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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-03-13
Concept: Defining Audiences

Concept: Defining Audiences

Audience Eligibility

When a worker's core attributes change, Workday processes this event by removing the worker from the audience and then immediately re-adding them to the audience, if they still meet audience eligibility criteria.

Data Source Filters

Data source filters enable you to apply specific criteria to your primary data source when defining an audience, which provides granular control and improved performance when creating your audience.
When a data source filter contains a prompt, Workday displays a
Filter Configuration
page where you can input the necessary prompt values. Additionally, when editing an audience, you can click the
Information
icon to review optional parameters for your configured data source filter prompts.

Prompts

As you build your audience criteria, you can also configure prompts directly in the
Conditions
and
Segments
grids on the
Audience Criteria
prompt. When you select a field with a required or optional prompt, Workday displays a dialog for you to input the values.
You can change these configurations later using the
Edit
icon, which is accessible when you edit an audience.

Related Business Objects and Operators

Related business objects allow access to fields from a different business object that are linked to the primary business object. See Concept: Business Objects, Data Sources, and Fields.
In Audience Builder, you can use related business objects to query and filter audience data across multiple, interconnected business objects. For example, if you’re using Worker as your primary business object and it has the multi-instance
Dependents
field, you can access fields from the Dependent business object in Audience Builder.
To display the
Subfilter
button to use a related business object when building an audience, you must select a related business object and 1 of these operators on the
Audience Criteria
prompt:
Operator
Description
Meets subfilter
An operator that includes workers if they have at least 1 related item that matches your subfilter criteria.
Doesn't meet subfilter
An operator that includes workers if they do not have related items that matches your subfilter criteria.

Talent Pools

To use a talent pool as an audience, you can create a condition using a Talent Pool field. For example, to create an audience of emerging leaders, select these values in the
Conditions
grid on the
Audience Criteria
prompt:
Field
Operator
Value
Talent Pools
In
Emerging Leaders
Ensure you and your Integration System User (ISU) have View access to your talent pool. See Create an Integration System User (ISU) for Engagements.

Limitations

Audience Builder queries have a limit of 16,000 characters. When you configure a
Field
with specific values, every character counts toward this limit.
Depending on the length of your data, Workday can process roughly 370 values per query. To avoid errors, group workers using broader field conditions or use a custom report instead of itemizing individual values or exceptions.