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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-07-24
Setup Considerations: Mass Operations on Business Processes

Setup Considerations: Mass Operations on Business Processes

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of Mass Operations Management functionality. 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

The
Mass Operation Management
 (MOM) task enables members of segment-based security groups to easily perform high-volume transactions on business processes, including:
  • Advance
  • Cancel
  • Escalate
  • Reassign
You can run the operation now or at a scheduled time such as once in the future, daily, weekly, or monthly. The task enables you to manage high-volume transactions by selecting an operation to run on an input report.

Business Benefits

Using the MOM task decreases manual efforts related to managing your business processes. The task allows these operation types:
  • Advance Business Processes
  • Cancel Business Processes
  • Cancel To Do
  • Escalate Business Processes
  • Reassign Business Processes
  • Rescind Business Processes

Use Cases

You can use Mass Operations Management to:
  • Cancel in-progress events automatically. Before the events are canceled, you want to be notified with a list of events being canceled as well as the option to continue or terminate the process.
  • Automatically reassign a business process step that's awaiting action such as approval for a PTO request. The Reassign mass operation type is designed to help ease the burden of manually reassigning steps from 1 user or user group to another.
  • Manually advance onboarding or hire steps in bulk.
  • Shorten the lead time for approving job requisitions by escalating the job requisition approval step to the next-level manager.
  • Skip
    To Do
     steps awaiting action or saved for later in bulk such as after the
    Completion
     step of an onboarding event.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
How do you reassign business process steps in bulk rather than manually reassigning them from 1 person to another?
You can use the Reassign Business Process Step mass operation type when you configure a segment-based security group on the
Mass Operations Management
 domain. If you don't enable the security, your users won't have access to this mass operation type.
Use the
Reassignable Step
 report field in a custom report as a Filter and input the report in the MOM task. You can use the report field to report on business process steps that can be reassigned, and they are either awaiting a person to take action or the step is unassigned. Note that they can have any of these statuses:
  • Awaiting Action
  • Automatic Initiate
  • Manual Send Back
  • Saved for Later
  • Sent Back
To filter further, you can also use the
Awaiting Persons
 report field in your custom 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.
How do you mass advance business processes?
Before you use the MOM task to advance business processes en mass, consider the business processes you want to advance. You can't send back business processes en mass using MOM. However, you can send back business processes en mass using the
Send Back Business Process
 Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) if you have permission:
To run EIBs.
  • On the business process security policy to perform this action on the event for the business process type.
You should also consider parallel steps when you use the MOM task to advance business processes. When you advance a step, this triggers the advancement of any parallel steps on the business process.
Example: A termination event has 2 parallel steps:
  • Step b: Employee exit survey
  • Step b: HR exit survey
If you advance the employee exit survey step using MOM, the parallel HR exit survey step also advances.
Automatic advancement isn't triggered if a parallel step is marked as
Do Not Advance
 on the business process definition.
How do you mass cancel business processes?
The
Mass Cancel Business Process
 task is limited such that you can cancel certain business processes by type or by an external source and time range. When you use the MOM task, it allows you to schedule cancellations to occur on a regular basis, be notified of the upcoming cancellation, and include a required review step to prevent accidental cancellations by allowing certain users to cancel the process. To avoid performance issues, only use the
Mass Cancel Business Processes
 task when canceling fewer than 25 events. For higher volumes, use the MOM task instead. Workday also recommends that you cancel events in smaller chunks by using the business process type and date range filters.
How do you handle canceling or processing transactions that are currently in Workday?
Consider automating some of this using the MOM task. You must be able to identify those business processes that you want to cancel, advance, or reassign with a custom report.
How do you mass rescind business processes?
The Rescind Business Processes mass operation type gives you the ability to schedule mass rescind events that you previously manually rescinded using existing solutions like the
Mass Rescind Business Processes
 task. You can schedule mass rescind events to occur on a regular basis, get notified of upcoming rescinds, and include a required
Review
 step to prevent mistakes by allowing only specified users to rescind.

