Browse the glossary for definitions of project and Workday terms.

This glossary includes terminology related to configuration and maintenance of the Workday Student product as well as management of the Student Sunrise project. Some terms may be familiar, but defining them explicitly is essential to implementing Workday Student successfully. As well, some terms are used differently than WashU traditionally uses them.

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A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Academic Appointment: In Workday, faculty, staff, academic affiliates and students are eligible to teach classes. Academic appointments are the connecting point to allow those individuals to be linked to a course section and anything related to that course.

Academic Calendar: The academic calendar provides the time framework for Workday Student. It is the template for creating academic years (2022-2023) and academic periods.

Academic Foundations: Workday functional area that establishes the structures in which our student systems environment operates. Components of Academic Foundations including our academic structure, programs of study, academic calendars, date controls and student eligibility rules.

Academic Level: The level of study of the program. WashU will use two academic levels: undergraduate and graduate.

Academic Period: An academic period is a formalized segment of time within an academic calendar that has defined start and end dates. An academic period is offered in each academic year iteration of an academic calendar. These periods can be configured with standard start/end dates, or without standard start/end dates.

Academic Plan: Academic plans are a tool to help students plan out what courses they should take during which academic period to satisfy the academic requirements for their program of study.​

Academic Record: An academic record is a collection of a student’s academic activities (GPA, registrations, academic history). In Workday, students can have a single or multiple academic record(s) that can include one or multiple programs of study.

Academic Requirement: Academic requirements define what a student needs to do to complete a program of study. Academic requirements enable advisors, staff and students to track and verify a student’s progress towards completing their program of study.

Academic Unit: The primary organizational structure in Workday Student. Academic units are used to represent schools, divisions or any other unit that admits students, offers programs of study or offers courses. Academic units are structured together to manage academic process flows, security access, Workday rule inheritance and reporting.

Academic Unit Hierarchy: Workday offers an additional method for grouping academic units for reporting purposes called the academic unit hierarchy. The academic unit hierarchy is related to but separate from the academic unit structure.

Academic Unit Structure: Within Workday, related academic units are organized together to form the academic unit structure.

Active Record: A student’s record is active if it is available for transactional processing in Workday.

Active Student: In Workday active students meet at least one of these criteria: are currently enrolled/eligible to enroll in a course, have enrolled and received a grade in the three years prior to go-live, and/or have an outstanding balance on their account.

Addable (addable program of study): Addable refers to a configurable trait of a non-primary program of study in relation to a primary program of study on a student record. Addable programs can be enrolled-in and completed in the same timeframe as its primary program of study. Addable status is a prerequisite for achieving stackable status.

Advising, Degree Audit & Curriculum: Workday functional area that addresses critical areas for the Workday Student implementation related to advising, academic plans, degree audit (academic progress reports), and curriculum/course creation and management.

Anticipated Aid: Financial aid that has been awarded but has not been received by the institution or credited to the student account.

Append: Allows a student to submit a new application for a particular program of study and have it added to an existing academic record.

Application Programming Interface (API): A software intermediary that allows two different applications to exchange data.

Architect, Configure & Prototype Stage (ACP): Workday Student implementation stage in which the bulk of future state design work occurs. During this stage, the project team gathers academic process requirements and technical specifications, then uses them to configure the software solution. The team also prepares for testing activities during this stage.

Automatic Past Due Balance: Automatic Past Due Balance hold assignments can be configured for students with high past due balances. Until they lower their balance to an acceptable amount, these hold assignments prevent students from registering for classes, receiving diplomas or other important processes.

Award Packaging: Aid/award packaging allows a person to manage all aspects of automating aid awards, including general eligibility requirements, grade-level limits and program limits for the institution’s specific packaging.


B

Business Analyst (BA): WashU project team member who evaluates academic and student processes and how they align with stakeholder needs. This team member assesses the impact of process changes; captures, analyzes, documents and manages requirements for assigned projects; and supports the communication and delivery of those requirements to stakeholders.

Business Process (BP): In Workday a business process is an automated workflow that routes tasks to designated users. Common tasks include to-dos, reviews and approvals. Alerts can also be set up to notify a user that a step has begun or was completed, or a particular review response was selected.


C

Campus Engagement: We will engage experts from across the university throughout the project to capture the needs and viewpoints of our schools and academic units. Campus members will be involved in a variety of activities to support system configuration and help prepare their schools and units for changes identified by the project.

Campus Teams: Campus teams are groups of experts in a particular functional area who support the project team by providing insight into current academic practices in each school/academic unit, contributing to the design and configuration of Workday Student and helping the university adopt the new system.

