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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-09-19
Setup Considerations: Delegation

Setup Considerations: Delegation

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of delegating business processes. It explains:
  • Why to set it up.
  • How it fits 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 It Is

Delegation enables users to give another person the ability to initiate business processes on their behalf or take actions on their My Tasks items. Users can set a start and end date to cover a specific period or they can delegate on an ad hoc basis.
Delegation is different from reassigning a task. Reassignment permanently moves responsibility for a task from 1 person to another. Delegation doesn't remove responsibility (ownership) for the task from the original task owner, but rather enables a user to perform tasks on behalf of the original task owner.

Business Benefits

Delegation enables users to share responsibility of their business processes among peers, subordinates, and superiors depending on the tenant configuration. Delegation ensures that tasks don't get held up when a user is unavailable.

Use Cases

  • Delegate Business Process Tasks. (
    Do My Tasks On My Behalf
    ): A manager on vacation can delegate My Tasks items, like PTO request approval, to their manager who can then approve any incoming PTO requests.
  • Delegate Business Process Initiation. (
    Start On My Behalf
    ): A user on a business trip can set a delegation period to have a delegate create expense reports on their behalf while they are out of the office.
  • Delegate a single task: A user can delegate a coworker to approve a specific expense report on their behalf.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
Who do you want users to be able to delegate a task to?
You can configure the
Users Can Delegate Tasks To
 prompt on the Edit Tenant Setup - Business Process task to determine who a user can delegate a task to.
The
Require End Dates
 check box applies to My Tasks delegations and not to single-task delegation.
Which My Tasks items do you want to delegate to someone else?
When you delegate all business processes on the
Manage Delegations
 task, the delegate can access all My Tasks items that the delegator can take action on in My Tasks. You might not want a delegate to view and access some My Tasks items.
Do you want the delegator to maintain visibility into the tasks they’ve delegated?
When you enable the
Retain Access to Delegated Tasks within My Tasks
 check box on the
Manage Delegations
 task, you will see the tasks in your My Tasks during the delegation period.
When you add a new delegation configuration or update an existing configuration and select the
For all Business Processes
 and
For Business Process
 options, Workday automatically enables the
Retain Access to Delegated Tasks within My Tasks
 check box.
Do you want to enable delegation only for specific business processes?
Consider configuring the security policies of any individual business processes that you want to enable for delegation by selecting the
Allow Business Process Delegation
 check box in the
Policy Restrictions
 section.
Do you want delegates to be able to create reports on behalf of delegators?
Consider that when you delegate the creation of an item, your delegate has access to all of your history for that item. Example: When you delegate the creation of expense reports, your delegate can copy all of your existing expense reports.
Do you want to create, retrieve, and update delegation configurations en masse?
Consider using these web services to streamline business process delegation configuration by eliminating manual entries:
  • Get Business Process Delegations
  • Put Business Process Delegation
The web services help your organization save time, reduce errors, and improve operational efficiency by enabling precise and targeted updates to worker delegations.

Recommendations

Workday recommends that you thoroughly test your delegation workflow in a non-production environment before configuring the delegation in your Production environment.
Include:
  • A
    Review
     or
    Approval
     step on the
    Request Delegation Change
     business process when you want someone to review delegations before they take effect. Anytime someone configures a delegation for a period of time, the
    Request Delegation Change
     business process is initiated.
  • An
    Approval
     step on the
    Delegate Task
     business process when you want someone to review single task delegations before they take effect. Anytime someone delegates a single task from their My Tasks, the
    Delegate Task
     business process is initiated.
Don't configure the exclude business process steps from My Tasks functionality on tasks that are delegated often.
Avoid assigning a large number of delegations to a single user to prevent performance issues.

Requirements

On the security policy of business processes you want to make available for delegation, you must:
  • Enable security groups to delegate the initiating action to others in the
    Who Can Start the Business Process
     section.
  • Select the
    Allow Business Process Delegation
     check box.
The event you want to delegate must be current or in the future.

