Project Update 5

Wake Forest is launching Workday Student functionality at four key milestones, and with two milestones complete, the team is well on schedule to meet its remaining goals:

• Check! The first milestone, or move-to-production (MTP1), occurred in October 2023 and focused on registrar functions, including setting up the University’s academic structure, programs of study, and courses and course sections in Workday. 
• Check! In early March 2024, MTP2 moved advising, academic planning and course registration activities into the new system.
• This summer: For MTP3 in July 2024, student financials activities will go live in Workday. These include accounts, financial aid disbursements, tuition assessment, payment plans, student balances and more. In preparation, Change Management will hold two virtual demonstrations on May 1 and June 12. All community members are invited to attend, and students are highly encouraged to participate. Those interested can register and add their preferred event to their calendar at this link.

This fall: MTP4 is scheduled for Fall 2024, when faculty, staff and students will begin using Workday for viewing grades and transcripts, applying for graduation and grading. More information, as well as demonstration dates and training materials, will be available closer to the live date.

In late January, the testing team led a mock semester, or dress rehearsal, to simulate key semester activities in Workday. All six schools were represented, and more than 70 Wake Foresters participated, including 30-plus students, 15-plus faculty and 15-plus administrators. These exercises were a live practice session as well as a way to collect feedback and immediately apply it to on-demand training materials. Comments were encouraging and included “easy to navigate,” “everything worked well,” “This was way easier than I thought,” and “Thank you for the opportunity for this trial run.”

“It was a positive experience,” says Associate Provost Anne Hardcastle. “I want to commend the way that Change Management folks have presented little bits of information all along, so that when we were finally in the system we were like, ‘Oh yes, I remember seeing this during a Readiness Session.’ This approach led to good familiarity in what to expect.”

In addition to mock semester, the training team completed in-depth, end-to-end (E2E) testing related to system functions and integrations. E2E testing is a comprehensive review of every process, task and activity that will take place in Workday to be sure everything is working as expected. Compared with E2E testing for the first launch in October, which included roughly 800 test cases and about 25 testers, the testing for MTP2 included about 4,400 cases and almost 100 testers.

“To meet our goals, the testing team leaned heavily on members of the project team and many people outside of the project,” says Anthony Hughes, Assistant Director of Enterprise Systems and Cloud Platforms. “We made tremendous progress with their support. Their focus helped us weed out bugs and unexpected defects so that we could be in the best possible shape ahead of the March go-live date. I appreciate everyone sticking with it through many hours of review.”

Work continues on integrations, which are connections to outside systems WFU uses that are necessary to launch Workday, including Slate, Follett, StarRez, Leepfrog and more. Integrations are completed as they are needed, and 18 were slated and ready for March. There are 63 more integrations in progress, with 36 planned for the July milestone and 27 planned for the final milestone later this summer.

The Change Management (CM) team kicked into high gear over the last few months, continuing its regular meetings with the project’s Change Networks while also spending significant time offering demonstrations to the entire campus community. 

“Over the past few months, the CM team has worked diligently to offer multiple modalities of training to the campus community. We wanted to connect with students, faculty and staff in meaningful ways, so getting onto campus to chat one on one was important to us, as was offering several demonstrations of Workday functionality, both in person and on Zoom,” says Matt Imboden, Change Management Lead. “Another major focus was digitally publishing detailed Q&A’s, as well as a comprehensive library of on-demand materials, which were customized and organized for students, faculty and staff. These materials will remain both helpful and relevant as the University community continues to learn and utilize Workday in new and powerful ways.”

Keep reading for an overview of CM’s many activities and communications, and check out this graphic for even more eye-popping statistics.

• The Staff Change Network met four times for Readiness Sessions about Advising and Academic Planning, Registration and Class Management, Student Financials and Financial Aid, and Graduation, Grading, and Transcripts.
• The Faculty Advisory Panel met for a Readiness Session on Academic Advising and Registration.
• Program and Department Academic Coordinators met three times for Readiness Sessions about Academic Records, Advising and Academic Planning, and Registration and Class Management.
• More than 30 Readiness Sessions were conducted both in person and virtually for faculty, staff and students. Advising presentations were designed specifically for lower division advisors, major/minor advisors, graduate academic advisors, and academic coaching and support roles. Advising and registration demonstrations were also held for faculty, student and broad campus audiences.
• Members of the CM team, along with several faculty, staff, student workers and Fellows, tabled across campus for almost 130 hours, handing out Project WakeDay swag and directly helping students create saved schedules and more ahead of registration.
• CM also offered individual presentations and demonstrations to about 20 student organizations between mid-January and the end of March, including DSAP, the World Tea Association, STAC, CLAC, Student Government, CLASS, ROTC, the Women’s Center, the Panhellenic Council, the LGBTQ+ Center, the Intercultural Center and SGA, among many more.

The training team stayed busy preparing, finalizing and publishing more than 200 on-demand support materials for faculty, staff and students, including 85-plus job aids, 10 reference guides, 25-plus videos and much more. These materials are organized and searchable on the faculty, staff and student training webpages. The training team also held 10 open labs, in cooperation with the Office of the University Registrar, throughout February for Program, Department and Academic Coordinators. Ahead of MTP3 in July, the team continues to write and define training and support materials related to student financials, which will soon be available on the training pages.

It is also likely (and by design!) that so far in 2024, almost every person at Wake Forest either received, viewed or engaged with a communication from Project WakeDay:

• Several e-invitations to Readiness Sessions were sent to all faculty, staff and students.
• Banners, fliers, and lawn and digital signs popped up across campus, advertising upcoming demonstrations and reminding students about their Workday onboarding tasks.
• A six-week social media campaign was published in cooperation with several offices, including Information Systems, the Office of the Provost, the Intercultural Center, Human Resources, the Women’s Center and more.
• New Faculty and Staff and Student FAQ pages were published on the project website, and updates were made to the Workday.wfu.edu website.
• A variety of handouts were designed, handed out and published on the project website for both faculty and students.
• And a total of 19 videos were completed and published on the project’s Kaltura channel.