Recommendations

Review your business processes to make sure they can be advanced, canceled, and reassigned.
When you run the MOM task and if the report returns more instances than the predefined limit for that mass operation type, Workday returns an error and doesn't perform the operation on any of the instances in the input report. Workday recommends that you verify the instance limit of the mass operation type you are using by checking its description. Then, break your report into smaller reports and configure multiple MOM processes so that each report returns less than the instance limit for the mass operation type.
When you configure the
Reassign Business Process Step
 mass operation to mass reassign steps that are unassigned in your tenant:
  • Use the
    Reassignable Step
     report field in a custom report. To filter further, you can also use the
    Awaiting Persons
     report field in the custom report.
  • Select the
    All Current Assignees or No Assignees
     prompt.

Requirements

To initiate a mass operation, you need to confirm that a segment-based security group can access the mass operation type segment. Grant the segment-based security group
View
 and
Modify
 access to the
Mass Operation Management
 domain security policy. You can access the
View Mass Operation Types
 report to view all available mass operation types.
Create a custom report that returns 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.
In the custom report, you must add a filter with a
True
 condition for the mass operation type:
Mass Operation Type
Required Input Report Filter
Additional Information
Advance Business Process
Manually Advanceable
Make sure there are prompt values in the report. This can help improve the performance of the report.
Cancel Business Process
Cancelable
Cancel To Do
Cancelable To Do
Workday skips unsubmitted steps with statuses of:
  • Awaiting Action
  • Saved for Later
Escalate Business Process Step
Step Can Escalate
The business process step must be awaiting action in 1 of these steps:
  • Action
  • Approval
  • Approval Chain
  • Consolidated Approval
  • Consolidated Approval Chain
Reassign Business Process Step
Reassignable Step
Workday reassigns all business process steps that the report returns. This can include unassigned steps and steps with statuses of:
  • Awaiting Action
  • Automatic Initiate
  • Manual Send Back
  • Saved for Later
  • Sent Back
Rescind Business Process
Rescindable
Business process events can only be rescinded after they have been completed

Limitations

Workday enforces a limit of 50,000 instances on most mass operation types, although there are some exceptions. For example,
Cancel Business Process
 has a limit of 200,000 instances. Some mass operations types might allow a higher instance limit. Workday sets these limits to prevent large MOM background processes from degrading tenant performance. When you run the MOM task and if the report returns more instances than the predefined limit for that mass operation type, Workday returns an error and doesn't perform the operation on any of the instances in the input report.
When you use the Advance Business Process mass operation type but you decide you want to send all the business processes back, you must manually send each one back or run the
Send Back Business Process
 EIB if you have the security permissions. Once you send back business processes en mass, you won't be able to undo your action. You can manually send back a business process only if it's enabled on the business process security policy.
The Reassign Business Process Step mass operation type won't reassign
Initiation
 steps when you select the
All New Role Assignees
 option in the
To
 section.
Business process administrators should create or edit a segment-based security group and grant segment-based security group access to the appropriate business process domains or business process security policies. MOM will only be able to act on instances that the person who configured the MOM operation has permissions to view.

Security

Understand segment-based security groups and segmented security. Business process administrators should create or edit a segment-based security group and grant segment-based security group access to the:
  • Mass Operation Management
     domain in the System functional area.
  • Appropriate business process domains or business process security policies. MOM will only be able to act on instances that the person who configured the MOM operation has permissions to view.
When you use the
Reassign Business Process Step
 mass operation type, Workday reassigns steps only to security groups that are on the business process security policy for the step.

Business Processes

To use
Cancel Business Process
 and
Advance Business Process
 mass operations types on business processes, you need to specify the security groups on the business process security policy.
You can use the
Business Process Configuration Options
 report to view what business processes can be advanced and canceled.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Business Process Configuration Options
You can use this report to determine which business processes you can advance and cancel.
Mass Operation Reviews
You can use this report to view the status and details of operations for a specific time frame. You can suppress notifications when using the MOM task.
Scheduled Future Processes
You can use this 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.
View Mass Operation Types
You can use this report to view the available mass operation types. Access this report to view the
Mass Operation Security Segment
 for each type and the security groups it’s accessible to.
Workday recommends that you use these report data sources:
  • Business Process Event Steps
    : For
    Escalate Business Process Step
     and
    Reassign Business Process Step
     mass operation types.
  • Business Process Transactions
    : For
    Advance Business Process
     and
    Cancel 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.

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.