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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-06-27
Concept: Action Step

Concept: Action Step

An action is a separate business process or review that initiates when a step runs. In the
Action/To Do/Checklist/Integration
 column, use the prompt to select one of the business processes available to this organization.
The processes from which you can select vary, depending on the business process you are editing. Only actions that make sense are available. The action you specify here has to complete before the next step can start.
If a business process launches more than 25 subprocesses of the same business process, Workday runs these subprocesses in batches of 25 at a time. Although Workday assigns the next step to the appropriate worker when the subprocesses have completed running, the
Next Step
 on the confirmation page is not displayed if all of the subprocesses have not yet completed running.
This issue can occur when running the
Move Workers
 business process, but might occur in others depending upon how you configure your business processes.
You can use an
Action
 step to create documents such as employment agreements and offer letters using customizable templates. When you add an
Action
 step to the business process definition, you can select
Generate Document
 as an allowed action from the
Specify
 prompt. When you generate documents, you can also use a
Review Documents
 step to distribute them. Each
Review Documents
 step enables you to distribute 1 generated document. When you add a
Review Documents
 step, the
Action
 step must precede it in the business process definition. You must configure the
Action
 and
Review Documents
 steps when you add them to a business process definition. You can assign the
Generate Document
 action step to any security group that is on the initiating actions of the business process where a
Generate Document
 action step is added.
You can't include
Generate Document
 in
Consolidated Approval
 and
Consolidated Approval Chain
 step types.
You can add a
Generate Document
 action step to model business processes that you create in Workday Extend.
To enable Workday Extend, contact your Customer Base Account Executive. Workday Extend is a separate product (SKU) that requires a separate license. Workday Extend enables you to build, deploy, and share apps that run on Workday and are tailored to the specific business needs of your enterprise.
A Review action is similar to an approval, except that the reviewer can make changes to the business process. See Concept: Approval Step.
An
Action
 step can have a validation condition where you set the severity of the validation to either block a step from exiting or allow a step to continue. To add a validation condition to an
Action
 step, you must add the validation condition directly to the
Action
 step of the business process definition.
You can configure validation conditions on an
Action
 step by accessing the
Maintain Step Conditions
 related action.
On the
Maintain Step Conditions
 task, you can enable the
Enable Validation Conditions for Add Approvers
 check box. When you select the check box on the
Action
 step, Workday triggers validation conditions if reviewers add additional approvers on the step. Selecting the check box provides you with the ability to maintain data integrity and prevent additional approvers from approving incorrect information. To trigger the validations conditions, there must be:
  • A security group for the
    Ad Hoc Approve
     action on the business process security policy.
  • At least 1 validation condition for the
    Action
     step.
If you currently use report fields in a validation condition rule that requires reviewers to add an approver before submitting an
Action
 step, don't select the
Enable Validation Conditions for Add Approvers
 check box on the
Action
 step. Example:
Ad Hoc Approval Count
 report field. If you want to enforce this rule, Workday recommends that you select the check box on the
Action
 step and remove the validation condition that uses those report fields. After the
Action
 step, configure an
Approval
 step with a report field that requires an additional approver in an entry condition rule.
You can configure an
Action
 step so that it doesn't deliver notifications to My Tasks by accessing the
Maintain My Tasks Display
 related action. The
Maintain My Tasks Display
 task enables you to configure a business process step you identify as high-volume from displaying in My Tasks.