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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-05-01
Concept: Custom Notifications

Concept: Custom Notifications

You can create custom notifications that trigger on any business process step, or on the status of the business process as a whole. You can also delay when a custom notification is sent by configuring a notification delay on the business process and not just for recruiting business processes.
Workday doesn’t respect routing modifiers in custom notifications when line-level routing is configured on a business process.
You can also configure a business process to send custom notifications through the Workday Messaging delivery channel as an SMS message.
You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.
To configure SMS messages, you must:
  1. Enable the Workday Messaging SKU.
  2. Configure the SMS settings on the
    Edit Tenant Setup – Notifications
     task in your tenant.

From Email Address in Notifications

On any business process definition, you can create custom business process notifications to use a different sent From email address in the notification. Example: You want to send customer invoices from a different email address for each subsidiary company within your parent organization.
On the workflow notification task, you can select a Customer SMTP configuration option in the
Email Configuration
 prompt.
Based on your custom business process notification setup, Workday processes the configuration and displays the respective email addresses in the notification to the recipient. On the workflow notification task, when you:
  • Select a Customer SMTP configuration override, we display the
    From Address
     you specify there as the sent From email address.
  • Don't select a Customer SMTP configuration override, we display the
    From Address
     you specify in the Default SMTP Configuration on the
    Edit Tenant Setup – Notifications
     task as the sent From email address.
  • Enter an email address in the
    Reply To Email Address
     field and select a Customer SMTP configuration override, we display the
    From Address
     you specify in the Customer SMTP configuration override as the sent From email address. We display the
    Reply To Email Address
     as the reply to email address.
  • Enter an email address in the
    Reply To Email Address
     field, but don't select a Customer SMTP configuration override, we display the
    Reply To Email Address
     as the reply to email address. We display the
    From Address
     you specify in the Default SMTP Configuration on the
    Edit Tenant Setup – Notifications
     task as the sent From email address.
When you use the notification category type on the
Edit Tenant Setup – Notifications
 task and the notification routing rule is set to a frequency of:
  • Immediately
    : We use the Customer SMTP configuration override on the workflow notification task. We display the
    From Address
     as the sent From email in the notification.
  • Daily
    : We use the tenant-level SMTP configuration and display the
    From Address
     as the sent From email in the notification.

Delegation and Custom Notifications

When you delegate My Tasks items and the initiation of business process actions to another person, the delegate receives associated custom notifications.
A delegate receives a custom notification when you create a custom notification and identify the:
  • Delegator as the recipient in the
    Recipients
     prompt (by selecting a report field the person is associated with) or use the security group in the
    Groups
     prompt (by selecting the security role related to the event).
  • Delegate as the recipient in the
    Recipients
     prompt (by selecting a report field the person is associated with) or use the security group in the
    Groups
     prompt (by selecting the security role related to the event). If the delegator retains My Tasks access, the delegator also receives the custom notification.
    The delegate might receive multiple notifications. Example: Logan and Betty work in the Osaka office. Logan delegates to Betty and retains My Tasks access. Workday sends a notification to workers in Japan. Betty receives 2 notifications: 1 as a recipient and the other as Logan's delegate. Logan retained My Tasks access, so also receives a notification.
Workday only sends delegation notifications to the delegate, unless the delegator retains My Tasks access.
This also applies to alternate delegation.
If the delegate has an expired or disabled system account, we don’t send custom notifications to the delegate.

Notification Delays

When you don't want to send notifications immediately, you can configure a delay for custom notifications.
Example: On 2023-11-15, a manager completes a probation review for an employee a few months before the probation period ends, but you don't want to send the notification to the employee immediately. You configure a notification delay to send the custom notification after the probation review period ends on 2024-02-15.
When you create or edit a custom business process notification on the business process, you can configure the delay in the
Delay Notification
 section. You can create the delay using either the moment the trigger occurs or a report field and define the amount of time for the delay.
When you base the notification delay on a field, and that field is blank, Workday evaluates the delay and sends the notification based on the current date. Example: You configure a custom notification to delay by 2 days based on a hire date. Workday triggers the notification on Monday but there's no hire date, so we send the notification on Wednesday.
When you have SMS message content and notification delay configured on the business process, Workday sends the notification at the same time as the email notification. When you disable SMS in your tenant but there's a pending SMS notification, Workday won't send the SMS message.

Time Zone and Notification Delays

On the
Edit Tenant Setup - System
 task, you can configure time zone settings to delay sending notifications. In the
Time Zone Configuration
 section, you can specify the time zone setting for calculating the date of the notification delay. You can select:
  • Workday Default Time Zone Settings (PST)
    : Workday sends notifications in Pacific Standard Time (PST).
  • Tenant Default Time Zone Settings
    : Workday sends notifications in the tenant time zone. Workday uses the value from the
    Default Timezone
     prompt to calculate the notification delay. When you don't select a value in the
    Default Timezone
     prompt, we use the time zone of the person receiving the custom notification to calculate the notification delay. But if the person receiving the notification doesn't have a time zone, we use PST to calculate the notification delay.
  • Event Related Time Zone
    : Workday sends notifications based on the time zone in the following order. When the:
    1. Event is about a worker, we use the time zone of that worker.
    2. Event isn't about a worker (such as a supplier invoice) but a worker initiates the event, we use the initiator's time zone to calculate when the notification delay trigger begins. When the initiating action is delegated, we use the time zone of the delegator and not the delegate's time zone.
    3. Notification is sent to a person, we use the time zone of that person.
    4. Person receiving the notification doesn’t have a time zone, we use the
      Default Timezone
       field configuration.

SMS Messages for Custom Notifications

When you enable SMS messaging in your tenant and email, mobile push notifications, and SMS are delivery channels for custom notifications, we send notifications based on the configuration on the workflow notification task:
Configuration
Notifications
On the workflow notification task, you configure the:
  • Subject
     and
    Body
     fields in the
    Email Message Content
     section or the
    Override Email Template
     prompt.
  • SMS Message Content
     section.
Workday sends:
  • An email.
  • A mobile push notification.
  • An SMS message.
Workday generates the SMS message based on the content configured in the
SMS Message Content
 section. Workday uses the same language and locale as the email message.
On the workflow notification task, you don't configure the:
  • Subject
     and
    Body
     fields in the
    Email Message Content
     section.
  • Override Email Template
     prompt.
  • SMS Message Content
     section.
Workday sends:
  • An email with static content with no email body.
  • A mobile push notification.
On the workflow notification task, you:
  • Configure the
    Subject
     and
    Body
     fields in the
    Email Message Content
     section or the
    Override Email Template
     prompt.
  • Don't configure the
    SMS Message Content
     section.
Workday sends:
  • An email.
  • A mobile push notification.
On the workflow notification task, you:
  • Don't configure the
    Subject
     and
    Body
     fields in the
    Email Message Content
     section or the
    Override Email Template
     prompt.
  • Configure the
    SMS Message Content
     section.
Workday sends:
  • A mobile push notification.
  • An SMS message.
Workday generates the SMS message based on the content configured in the
SMS Message Content
 section. Workday uses the same language and locale as the email message.
When you use a report field in the SMS message that the recipient doesn't have security permission to access, we display
Not Available
 instead of the report field value in the notification.
Workday generates the SMS Message content using the same language and locale as the email message.
Workday doesn't create a notification event if the recipient didn't opt in to SMS with their mobile phone number. When users don't opt in to SMS on their mobile phone number, we send SMS only on a routing rule. Workday doesn't send the SMS message and a notification won't display on a user's
Notifications
 page.