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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-03-13
Concept: Student Registration

Concept: Student Registration

With Workday Student, you can efficiently move students through the course registration process.
You can configure the student registration process to align with the policies of your institution. This enables:
  • Students to register for and manage their courses more independently.
  • You to reduce manual effort and focus on resolving unique circumstances.
Example: Workday prevents students from registering for a course section once it's at capacity, but you can still manually override the capacity setting for students.

Registration Policies

You can define these policies for students within an academic unit and level, or program of study:
Policy
Description
Enrollment access and grading policy
Use the
Maintain Enrollment Access and Grading Policy
 task to specify:
  • The set of students who can register for specific courses.
  • The grading scheme used when you grade students for courses.
Enrollment unit limit policy
Use the
Maintain Enrollment Unit Limit Policy
 task to specify the number of units that students can register for.

Registration Dates

You use date controls to specify registration-related dates, such as:
  • Enrollment window.
  • Open enrollment.
  • Last day to waitlist for a course.
  • Last day to add a course.
  • Last day to drop a course without a record.
  • Last day to withdraw from a course with a withdrawal grade.
You can use the
Maintain Academic Period Registration Appointments
 to define registration appointments, which control when different sets of students can register during the enrollment window.

Registration Planning

To meet their educational objectives, students can use:
  • Academic plans and academic progress reports for long term planning.
  • Saved schedules to plan each academic period. When students create a saved schedule for a standard academic period, they can also add course sections from the nonstandard periods that roll up to it.
Students can also use their academic plans to create a saved schedule.

Saved Schedules

Students can manage their saved schedules when they access the
View My Saved Schedules
 report from the global search or dashboards you configure. After students create saved schedules for an upcoming period, they can register for courses quickly when registration appointments open for that academic period.
To help students manage their saved schedules more efficiently, we recommend you opt-in to the
User Interface for Student Registration Saved Schedules
 feature on the
Maintain Feature Opt-Ins
 report. When students edit their saved schedules after you opt-in:
  • Workday displays their selected course sections on a calendar to help them visualize their weekly class schedules.
  • Workday provides students with academic plan information, helping them plan more efficiently.
You can also:
  • View all saved schedules for a student when you select
    View Saved Schedules
     from the
    Plan
     report on the Academics profile group of the student's profile.
  • Create custom reports to view saved schedule data, enabling you to learn more about trends in student registration planning.
  • Access the
    Maintain Custom Labels
     task to rename
    saved schedule
     and
    saved schedules
     in your tenant to align with the policies and preferred terminology at your institution.

Students Registering for Courses

Students can register for course sections that:
  • Tie into fixed academic periods in the academic calendar.
  • Don't tie into academic periods, but fall within a standard academic period.
You need to onboard current students before they can register for the upcoming academic period. Students can then register for courses on the desktop or mobile application from:
  • Their academic plan if there is at least one eligible course.
  • Their saved schedule if there is at least one eligible course.
  • The
    Find Course Sections
     report.
  • A course listing.
Students can troubleshoot why they're not able to register for a course on these tasks:
  • Start Course Section Troubleshooting
    .
  • Start Registration for Course
    .
You can also use the
Registration Troubleshooting Console
 task to help students troubleshoot their registrations.