It’s been a busy couple of months! Between collaborating on AI initiatives, the usual start-of-year activities, attending Workday Rising in Las Vegas, and an AI gathering at Denison University, I’ve had my fair share of travel (including a somber trip to Florida for a friend’s funeral). But I’m back and ready to share some insights on how we’re leveraging Workday for document management.

Many of us with experience in higher education have encountered the limitations of document management in traditional ERPs. Often an afterthought, these systems can be clunky, poorly integrated, and necessitate separate document management solutions, creating extra work.

Workday offers a refreshing alternative. With both Worker Documents and Student Documents, we can store important information directly within the system. This functionality allows us to:

• Create custom categories: Organize documents logically and efficiently.
• Apply robust security: Control access to sensitive information using role-based permissions and segmented security constructs.

We utilize Student Documents extensively throughout the student lifecycle:

• Matriculation: We integrate with our admissions system (Slate) to automatically transfer application materials (essays, transcripts, etc.) to Workday, making them readily accessible to advisors, class deans, and the Registrar’s Office.
• Ongoing: We generate and store a variety of documents, including:
  • Unofficial Transcripts: While Workday can generate transcripts, we provide a custom two-column format for students and faculty. This is particularly helpful because it presents the information in a concise and easily readable way that Workday’s standard transcript format doesn’t offer. This is generated whenever there is some change that requires a refresh (grades, address change, honors and awards etc)
  • Enrollment Verifications: Students can access these on-demand, eliminating the need for manual requests to the Registrar’s office, which is the way it used to be. This provides students with greater autonomy and saves staff time.
  • Placement Results: First-year students and their advisors can easily view placement exam results, which are generated through student onboarding. This helps with advising and course selection, especially since some placements are required and some are optional.
  • Academic Progress Reports: Students used to access their academic progress reports, formatted in a way that’s specific to our institution’s needs. But we no longer produce these documents because we direct the students to our Extend App.

Worker Documents and Beyond

We also leverage Worker Documents for employee-related information, such as:

• COVID-19 documentation: Vaccination acknowledgements and proof of vaccination. This was especially crucial during the pandemic to track compliance with health and safety regulations.
• Employee applications and job descriptions: Keeping this information readily accessible in Workday simplifies HR processes and ensures that employees have easy access to their relevant documents.

Furthermore, we’ve found creative uses for document management in faculty recruitment:

• Consolidated application packets: We do faculty recruitment in Workday and it is very complicated. But we are able to accommodate the requests from the academic departments to structure the application so the candidates can answer several additional questions and upload several documents, both of which are very dependent on the particular search. Faculty committees like to see all submitted documents collated (different departments want them collated differently) into a single PDF. We have an integration that does this and stores the consolidated document in the Candidate profile.

Benefits of Centralization

By centralizing document management within Workday, we’ve achieved:

• Improved efficiency: Streamlined processes and reduced manual effort.
• Enhanced security: Granular control over document access.
• Reduced reliance on external systems: While we still utilize Docuware for historical employee records, primarily those hired before we implemented Workday, Workday has become our primary document management solution.

Workday’s document management capabilities have proven to be a valuable asset, allowing us to effectively manage and secure critical information across campus.