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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-04-17
Steps: Set Up Org Design and Scenario Modeling

Steps: Set Up Org Design and Scenario Modeling

  • Enable and set up Human Capital Management (HCM).
  • Enable and set up Workday Workforce Planning. Workday Workforce Planning is a separate product (SKU) that requires a separate license.
You can use org design and scenario modeling to model organizational changes in a secure, sandbox environment. You can create multiple "what-if" scenarios to restructure hierarchies, move positions, and modify attributes without affecting your live HCM data.
You can visualize your current organization, drag and drop organizations and positions to model changes, and instantly see the impact on key metrics such as headcount, FTE, and workforce costs. Once you finalize a scenario, you can route it for approval using the
Design Org Models
 business process.
As a security administrator, you can set up who has access to:
  • Create org models and initiate the collaboration process.
  • Use the configuration tasks and edit the guidelines.
  • View and edit org models that they’re invited to.
  • Approve, cancel, or deny the org model after everyone finishes collaborating.
  • View org models that they don’t own.
This functionality doesn’t connect with:
  • Adaptive Planning instances.
  • Org Studio.
We don't support overlapping positions.
  1. If roles with these functions don’t already exist, we recommend that you create roles for:
    • Org Model Owner.
    • Workforce Planner.
    Ensure that the role that creates org models has row-level security access to the position data. Otherwise, we don’t display positions or headcount numbers on the org model.
  2. Assign someone to every role involved in the org modeling collaboration process.
  3. Create or change existing security groups for your:
    • Users who can create org models and initiate the collaboration process.
    • Users who can view and edit org models that they’re invited to. You must use a role-based security group for these participants.
    • Users who can use the configuration tasks and edit the guidelines.
  4. Configure the domain security policies of these domains:
    Option Description
    Manage: Org Models
     domain in the Adaptive Planning for the Workforce functional area
    Give view and modify access to the security groups who can create org models and initiate the collaboration process.
    Participate: Org Models
     domain in the Adaptive Planning for the Workforce functional area
    Give view and modify access to the role-based security groups who can view and edit org models that they’re invited to.
    If you don’t add the security groups to this domain, we restrict you from adding the groups to the Shared Participation step on the business process and you can’t invite these users to org models.
    Set Up: Org Model
     domain in the Adaptive Planning for the Workforce functional area
    Give view and modify access to the security groups who can use the org model configuration tasks and edit the org model guidelines.
    Worker Data: All Positions
     in the Staffing functional area
    Give view and modify access to the security groups who can create org models and initiate the collaboration process.
    These security groups need access to this domain so they can access the All Positions data source, which we use to create org models.
  5. For the
    Design Org Models
     business process, add security groups who can perform these actions:
    Option Description
    Who Can Start the Business Process
    Add the security groups who can create org models.
    Who Can Do Action Steps in the Business Process
    Add the security groups who can view and edit org models that they’re invited to.
    Who Can Do Actions on Entire Business Process
    (Optional) Add security groups to these actions:
    • View All
      . These security groups can view all org models even if they don’t own them.
    • Approve
      . These security groups can approve org models after everyone finishes collaborating.
    • Cancel
      . These security groups can cancel the collaboration process and remove all
      My Tasks
       items.
    • Deny
      . These security groups can deny finished org models and send them back.
  7. For the
    Design Org Models
     business process, add the shared participation step. This step enables you to invite people to collaborate on your org model using
    My Tasks
     items. You can add other steps.
  8. Add the shared participation step:
    Option Description
    Type
    Select
    Shared Participation
    .
    Specify
    Select
    Design Org Models Shared Participation
    .
    Group
    Select the security groups you want to create org models. These users act as model owners.
    We automatically add users in these security groups to the Workday-delivered Org Model Owner security group.
  9. After you add the shared participation step, select
    Configure Shared Participation Step
    . Configure the shared participation step:
    Option Description
    Organization Type to Use
    Select the org types you want to model.
    Group
    Select the security groups you want to invite to collaborate on your org model. These security groups must be role-based security groups that you added to the
    Participate: Org Models
     domain in the Adaptive Planning for the Workforce functional area.
  10. To use custom calculations for workforce costs, ensure you configured the necessary calculated fields on the Headcount Plan Line Details business object. You can select these fields when you create org models using the
    Org Models and Scenarios
     dashboard.
You can now create org models.