Change Manager: WashU project team member who serves as a liaison between the project and the schools/units and provides support during the transition to Workday Student. The change managers will help their assigned schools and units prepare for anticipated changes to their area.

the Cloud: Refers to software and services that run on the Internet instead of on a server at WashU or locally on your computer.

Concentration: A program of study that is required as part of a degree program. It may be required at the point of admission or may be selected post-matriculation. Also, it may be offered at the graduate or undergraduate level. 

Course Tags: Course tags are custom identifiers that attach to courses or course sections to categorize them and make them easier to track and manage.

Course Section: A course section is the specific instance of a course for which a student registers during a given academic period.


D

Data Audit: The automated review of data in Workday against data from our legacy systems.

Data Conversion: The process to migrate data from our legacy systems to Workday.

Data Governance: Organizational framework that establishes guidelines and standards to effectively manage data. Includes common definitions for terms and other pieces of data.

Data Load: The process of importing legacy system data into Workday.

Data Warehouse: A centralized repository of data so that a shared, single source of truth may exist. This central repository – along with tools, training and processes – will enable units to better leverage the university’s data as an asset.

Data Validation: Confirming that data from our legacy systems has loaded properly into Workday.

Data Verification: The manual review of data in Workday against data in our legacy systems.

Deploy Stage: Workday Student implementation stage; training and final go-live preparations occur during the Deploy Stage.

Discovery Stage: In advance of the Workday Student implementation, the Student Sunrise project team completed a Discovery Phase to better position the project for success. Our discovery work, which ran from March 2020 to May 2021, focused on understanding how we do things today in our academic and student support areas and flagging things to consider and address as we implement Workday Student.

Disbursement: A payment to a student from their financial aid package.

Dual Programs: A dual program involves two separate programs of study that usually share some common curricular elements and may allow a specified amount of double-counting. Dual programs are designed and approved by a cross-departmental or cross-school faculty committee, or separately by both schools’ committees, who have agreed on the common elements. Dual programs may be WashU-only or cross-institutional and are pursued at the same time (either concurrently or consecutively).


E

Effective Dates/Dating: An effective date in Workday is the date when a version of something goes into effect. Based on the action being completed, this may be a past, present or future date.

End-to-end (E2E) Process: The connection of series of tasks and activities that includes all steps across functional boundaries. E2E process may include tasks or activities that are manual or occur in systems other than Workday.

End-to-end (E2E) Testing: A comprehensive review of the end-to-end process. E2E testing will review processes in Workday and could include tasks or activities that are manual or occur in systems other than Workday.

Enterprise Applications (EA): WashU IT department that manages all technology systems and applications that are used enterprise-wide for the university.


F

Federal Work-Study: Federal Work-Study (FWS) is a federal program offered and administered by WashU that provides opportunity for part-time employment to students with financial need to help pay their educational expenses. Students are responsible for finding qualified employment. Funds are paid out through a paycheck, as earned.

Finance (FIN): Or Workday Finance; Workday’s tool for managing financial data and processes. WashU implemented Workday Finance in 2021.

Financial Aid: Workday functional area; addresses critical areas for the Workday Student implementation related to financial aid.

Functional Area: Group of related processes and data that support a core academic or student activity or function, such as advising, curriculum management or student financials. Much of the Workday Student project work is organized around functional areas.

Functional Lead (FL): WashU project team member assigned to lead the configuration of a Workday Student functional area. The functional lead is responsible for driving the design of Workday processes, policies and integrations.


H

Homegrown: Systems developed by WashU, as opposed to a vended system.

Human Capital Management (HCM): Or Workday Human Capital Management / Workday HCM. Workday’s tool for managing human resources and payroll data and processes. WashU implemented Workday HCM in 2021.


I

Inactive Record: A student’s record will be inactive if that student has withdrawn from the university, has been dismissed or suspended, or has completed their program.

Inbound integration: In the context of Student Sunrise, an inbound integration takes data from a different system and loads it into Workday.

Inheritance (Policy Inheritance): By default, any policies configured to an academic unit and level apply to the subordinate academic units, unless a separate policy is set up. This top-down cascade is referred to as inheritance.

Integration: A connection between different systems within the WashU ecosystem so that data can be shared to meet our business goals.

Integration Design Document (IDD): A document defining the technical design, data flow, use cases, and details of the data connections between Workday and another WashU system.

Integrations Workstream: Workday Student implementation workstream that will focus on developing integrations between Workday and other university systems that are necessary to launch Workday.

