Concept: Change Benefits Web Services

Workday provides 2 web services that load mass changes for benefits elections:

Change Benefits
Bulk Import Change Benefits

The

Change Benefits

web service is the older of the 2 web services and performs bulk uploads. It enables you to initiate and complete the

Change Benefits for Life Event

business process to generate benefit transactions for employees. The web service ignores any additional steps that you’ve configured on the

Change Benefits for Life Event

business process.

This web service is for mass uploads from an external system. We don't recommend that you use this web service for incremental benefit updates from a third-party benefits administration system. The web service works by waiving all of the worker benefits elections that match a specific benefit event type. It then replaces them with the benefit elections that you specify on the web service call. The purpose of the web service is to load benefits for an initial conversion or acquisition only. It doesn’t participate in coordination of events, and if you load benefits out of order employees could have incorrect elections in Workday.

The

Bulk Import Change Benefits

web service provides the same function as

Change Benefits

. However, it’s more efficient and faster if loading very large volumes of data. The web service also provides a request ID so that you can track the request through the process monitor.

While this web service has a significant performance improvement, you can't specify processing order for multiple events for the same worker. If you need to submit multiple events for a worker in a particular order, you can either:

Submit 1 template for each event.
Use the
Change Benefits
web service.

These web services upload large numbers of benefits elections. One of the required fields in the web service is the

Benefit Event Type

. This value lets the web services know which plans it can update.

Based on the request, the web services replace benefits for the specified event type with the benefits in the web service call. Essentially, they overwrite all plans for the benefit event type with the new plans on the request.

To avoid impacting elections that aren't part of an update, Workday recommends that you use a separate benefit event type for each request. Each request should contain only the benefits that you need to update. Example: Avoid using a general benefit event type like Admin Correction. The web service removes all benefits associated with that event type, before adding the plans on the request.

You can waive a benefit election by excluding replacement elections for the benefit coverage types in the event.

The

Change Benefits

and

Bulk Import Change Benefits

web services support these benefit types:

Health Care
Heath Savings Account
Spending Account
Insurance
Retirement Savings
Additional Benefits

The web services ignore the values for the

Coverage Begin Date

and

Deduction Begin Date

fields. Workday calculates these dates based on the enrollment event rules. However, the web service requires that you populate the

Coverage Begin Date

field.

Deduction Begin Date

is optional.

You can include a value for the

Original Coverage Begin Date

and

Original Deduction Begin Date

fields if you need to capture either:

The original date the worker enrolled in the benefit plan.
The date of the worker's first deduction for the plan.

The dates loaded in these fields display in the

Coverage Begin Date

and

Deduction Begin Date

report fields in the user interface. Typically you only load these values when converting data from a legacy system to capture history. When loading a change for an existing plan, administrators typically want to capture a new coverage begin date for the change.

Before creating the request, ensure you have all the reference IDs for the benefits you want to modify. Examples:

Benefit Event Type ID
Frequency ID
Health Care Coverage Plan ID
Health Care Coverage Target ID

Example: If you extend coverage from

employee

to

employee + child

, you need to add the dependent in Workday with its dependent ID, otherwise your request fails.