Skip to main content
Documentation
Documentation
Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-05-29
Steps: Set Up Waitlists for Course Sections

Steps: Set Up Waitlists for Course Sections

You can enable waitlists for course sections to help students register for the courses they need.
You can manually manage course section waitlists, or enable Workday to manage them for you. When Workday manages course section waitlists for you, Workday sends waitlist promotion notifications to students based on how you configure the:
  • Registration Waitlist Availability Event
     business process.
  • Waitlist policies that you create for academic unit and academic level configurations.
You also need to configure a mass operation to remove expired waitlist promotion notifications from your tenant.
  1. Edit Business Processes
    To enable students to respond to waitlist advancement notifications, add the
    Confirm Waitlist Advancement
     action step to the
    Registration Waitlist Availability Event
     business process. Workday sends waitlist advancement notifications based on the waitlist policy that you configure.
  3. (Optional) Add help text to waitlist promotion notifications.
    1. From the related actions menu of the
      Registration Waitlist Availability Event
       business process, select
      Business Process
      Maintain Help Text
      .
    2. Click
      Edit Step Help Text
       for the
      Confirm Waitlist Advancement
       step.
    3. Complete the grids. Example: For course waitlist policies that remove students from the waitlist after they reach the
      Expiration Limit
       of
      3
       on their waitlist promotion notifications, you can note that students will be removed from the waitlist if they take no action after 3 notifications.
    Security:
    Business Process Administration
     and
    Manage: Business Process Definitions
     domains in the System functional area.
  4. (Optional) Enable email notifications for waitlist promotion notifications.
    1. From the related actions menu of the
      Registration Waitlist Availability Event
       business process, select
      Business Process
      Add Notification
      .
    2. Select
      Student Course Registrations
       from the
      Related Instances
       prompt.
    3. Select
      Student as Self
       from the
      Groups
       prompt.
    4. Specify an
      Email Option
      .
  5. (Optional) Schedule a mass operation to remove expired waitlist promotion notifications.
    When your waitlist policies use the
    Waitlist Promotion Method
     of
    Expiration
    , you need to schedule a
    Cancel Expired Registration Waitlist Availability Events
     mass operation to remove expired waitlist registration events. You can set up multiple mass operations that run at different times to reduce delays in waitlist promotion notifications.
    1. Access the
      Mass Operation Management
       task.
    2. Complete the task:
    Option
    Description
    Mass Operation Type
    Select the
    Cancel Expired Registration Waitlist Availability Events
     mass operation.
    Input Report
    Select either the:
    • Expired Waitlist Availability Events
       report.
    • A custom report. You can copy the
      View Expired Waitlist Availability Events
       report to create a custom report for this mass operation.
    Report Definition
    Specify the instances that you want this mass operation to apply to. When you leave this blank, the mass operation applies to all instances of expired waitlist registration events within the tenant.
    Security:
    Mass Operation Management
     domain in the System functional area.
  6. (Optional) Configure the course section waitlists that you want to manually manage.
Access the
View Scheduled Mass Cancel Waitlist Availability Events
 report to view all scheduled
Cancel Expired Registration Waitlist Availability Events
 mass operations.