Intercession: In Workday, this is a non-standard academic period that can overlap with other academic periods as long as they fall within the dates of a standard academic period.


L

Launch: Workday Student implementation term; denotes the point at which WashU will begin using a defined set of Workday functionality in production. The project includes four launches during the go-live year. See the timeline for more information.

Legacy System: Current technology system or application in use at WashU.


M

Matriculation: Matriculation occurs on the first day of class. Until that time, students who have committed to WashU are “pre-matriculated.” In Workday, a student is “matriculated” once the student has accepted their offer of admission and their records move into Workday. Matriculation then creates the academic record and begins the onboarding process. This will be a separate/different definition of the current WashU utilized FERPA matriculation and means there will be two definitions of “matriculation” across WashU.

Move to production (MTP): Workday Student implementation term; denotes the dates during the Deploy Stage at which Workday configuration and data move into the production tenant. This may differ from launch dates, the points at which the university will begin using specific functionality in production. There are two moves to production in WashU’s Workday Student implementation timeline.

Move to production 1 (MTP1): The first move to production.

Move to production 2 (MTP2): The second move to production.

Mulesoft: WashU’s third-party integration platform. Mulesoft is an integration intermediary platform that allows data to be transferred between systems.

MyDay: WashU project that implemented Workday HCM and Finance. MyDay also established new foundations to make it easier to share and manage data across the university, including helping to create the office of data governance and implementing new data management tools, processes and policies.


O

Organizational Change Management (OCM): A framework that helps individuals and organizations move through a change that is desired to achieve a specific organizational outcome.

Organizational Change Management (OCM) Team: The Student Sunrise project has a team dedicated to organizational change management (OCM team) that focuses on the people side of change (vs. the technical side). The Student Sunrise OCM team will support project communications and training, document changes and assess their impacts, and focus on preparing the university community for go-live.

Outbound Integration: In the context of Student Sunrise, an outbound integration takes data from Workday and loads it into a different system.


P

Platform: A single system with multiple product/functionality offerings. Workday’s tools for HCM, Finance and Student operate on a unified platform that creates a seamless end-user experience with one place to access data and processes for all these areas.

Policy: Can refer to a university policy or a Workday policy, the latter of which is a rule set configured in the system. Policies in Workday are “passed down” from superior academic units and “inherited” by their subordinate academic units.

PowerFAIDS: WashU’s system to manage financial aid administration for Danforth undergraduate, graduate and law students. PowerFAIDS replaced WashU’s legacy STAR system in 2020 to manage all aspects of the financial aid process, including applications, disbursements, award distribution and federal work-study.

Primary Program of Study: Workday requires one program of study to be the primary program. The primary program is, by default, the first active program a student declares. If only one standalone program exists on a student’s record, it will be the primary program.

Production: A system is “in production” when it is being used to complete live transactions.

Production Tenant: The instance of Workday that is being used to complete live transactions.

Program of Study: Used to organize academic functions (such as course requirements), people (such as faculty or students) and/or credentials (such as degrees or certificates) within Workday. Today’s major program (MP) in SIS is the analogue to a program of study in Workday.

Program of Study Type: A program of study type defines the educational objective and differentiates it from other educational objectives being pursued, as well as governs addable/stackable rules. Workday offers several types of programs of study, and functionality differs for each program of study type.


R

Refactor: Updating an existing system to send or receive data from Workday Student. Refactoring may include changing a system’s business logic; changing a system’s technical design; and/or adding, removing, or merging database fields or tables.

Reporting: The process of organizing data into informational summaries in order to monitor how different academic and student areas are performing.

Reporting Record: When students have multiple academic records, the reporting record establishes primacy for processing and reporting. ​

Reserved Capacity: Functionality that enables seats to be “saved” in a course section based on specified criteria, such as a student’s program of study or class year.

Retrofit: In the context of Student Sunrise, retrofitting means adding Workday as a source system in an existing integration rather than creating a new integration.

Rolling go-live: A product release featuring functionality that is released through a series of launches over the course of one academic year (AY2024-25) rather than all at once.


S

Security: Workday Security is the framework for managing user access within the system.

Security Role: Security roles are how Workday manages what each user can see and do in the system. Roles are assigned to positions in Workday to enable data access and the ability to perform certain tasks.

Service Delivery Model (SDM): The methodology, tools, processes and team that support Workday in production at WashU post-go-live. The SDM, or “Workday Help”, team manages the release of new Workday functionality, addresses issues, answers community questions, and updates training and support materials. WashU currently has an SDM team supporting Workday HCM and Finance.

