts.
Employee
To Dos Reminders to do something outside of Workday. They can be part of business processes, and have to be
marked complete before the workflow will go to the next step.
Employee
View (business process) A securable item used to allow members to view status of a business process and report on it. A securable item
in a business process security policy.
Manager
Worktag A named attribute that you can assign to events and objects to indicate their business purpose. For example,
you can create a Customer worktag, whose values are the names of your customers. You can use the worktag
to assign a customer to an expense in an expense report or a product sales event.
Employee