Limitations

Delegates might not have the same security permissions for secured objects as the delegator. Examples: Report fields and tasks. Workday recommends that you thoroughly test your delegation workflow in a non-production environment before configuring the delegation in your Production environment.
Not all business processes allow delegation. When you delegate a To Do step and an embedded task in a
To Do
 step doesn't allow delegation, the task won't appear in the delegate's My Tasks as a To Do.
Tenant delegation settings apply only to users requesting delegation on behalf of themselves. When you enable role-based or user-based security groups to request delegation on behalf of others, these settings don’t apply.
Delegates can request reassignment for any delegated tasks, but they can't delegate any delegated tasks to another worker.
When users delegate single My Tasks items, they can't set when the delegation begins and ends.
Workday prevents a delegated business process from accessing certain Workday functionality that requires connecting to another service, including:
  • Background conversions
  • Business form printing
  • Integrations (including Reports as a Service, REST API, and Workday Studio)
  • Scheduled reports
  • Access to documents on My Reports
  • Solutions
When an
Action
,
Approval
, or
To Do
 business process step is configured to be excluded from My Tasks and you delegate the task, the task won't display in the My Tasks of the delegate or the delegator.
If you can't access a delegated task that's been excluded, the:
  • Business Process Administrator can stop delegation by accessing the
    Manage Delegation Setting
     task.
  • Delegator can stop delegation though single task delegation.

Tenant Setup

You can use the
Edit Tenant Setup - Business Processes
 task to:
  • Require end dates for delegation. The
    Require End Dates
     check box doesn't apply to single task delegation.
  • Apply routing restrictions during delegation. When routing restrictions prevent Workday from routing a business process to a delegate, Workday routes the business process to an alternate delegate. Alternate delegates can't initiate a business process on behalf of a delegate. When you enable the
    Apply Routing Restrictions during Delegation
     check box and a delegate approves a step, Workday considers the delegate to be a prior approver. The ability to act on a step goes away when it has a routing restriction on a prior approver, even when it's a parallel step to the
    Approval
     step. The delegate won't have permission to complete the next step because of the routing restriction on the step, and the delegate is now a prior approver.
    If you configure delegation settings with an alternate delegate and you clear the
    Apply Routing Restrictions during Delegation
    check box, Workday displays a confirmation page. If you proceed to clear the check box, Workday removes alternate delegates from manage delegation settings. Alternate delegates won't receive delegated items.
    If you enable the
    Apply Routing Restrictions during Delegation
     check box, the
    Alternate Delegate
     field isn’t required in the
    Put Business Process Delegation
     web service.

Security

Configure the
Business Process Delegation
 domain in the System functional area.

Business Processes

You can delegate the initiating action on some business processes.
Configure the security policy for the
Request Delegation Change (Default Definition)
 business process. If the default definition for this business process doesn’t exist in your tenant, you must create it.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Business Processes for Delegation
View a list of business processes that are enabled for delegation.
Business Process Tasks Not Delegated
View tasks that Workday doesn't delegate due to routing restrictions.
Current Delegations
View current and active delegations at a glance for organizations you specify. You can select whether to include subordinate organizations and managers in the report results. This report displays the:
  • Delegating person (the delegator)
  • Duration of the delegation
  • Delegate
  • Affected business processes
  • Delegation configuration
This report doesn't include delegations that have expired.
You can use the
Delegation Assignments
 report field in custom reports to view all current or future delegations assigned to a worker.
Users with the security permissions, such as implementers, can obtain the reference ID of a specific delegation instance. In the
Current Delegations
 grid, select
Delegation
Integration IDs
 from the related actions menu of the specific delegation instance.
Manage Delegation Settings
View current delegations and past delegations for a worker. You can also view which business processes allow delegation.
Users with the security permissions, such as implementers, can obtain the reference ID of a specific delegation instance. In the
Current Delegations
 grid, select
Delegation
Integration IDs
 from the related actions menu of the specific delegation instance.
My Delegations
View completed tasks from the delegating user's point of view.
Users with the security permissions, such as implementers, can obtain the reference ID of a specific delegation instance. In the
Current Delegations
 grid, select
Delegation
Integration IDs
 from the related actions menu of the specific delegation instance.
View All Delegated Tasks
View a list of delegated tasks that you, as a delegate, can perform based on the original assignment date for the delegating user.
View and Maintain Notifications
View a list of notifications for the delegating user sent during the time that the delegation is in effect.
View More Processes
View a list of delegated business processes and who took action on your behalf.
View My Delegation Assignments
View all the business process
Initiation
 steps that others have delegated to you.

Integrations

Web Service
Considerations
Get Business Process Delegations
Enables you to retrieve all delegations that are configured. This includes active and future delegation configurations.
By default, we don’t display expired delegations. However, you can include them by setting the
Include Expired Delegations
 flag in the
Request Criteria
 section. You can also filter delegation configuration for specific business processes by specifying the business process types in the
Request Criteria
 section.
Put Business Process Delegation
Enables you to create or update a delegation configuration.

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.