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Adaptive Planning
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Setup Considerations: Alternate Calendars

Setup Considerations: Alternate Calendars

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of alternate calendars. It explains:
  • Why to set them up.
  • How they fit into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What They Are

Alternate calendars enable you to display data at time rollups that differ from the default calendar.

Business Benefits

You can use alternate calendars to remove or reduce the need for these and other time-consuming workarounds:
  • Complex integration loaders.
  • Complicated report elements.
  • Multiple instances in some cases.

Use Cases

  • You enter data according to the calendar year. Your first quarter spans January to March, and so on. You report on your fiscal calendar. The first fiscal quarter spans February to April, and so on.
  • Your financial data uses a Month > Quarter > Year calendar structure. Your labor pay periods are biweekly and rollup to a payroll year: Week > Pay Period > Pay Year.

Questions to Consider

Question
Answer
Why do you need different calendar structures?
For viewing the data differently, use alternate calendars. You can:
  • Preserve the structure of your existing calendar.
  • Preserve existing data and the way that your team enters data.
  • View different rollups.
For entering data differently, use multi-instance. You can:
  • Have completely different calendar structures in each instance for the same data.
  • Import and enter data differently into each instance.
  • View different rollups.
  • Manage 2 data sets.
How different are the alternate rollups from your default calendar rollups?
For rollups that don't fit into the default structure, use alternate calendars. Example: Your fiscal year doesn’t start in January.
For time rollups that can fit into the existing structure, customize your existing calendar. Example: Add a halfyear rollup to a Month > Quarter > Year structure.
You might have to customize the structure of your default calendar and add alternate calendars. Example: Your default calendar is Month > Quarter > Year, and your alternate calendar is Week > Pay Period > Pay Year. To aggregate at Pay Period, you need to enter data at a strata at or smaller than Week. So, add Week to your default calendar.
How does your data fit in the calendar structure?
To enter data at time strata that already exists in your calendar structure, use different defaults per sheet. This option preserves the calendar structure, prevents the loss of data, and preserves your general ledger account data.
To enter data at time strata that doesn't exist in your calendar structure, but fits in the structure, customize the calendar and add time strata. If you add a new leaf strata, you have to reload all data.
To enter data at a time strata that doesn't exist and doesn't fit into the structure, use multi-instances. This option enables you to enter data into entirely different time structures.
To only view data at different rollups that don't exist in your default, use alternate calendars. This option preserves data and simplifies data entry while viewing different rollups.

Recommendations

For the TimeStructure spreadsheet, use the export to avoid copying all existing calendars into the spreadsheet.
To test that the alternate calendars roll up the data the way that you expect, try alternate calendars in your sandbox instance.
To ensure accuracy, check the rollup data in reports or sheets after importing alternate calendars. If you’re using multi-instances or external sources, you can compare the data with your multi-instance to see if it rolls up as expected.
A fork is the last common time unit between an alternate and default calendar. For selecting the fork strata:
  • Make the fork the same as or larger than the strata where you enter data. Example: You enter data at the Month for a calendar of Week > Month > Quarter > Year. Fork at Month or Quarter.
  • To view the alternate rollup data in standard sheets, make the fork strata the same as, or larger than, the default time strata. Example: The default time strata is Month. Fork at Month or larger.
  • To view alternate rollup data for cube or modeled accounts, make the fork strata the same as the time strata of the sheet or larger.
  • If you plan with different leaf strata on standard versus cube and modeled sheets, use a fork that can accommodate all. Or create separate alternate calendars for each. Example: Some sheets have Week as the default. Others have Month. The fork should be Month to include both.
To avoid displaying blank rollups, coordinate the version range with the alternate calendar range. Example: The first month of the alternate calendar is December 2016. The first month of the default calendar is January 2017. Start the range of the version at or before December 2016. If you start it after, the alternate calendar first month displays blanks. Also, align the end of version with the end of the alternate calendars.

Requirements

An alternate and default calendar must share at least the leaf strata and all strata up to the fork.
Example: Your default calendar is Day > Week > Month > Quarter > Year. Your fork is Month. Your alternate calendar must include Day, Week, and Month before the alternate rollups begin.

Limitations

  • You can use a maximum of:
    • 1 default calendar for data entry and 3 alternate calendars.
    • 8 time strata in each calendar structure, including shared periods below the fork strata. Example: Months > Quarter > Year has 3 time strata.
    • 8,000 leaf time periods. Example: When Days are your leaf time strata, or the smallest time strata in your structure, your calendar must not exceed 8,000 days. To increase the maximum, contact your Named Support Contact.
  • You can’t launch
    Explore Cell
     from data displaying alternate calendar rollups in dashboards, reports, or sheets.
  • In OfficeConnect, the
    Components
     and
    Contexts
     elements always reference data from the default calendar, not the alternate calendars.
  • Only default calendars have a default time strata where you can enter data.
  • Alternate calendars are automatically available in the display options of sheets, but you must add them to individual reports and charts.

Security

To make changes to the calendar, you need:
  • Model Management Access
     permission.
  • Time
     permission.
  • Configure Calendar
     permission.

Integrations

For planning data sources, you can use any of your calendars as the aggregation calendar for cube sheet and custom sources.

Connections and Touchpoints

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.