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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-07-24
Set Up Mass Operations

Set Up Mass Operations

  • Create a custom report that retrieves the business process instances on which to perform the mass operation. You can use the
    Supports Operation Type
     report field to determine if a report data source supports a mass operation type for the task.
  • Create a segment-based security group with access rights for the required mass operation.
  • Security:
    Mass Operation Management
     domain in the System functional area.
You can use the
Mass Operation Management
 (MOM) task to enable members of segment-based security groups to perform mass operations on business processes.
  1. Access the
    Mass Operation Management
     task.
    Your selection determines options to display on the next page.
  2. As you complete the task, consider:
    Option Description
    Mass Operation Type
    When you select:
    • Advance Business Process
      : Configure a filter with an And condition that sets the
      Manually Advanceable
       report field to
      True
       on your input report. When you enable the
      Enable Advancing Unassigned Tasks
       check box on the
      Edit Tenant Setup - Business Processes
       task, you can advance an unassigned step within a business process.
      To help improve the performance of the input report, make sure there are prompt values in the report.
    • Cancel Business Process
      : Configure a filter with an And condition that sets the
      Cancelable
       report field to
      True
       on your input report.
    • Cancel To Do
      : Configure a filter that sets the
      Cancelable To Do
       report field to
      True
       on your input report. Workday skips all
      To Do
       steps in
      Awaiting Action
       or
      Saved for Later
       status. To filter out by
      Saved for Later
       status, use the
      Event Record Action
       report field in your input report.
    • Distribute Journeys
      : Workday distributes up to 50,000 journeys. The
      Exclude recipients who have a completed or retired journey from this category
       option enables you to prevent the journey builder from sending journeys to recipients who have journeys in
      Completed
       or
      Retired
       status.
    • Edit Journey Status
      : Cancel or retire up to 50,000 new or in-progress journeys, and you can rescind completed, retired, in-progress, and not started journeys.
    • Escalate Business Process Step
      : Configure a filter with an And condition that sets the
      Step Can Escalate
       report field to
      True
       on your input report. Workday forwards steps only to security groups that include the manager role. When you use this mass operation type, you can only escalate steps to users who have access to the business process security policy, or you must select
      Unrestricted Escalation
       on the business process security policy. When a step recipient has multiple managers, Workday escalates steps up the management chain of the event target. Workday stops escalation when you reassign a step to a user not in the management chain. You must have access to the Reassign business process security policy to escalate business process steps.
      Workday uses advanced routing during escalation. Example: Select
      Exclude Initiator
       on the
      Maintain Advanced Routing
       task for a step, and HR Partner as an alternate security group. If a step is escalated to an initiator, Workday routes the step to the HR Partner.
    • Reassign Business Process Step
      : Workday reassigns My Tasks tasks to other users when there's 1 or more users or when there isn't a current user assigned. Configure a filter that sets the
      Reassignable Step
       report field to
      True
       on your input report. Workday attempts to reassign all business process steps that the report returns including unassigned steps and steps with statuses such as:
      Awaiting Action
      ,
      Automatic Initiate
      ,
      Manual Send Back
      ,
      Saved for Later
      , and
      Sent Back
      . To filter out by assigned or unassigned status, use the Awaiting Persons report field in your input report.
      You can reassign business process steps to a person with a non-worker role. Example: A student. Note that you won't be able to reassign business process steps to a:
      • System user that doesn't have a role. Example: An Implementer or Service Center Representative.
      • Person that doesn't have an active Workday account. Example: A candidate.
      In the
      To
       section of the mass operation type, when you select the:
      • Person
         prompt: Workday displays persons with nonworker roles in the prompt.
      • Security Group
         prompt: Workday reassigns steps to non-worker roles that are within the selected security groups.
    • Rescind Business Process
      : Rescind up to 200,000 completed business processes. This operation also enables you to suppress notifications during processing. Configure a filter that sets the
      Rescindable
       report field to
      True
       on your input report. To rescind business processes using this mass operation type, they must include a
      Review
       step because you can't undo the operation.
      When you rescind a completed business process, it reverses all progress and rescinds any other business processes that it calls as actions. All data reverts to its original state before the business process initiation. As a result, you may need to review custom data in some cases, such as
      Edit Additional Data
       events. For more information, see Concept: Edit Additional Data Step section.
    • Redirect Inbox Items:
       Schedule any of the allowed
      Redirect
       actions on integration failures;
      Move to Next Step
      ,
      Terminate Business Process
      , or
      Rerun Integration
      . This functionality also impacts the
      Review Documents
       step type.
      You can't automate the
      Send Back
        action using this mass operation type. You also must configure a filter with an AND condition that sets the
      Redirectable by Processing User
       report field to
      True
       on your input report.
    Input Report
    Select your custom report. Workday displays only simple or advanced custom reports using appropriate report data sources in the
    Input Report
     prompt.
    Workday recommends that you use these report data sources:
    • Business Process Event Steps
      : For
      Escalate Business Process Step
      ,
      Reassign Business Process Step
       and
      Cancel To Do
       mass operation types.
    • Business Process Transactions
      : For
      Advance Business Process
      ,
      Cancel Business Process
      , and
      Rescind Business Process
       mass operation types. To optimize report performance, we recommend using the following as required prompts:
      Business Processes
      ,
      Transaction Status
      , and a date range (
      Initiated Date Range
       or
      Completed Date Range
      ).
    • Business Process Transactions (Indexed)
      : For
      Advance Business Process
       and
      Cancel Business Process
       mass operation types. You can use this report data source when configuring the mass operation only if you're on the domain security policy for the
      Business Process Administration
       domain. If this is the case, Workday recommends that you use this report data source instead of the
      Business Process Transactions
       report data source to improve performance of the report.
    When creating a custom report, clear the
    Optimized for Performance
     check box to use input report filters for MOM.
    Run Frequency
    Schedule the process to run at times of low usage.
  3. As you complete the page, consider:
    Option Description
    Suppress Notifications
    When you suppress notifications and advance a business process to:
    • The next step: Workday doesn't send system and custom notifications for the next step of the parent business process or the first step of any subprocess initiated by that step.
    • Completion: Workday doesn't send system and custom notifications for the current step, subsequent steps, or subprocesses that are within the business process.
    • The final step: Workday doesn't send system and custom notifications upon completion of that step or the business process.
    Send to Completion
    The event advances to the end of the business process.
    Delay and Default Review Action
    Set these
    Review Notification Settings
    :
    • Delay
      : Select a period Workday waits for user review before processing or aborting the mass action by default.
    • Default Review Action
      : Select whether Workday aborts or continues to process the mass action if a reviewer doesn’t respond before the delay period elapses.
Workday enables a mass operation that runs when needed or as a scheduled background process. The
Mass Operation Management
 task limits the number of actions that Workday performs in a single execution. The base of this limitation is the number of instances the input report generates. The limit is different for each mass operation type. Example: When you select an input report for an
Advance Business Process
 operation that returns more than 50,000 instances, you’ll get a notification that the Mass Operation Management background process completed with errors and didn't process any data.
You can use the
Scheduled Future Processes
 report to edit scheduled processes including scheduled mass operation processes. On this report, you can only change the start and end dates of the process and basic configuration settings.
When using the
Mass Operation Management Runs
 custom report to view the status of MOM background jobs, or when viewing the
Results
 section of a particular background process, you might not be able to drill down on the
Report Output
,
Data Processed
, or
Data Not Processed
 values. This is because the results data of background jobs is not retained indefinitely. These read-only results are retrieved from the MOM run when the instances themselves are not available on the background process. When the background process runs and purges MOM data, Workday returns saved data only.