Skip to main content
Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Create and Publish Docs Templates

Create and Publish Docs Templates

Security: These domains in the System functional area:
  • Drive
  • Docs
  • Document Library
Keep these considerations in mind when creating and publishing templates:
  • If you want to automatically share a Docs template with a set of users, you can share a folder in Drive with individual users or with a security group, and place the new template into that folder.
  • Docs doesn't support automatically publishing on a future date. If you want to hold your changes back until a specified date, you need to manually publish on that date.
  • Docs doesn't support concurrent editing or publishing of templates by more than 1 user.
  • Docs doesn't support right-to-left (RTL) language formatting.
  • When you create a new template, the new template will be available to configure to the business process even if you haven't published it yet. Until you publish it, the document generated from it will be blank. We recommend not configuring a template to a business process until after you publish it.
  • If you upload a previously downloaded template file, make sure you publish it before configuring it to the business process.
  1. From Drive, select
    New
    >
    Document Template
    and name the template.
    For DocuSign, you must use a name with fewer than 100 characters. For Adobe Sign, names can't contain special characters such as the ampersand.
  2. Select a source.
    The source is the business process type that uses the
    Generate Document
    step for the document. Example: The
    Offer
    business process type can be a source.
  3. Select a category.
    Categories enable you to organize and manage different types of documents associated with workers or other objects in Workday. You can use segment-based security groups to restrict the document categories that display in the prompt.
  4. (Optional) Select
    Language
    Add Language
    to change the base language.
    When you create the template, Workday Docs sets the base language to English. Any new language instances use the English content as a starting point for your translated template.
  5. Add content to the template.
    The template initially is in an unpublished state. A
    Published
    or
    Unpublished Changes
    indicator displays at the top of the template to indicate the status of the content.
  6. (Optional) Add new language instances for the template by clicking
    Language
    Add Language
    .
    When you create a language instance, Docs copies the existing content from the base language into the new instance. Then you use that content as a guide and manually replace it with the content in the desired language.
    You create and manage translated content in headers and footers in the same way as the template content. Each language has separate headers and footers.
    If a generated document is sent to a user whose preferred language doesn't match any of the defined language instances, Workday sends that user the base language document.
  7. Click
    Publish
    to make the current content active in the template.
    When you publish the template, business processes start using the updated template when generating documents.
    When you click
    Publish
    , if any errors exist in the template:
    • A red dot displays next to a language in the text editor drop-down list and the headers/footers drop-down list if the language instance contains one or more errors in data fields, condition rules, or images.
    • A red border displays around the text editor drop-down list and the headers/footers drop-down list if any language has an error. The red border displays until you fix all errors in all the language instances.
    • A red banner and check box display in the condition rule or data field panel, enabling you to display only the rules or fields with errors.
  8. Make additional changes to the template as needed. As soon as you make a change, its state changes to unpublished, and the orange
    Unpublished Changes
    indicator displays at the top of the template. Your template changes aren't used in the business process until you click
    Publish
    to activate those changes.