Concept: Message Builder

Message Builder provides these messaging and templating capabilities for Workday applications that adopt it:

Rich text editing for message formatting and layout.
Report fields that help you personalize message content.
Templating tools to add branding, consistency, and reusability to your messages.
Message them previewing as recipients will view, including the ability to view and link notification templates.
Message translations to extend your audience reach (Collection Letters only).

If enabled by your application, Message Builder can also provide:

AI-generated suggestions for email content.
AI-generated translations for message body and email subject field content.

You can create message templates using the:

Create
Create Message Builder Template
task.
Message Builder Template Dashboard
report.

To view message templates without modify privileges, use the

View Message Builder Template

report.

When you access the

Message Builder Templates Dashboard

, you can:

Click
New
to create a new message template.
Select an existing message template and click
open
to compose your message from templated text. You can also double-click the message template to open it.

To create a new template, you complete these fields:

To complete template creation, you click

Create Template

to open the editor, where you can add message content and formatting to the template. When you access the

Create Message Builder Template

task, Message Builder requires you to complete the same fields.

Editing a message template is part of template creation but you can also return to saved message template to edit it. To return to a template, select it from the

Message Builder Template Dashboard

and click

open

, or double-click the template.

Alternatively, you can edit a template by accessing the

Edit Message Builder Template

task and selecting the template to edit.

Once in the editor, you can change the notification template applied to the message template. Notification templates provide consistent, reusable branding to message template headers and footers. To assign a default notification template to a message template, click

Link notification design template to message template

.

You can use rich text to customize your message body. The rich text editor includes these formatting and layout tools:

Subheadings.
Font sizes and color.
Bold, italic, and underline.
Bulleted and numbered lists.
Hyperlinks.
Report fields for personalization.
GenAI prompts (If enabled by your application).

The tools available may differ depending on the channel selected. Example: SMS channels don’t support bolding or hyperlinks. If your application supports GenAI suggestions, prompt options depend on the notification category and tenant configuration. Each notification category can have a different set of prompts in the GenAI drop-down menu.

If your Workday product supports Message Builder translations, you can provide message body content and email subjects in multiple languages within a single template. After establishing a base language, you can expand your communications to global audiences by adding new languages in the

Add Languages

modal.

If your organization has enabled machine translations, you can generate translations automatically or prepare the languages for manual entry. Selecting the

Translate from Base Language

option in the modal uses AI to populate your chosen languages. You can view the automatically translated text by selecting the language in the

Translations

panel. To help you easily identify AI-generated content, the panel displays a sparkle icon next to the language. Message Builder doesn’t translate the labels of data fields.

If you prefer manual translation, you can select the

Empty

as the

Default Text

option to create blank language templates. However, if your organization hasn't enabled machine translations, the model doesn’t include these options. In that case, selecting a language simply adds it to the

Translations

panel with an empty message body, ready for manual translation.

When you complete your template, you can click:

Publish
to make it available in the workflows of applications that use Message Builder. Message templates display in the
Message Builder Template Dashboard
as drafts.
Save
to save it as an unpublished draft in the
Message Builder Template Dashboard
as
DRAFT
. Only those with View or Modify access to the notification category of the unpublished draft can view it. Drafts aren’t available in the workflows of applications that use Message Builder.

When the

Message Builder Template Dashboard

displays a template as

CHANGES UNPUBLISHED

, the message template has both a draft and a published version.

You can use Object Transporter to migrate Message Builder templates, simplifying template maintenance and updates across tenants. You can migrate published templates either as single instances or in configuration packages using Message Builder Templates as the implementation type.

When you migrate a published template, Object Transporter also migrates any Notification Designer template linked to the Message Builder template. When you migrate a Message Builder template in

CHANGES UNPUBLISHED

status, Object Transporter migrates the last published version of the template with the Notification Designer template linked to it. You can migrate the same published Message Builder template more than once, but Object Transporter only needs to migrate a linked Notification Designer template once. Workday preserves the link between the published Message Builder template and Notification Designer template in the target tenant.

If a template contains embedded external fields, Object Transporter doesn't migrate those fields with it. You must migrate the external fields first. Then, as you migrate the template, Workday automatically maps the Workday IDs (WIDs) from the source to the target tenant. This mapping ensures your templates function correctly without manual changes.

To use Message Builder, you must complete these setup tasks:

Set up Message Builder security.
Configure Workday applications that use Message Builder to access it.
If you're using an email channel for notifications, create and activate notification templates.
Use the
Edit Tenant Setup - Notifications
task to configure channels that your application can use. Also, use this task to configure the default reply to and the from email address fields in Message Builder.
Set up security for Notification Designer.
If your organization has an MSA subscription service agreement with Workday, use the
Innovation Services Opt-In
task to enable the email channel for Notification Designer.
If your application uses the GenAI suggestions feature in Message Builder, use the
Innovation Services Opt-In
task to enable the GenAI prompt options.