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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-08-22
Concept: Object Transporter Migration Workflow

Concept: Object Transporter Migration Workflow

Workday launches Object Transporter when you access these tasks or associated related actions to migrate configuration data between tenants:
  • Migrate with Object Transporter
    .
  • Migrate Configuration Extract
    .
Before Object Transporter moves configuration data to a target tenant, Workday checks for issues in the source data. It first finds errors that block migration, then identifies prerequisite issues you must resolve. The final check displays changes to the target tenant after migration, enabling you to examine and exclude modified instances or dependencies before migrating to your target tenant. The sequence follows this workflow:
1. Error check
If Workday finds errors blocking your migration, it displays the
View Errors
page in the migration workflow. The page includes guidelines for fixing the errors and retrying the migration.
2. Prerequisites check
Workday checks for instances that have configuration prerequisites that must exist in the target tenant for migration to succeed. If found, it lists the missing migration prerequisites on the
Pre-Check Migration
page, with guidelines for resolving them. Workday flags a prerequisite as an issue when it finds:
  • No corresponding instances on the target tenant.
  • A missing or mismatched Reference ID.
3. Premigration differences check
Workday next displays a
Pre-Migration Diff Report
page to report the instances, grouped by implementation type, that you have in scope for migration.
The information in the header summarizes the contents of the instance, configuration package, or configuration extract that you have in scope for migration. It displays the number of implementation types present and the number of unique instances planned for migration. Workday counts the instances it finds across multiple implementation types only once. The report groups instances with the same migration behavior by these tabs, enabling you to focus on one migration behavior at a time:
Tab
Description
All Instances
Lists all instances that your configuration package, or configuration extract contains. When you migrate a single instance, the tab displays 1 top level instance and any dependent objects it may contain.
Modified
Status icon: Orange
Lists instances that exist in both the source and target tenants but differ because of a previous modification. During migration, Workday overwrites the target instance with the source instance unless it is a security policy.
By default, Workday merges security policies from a source with the corresponding security policy on the target tenant. You can change default behavior for security policy migration by using the
Edit Migration Behavior
option to overwrite the tenant security policy.
New
Status icon: Blue
Lists instances that don't yet exist exist in the target tenant. During migration, Workday adds the instance from the source tenant to the target tenant.
No Change
Status icon: Gray
Lists instances that are identical in the source and target tenants. No migration is necessary.
Excluded
Lists top-level instances that you've excluded from the migration.
If you haven't excluded anything, Workday doesn't display this tab.
You can use the report to review instances in detail by drilling down with these reports:
  • Dependencies Diff
    : When the
    Pre-Migration Diff Report
    reports a new or modified top-level instance, you can click
    View Dependencies
    to view the dependent instances of top-level instance that Workday will also migrate.
  • View Attribute Diff
    : When the
    Dependencies Diff
    report displays modified dependencies of an instance, you can click the
    View Attribute Diff
    button for the instance to compare the attributes differences between source and target tenants.
  • Manage Modified Instances
    : When the
    Dependencies Diff
    report displays modified dependencies of an instance, you can click the
    Manage Modified Instances
    button in the report header select any modified instances to exclude from migration.
4. Migration
When you resolve all issues, review the difference reports, and optionally exclude any modified instances and dependencies from migration, Object Transporters migrates the instances from the source tenant, less any modified instances that you select to exlude. It always migrates the current version of tenanted objects. Adding an instance of an object to a configuration package doesn't restrict Workday from updating that object to a newer version of the one in the package when one is available.
When Workday completes the migration, you can view the
Post Migration
report, or create a
Tenant Compare
report to compare the differences between tenants after migration.