Setup Considerations: Workday Messaging
You can use this topic to help you make decisions when planning your configuration and use of Workday Messaging. It explains:
- Why to set it up.
- How it fits into the rest of Workday.
- Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
- Security requirements and business process configurations.
- Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.
What It Is
Workday Messaging provides channels for SMS and WhatsApp notifications, enabling you to communicate with internal and external recipients who have opted in to receive SMS and WhatsApp messages. For SMS, you can use Workday Messaging for custom business process notifications and for specific notification types in these product areas:
- Benefits
- Expenses
- HCM
- Recruiting
- Student
Business Benefits
By using Workday Messaging, you can:
- Increase communication efficiency by reaching recipients quickly and directly.
- Conduct interactive conversations with candidates to improve engagement.
- Reach specific populations with ad hoc SMS messages.
- Keep recipients informed using their preferred communication channel.
- Reach recipients who don't have a dedicated computer.
- Expand your global reach by connecting with candidates in any country WhatsApp supports worldwide.
Use Cases
As an administrator for:
- Business processes, you can configure custom business process notifications to send SMS messages to students, workers, and candidates.
- HR, you can send ad hoc SMS messages to workers.
- Benefits, you can send SMS messages to workers related to their benefits, including open enrollment reminders.
- Expenses, you can send SMS messages to workers regarding expense submission, including how to send receipts.
- Student, you can send SMS messages regarding academic advising, financial aid, student financials, and student records to matriculated students.
As a recruiter, you can send:
- SMS messages to specific prospects and candidates inviting them to apply for a job.
- Recruiting messages to candidates and receive timely responses using Candidate Conversational Messaging for both SMS and WhatsApp.
- Personalized or predefined one-way SMS messages to candidates from their candidate profiles to keep them informed throughout the hiring process.
- SMS reminders of upcoming interviews.
- SMS updates on application status.
Questions to Consider
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
What types of messages do you want to send using SMS? | You can configure message templates and custom business process notifications for your SMS notifications. You can also send recipients ad hoc messages from their candidate profiles.
You can’t add the SMS channel to existing message templates. You need to create new message templates to add SMS. |
How do you measure SMS activity? | You can view the SMS message count across all tenants by running the View SMS Usage Metric task.
Workday includes all incoming and outgoing messages across all tenants in your SMS message totals. The message count includes opt-in and opt-out messages. Workday Messaging splits any message that exceeds 160 characters into multiple message segments, each of which counts toward your message totals. |
How do you test the SMS notification functionality in a non-Production tenant? | Configure Workday Messaging in your Production tenant first before you configure Workday Messaging in a non-Production Tenant. See Set Up Workday Messaging.
When your Workday Messaging Production configurations complete successfully, you can configure Workday Messaging in a non-Production tenant, and then begin testing. See Configure Messaging for Non-Production Tenant. |
How do you ensure that you don't send live SMS notifications to recipients while testing in a non-Production tenant? | You can configure SMS notification restrictions to disable notifications or redirect notifications for testing purposes to a particular:
|
How do you want to view your SMS notification history? | You can view historical SMS messages on the:
|
Do you need to reach message recipients in more than one country? | You can send SMS messages only to recipients within the same country as your SMS number. To text recipients in multiple countries, you need to configure a separate SMS number for each country. You can send WhatsApp messages to recipients in any WhatsApp-supported country worldwide, regardless of the country for which the phone number was configured. |
Do you have a personal Facebook login that you can use to set up WhatsApp? | You must use a personal Facebook login to access a Meta Business Portfolio to create a WhatsApp Business Account and connect it to Workday. You must also be able to access these domains outside of Workday to log in to your Meta Business Portfolio:
|
Recommendations
Test each configured SMS notification in a non-Production tenant using a redirect restriction to prevent accidentally sending messages to candidates.
Requirements
You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.
Limitations
Workday Messaging is available for:
- Customers who have a live Production tenant (SMS only).
- Mobile phone numbers in specific countries. See: Workday Messaging Country Configuration.
Workday Messaging doesn't support:
- Attachments or rich-text formatting in SMS messages.
- Mobile phone numbers with extensions.
Tenant Setup
You can use
Edit Tenant Setup – Notifications
to:- Delete the copied Production SMS configuration that displays in a non-Production tenant after a tenant refresh.
- Enter your customer name.
- Customize your terms and conditions.
- Create notification routing rules for SMS and WhatsApp messages.
- Set up SMS notification restrictions to disable notifications or redirect notifications for testing purposes to a particular:
- Contact.
- Mobile phone number, including country code.
Security
You can configure these domains in the System functional area:
Domain | Considerations |
|---|---|
Business Process Administration
Manage Business Process Definitions | Users with access to both domains can copy, create, delete, and edit custom business process notifications. |
Manage: Innovation Services
| Enables you to opt in to the Workday Messaging service using the Innovation Services and Data Selection Opt-In task. |
Manage SMS
| Secures tasks and reports that enable you to view SMS records, including:
|
Manage WhatsApp
| Secures tasks and reports that enable you to view WhatsApp records, including opt-in and opt-out history. |
Messaging Opt-In/Opt-Out
| Enables you to initiate the opt-in/out-out process for groups of workers, candidates, students, or student applicants on behalf of the recipient. |
Set Up: Message Templates
| Enables you to create SMS message templates. |
Set Up: Tenant Setup - BP and Notifications
| Enables you to:
|
Business Processes
When you configure custom business process notifications, keep in mind:
- The volume of notifications in the candidate experience.
- The SMS message limits for your company. Workday Messaging splits any custom business process notification that exceeds 160 characters into multiple message segments. Each segment counts toward your message totals.
Reporting
Reports | Considerations |
|---|---|
All Outbound SMS Notifications
| View all outbound SMS notifications within a specified date range. Details include sender, recipient, phone number, message text, and business process type. |
Business Process and Integration Notifications Indexed
| View all notifications for the specified period. Details include the time, subject, message, and recipient of each notification. |
Innovation Services Summary
| View service opt-in status, last-modified information, and the Innovation Services descriptions from Workday Community. |
Maintain Workday Messaging
| View the date submitted and configuration status for each one-way and conversational messaging configuration. |
SMS Opt In and Opt Out Activity
| View SMS opt-in and opt-out records within a selected timeframe. |
SMS Terms and Conditions History
| Track when the terms and conditions changed and who changed them. |
View One-Way Messaging Configuration
| View the configuration details and the Production and non-Production phone numbers for the one-way messaging configuration for each country. Click the View button from the Maintain Workday Messaging report to access the View One-Way Messaging Configuration report. |
View Conversational Messaging Configuration
| View the configuration details and the Production and non-Production phone numbers for the conversational messaging configuration for each country. Click the View button from the Maintain Workday Messaging report to access the View Conversational Messaging Configuration report. |
View WhatsApp Sender
| View details about your WhatsApp sender. On the Maintain Workday Messaging report, click the magnifying glass icon in the Actions column of the WhatsApp Messaging Configuration grid to access the View WhatsApp Sender report. |
View WhatsApp Sender Configuration
| View details about your WhatsApp sender configuration. On the Maintain Workday Messaging report, click the View button in the WhatsApp Messaging Configuration grid to access the View WhatsApp Sender Configuration report. |
WhatsApp Opt In and Opt Out Activity
| View WhatsApp opt-in and opt-out records within a selected timeframe. |
Candidate Communication
| View messages sent to candidates on the candidate profile. |
Find Candidates
| View information about prospects, active candidates, and workers, such as candidate skills and jobs applied for. You can also manually send SMS messages to candidates. |
Integrations
No impact.
Connections and Touchpoints
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.