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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-11-03
Concept: Membership Rules

Concept: Membership Rules

Membership rules enable you to assign worker positions to custom organizations automatically based on defined criteria. Membership rules affect performance, so it's important that you configure them carefully.
Membership rules assign workers based on an intersection of 3 attribute types:
  • Location
  • Organization
  • Position
Position attributes include:
  • Job families.
  • Job profiles.
  • Management level.
When you create a membership rule that uses position attributes, the results include workers that match any of the attributes. In general, position attributes perform better than organization attributes in membership rules.
Organization attributes include:
  • Include Subordinate Organizations in Rule.
  • Include Subordinate Organization Roles.
  • Organization Subtypes.
When you create membership rules that use organization criteria, consider the criteria carefully. Criteria that return a large number of organizations can affect performance, especially when you include subordinate organizations. Membership rules that use organization criteria use intersection logic, so results include workers in organizations who meet all of the criteria.
When you create membership rules that use 2 or more of the 3 attribute types (position, organization, or location), the results include members of an intersection of the 3 attribute types. In this case, membership rule results include workers that meet any 1 of the position criteria (job family, job profile, or management level) and:
  • A value in each field of the organization criteria (included organizations, included organization roles, or included organization subtypes).
  • Any of the selected locations.
Membership rules don't remove explicitly assigned members. You can view explicitly assigned members and members assigned by rules in different grids on the
Members
 tab of the custom organization.

Membership Rule Types

Membership rules can be:
  • Static: Calculate membership when you select
    Assign Members Using Rule
     from the related actions menu on the custom organization. The
    Assign Members Using Rule
     explicitly assigns members.
  • Semidynamic: Calculate membership every 4 hours. (Semidynamic rules start as dynamic rules.)
  • Dynamic: Calculate membership whenever security is evaluated for the custom organization.
Dynamic rules have the greatest impact on performance, especially when your rule includes subordinate organizations. You can improve the performance impact of membership rules by making your rules semidynamic. Reserve dynamic rules for custom organizations in which latency in security evaluation would have serious consequences.

Best Practices for Membership Rules

Membership rules affect performance, so it's important that you configure them carefully by following these best practices:
  • When possible, use position attributes instead of organization attributes.
  • When you use organization attributes, don't include subordinate organizations.
  • Membership rules evaluate terminated workers and active workers. When you have many terminated workers, consider putting them in a separate location hierarchy that is excluded by the membership rule criteria.
  • Membership rules that return a large number of active or terminated workers can diminish performance. In which case, use semidynamic rules to improve performance.
  • Use static or semidynamic membership rules instead of dynamic rules whenever possible because dynamic membership rules are re-evaluated each time that membership is evaluated.
  • If you require dynamic membership rules, we strongly recommend you enable the
    Enable Dynamic Membership Rule Evaluation Optimization
     check box on the
    Edit Tenant Setup - HCM
     task.
  • Workday recommends that you avoid dynamic membership rules when the membership rules return more than 3,000 members for time off rules. (Use semidynamic rules instead.)
  • To improve performance, ensure that all membership rules in your tenant are semidynamic. When report fields use dynamic membership rules, Workday evaluates each instance that includes the report field, which can cause delayed report results or failures.
  • Static membership rules can be used to assign members explicitly to a custom organization by selecting
    Assign Members Using Rule
     from the related actions menu on the custom organization.
  • You can't rescind membership rules that mass assign workers to a custom organization using
    Assign Members Using Rule
    . Instead you can use
    Reorganization > Move Workers
     from the related actions menu to move workers to another organization. Note that you must clear the
    Position Assignment Unique
     check box for the custom organization.
  • When you need membership rules to include more than 10,000 positions, configure 2 or more membership rules.
  • To view members of a custom organization that doesn't have hierarchies enabled and has more than 50,000 members, use the
    View Organization Members
     report (secured to the
    Worker Data: All Positions
     domain). Depending on your domain security configuration, the member count for the
    View Organization Members
     report might differ from the
    Organization
    View Members As Of
     related action.