Shadow System: A WashU system that has been developed to take information from a core university system (most often a finance, HR, research or student system) and feed it into a department’s personal system (often an Access or SQL Database) for departmental reporting. Shadow systems function as a workaround process in today’s environment to combine data from multiple systems into a single report. In Workday, much student, HR and financial data will be available in a unified platform, reducing the need for shadow systems.

SIS: Student Information System; WashU’s legacy student information system comprising 32 separate but connected homegrown technology systems, including WebSTAC, WebFAC and WUCRSL. SIS is the official record of the university, containing academic records and data for all WashU students.

Slate: WashU’s system to manage admissions for all undergraduate programs and most graduate programs.

Source Data Analysis: The process of determining how to format our legacy system data for loading into Workday.

Specialization: A program of study that is not required as part of a degree program or at the point of admission. It may be offered at the graduate or undergraduate level as an additional program of study related to, but not required by, a degree program.

Stabilization Stage: Workday Student implementation stage; addresses post go-live fixes and ensures the system is stable for operations.

Stackable (stackable program of study): Stackable refers to a configurable trait of a non-primary programs of study, in relation to a primary program of study. Stackable programs may be added to a student record and can be completed independently of (before or after) the primary program of study on that record.

Student: Or Workday Student. Workday’s tool for managing academic and student data and processes, including student records, student financials, curriculum, advising and more.

Student Cohort: Student cohorts are configurable collections of students that share characteristics such as program of study, academic unit, special population, tuition rate, etc.

Student Financials: Workday functional area; involves calculating charges, producing bills, receiving payments and preparing tax statements for students.

Student Onboarding: Once matriculated in Workday, first-time students are onboarded via the student onboarding process in Workday.

Student Record: A student record is the complete picture of a student’s academic relationship with the university.

Student Sponsor Contract: A student sponsor contract is an agreement by an agency, company, embassy, or other organization to pay all or a portion of a student’s tuition and fees.

Subject: A subject is the area of study for a course, like accounting or biomedical engineering. In Workday, these align most closely with “departments” in WUCRSL and, similarly, can be used to filter courses. Most departments in WUCRSL will be converted into Workday as subjects.

Subject Matter Expert (SME): A member of the WashU community who knows the functional and operational details of a particular subject.


T

Tenant: Workday implementation term; describes an instance of the Workday system. In technical terms, a tenant is a Workday software environment, similar to development, test, stage and production environments. WashU will use and manage several Workday tenants throughout the course of the implementation.

Testing Stage: Workday Student implementation stage during which the project team conducts several rounds of testing to confirm that the system works as designed.

Third Party Outside Payment: A Third Party Outside Payment is made by an outside agency, corporation, State Prepaid Tuition Plan, etc.


W

Waiver: The agreement of a lender to overlook a borrower’s failure to meet one or more conditions.

WebFAC: Web-based faculty access system; legacy WashU system, part of SIS. A web-based application that allows faculty, instructors, teaching assistants and advisors to perform two main functions: access course and roster information and access advisee academic information.

WebSTAC: Web-based student access system; legacy WashU system, part of SIS. A student’s access point to his/her academic record at WashU. Students can complete a variety of academic and other activities within WebSTAC, including adding/dropping classes, checking grades, requesting an official transcript, printing an unofficial transcript, reviewing billing information, interacting with Dining Services, Campus Card Services and Residential Life program sites, and more.

Workset: Workday Student implementation term. A workset contains a collection of objectives to be completed within a defined timeframe (6-7 months) during the Architect, Configure & Prototype Stage. WashU’s implementation contains four worksets: A, B, C & D.

Workstream: Workday Student implementation term used to organize related project work areas. The Student Sunrise project work is divided into three main categories – functional, technical and organizational change management – each of which are composed of multiple workstreams.

WUCRSL: WashU CouRSe Listing System; legacy WashU system, part of SIS used by administrators. Database for course data, which is organized by curriculum, semester and section. Typically referred to as “Course Listings” by non-administrators, including students.


Data Governance

WashU’s Office of Data Governance (ODG) manages Collibra, WashU’s data intelligence platform. Collibra is the single source of truth of all our data governance and stewardship activities and will allow WashU to maximize the value of our data. 

Official definitions of project and Workday terms will be housed in Collibra. The Student Sunrise team is working in partnership with the ODG to identify and define academic and student terms and add them to Collibra. These definitions may be more technically focused than the definitions found on this page. Collibra is available to any WashU employee with a WUSTL Key.