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A
- Academic Unit (AU)
Workday Student's primary organizational structure is built around Academic Units. An academic unit could be a senior college, division, or other unit that admits students and offers programs of study or courses. Academic process flows, security access, Workday rule inheritance and reporting are often structured by academic unit.
- Academic Foundation
A functional workstream focused on academic structure, programs of study, academic calendars, and educational taxonomy.
- Alchemy
Northwest's Workday implementation partner
- Architect and Configure Stage (A&C)
Workday implementation stage in which the bulk of future state design work occurs. During this stage, the project team gathers requirements and technical specifications, then uses them to configure the software solution. The team also prepares for testing activities during this stage.
B
- 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
- Change Management Team
A functional workstream focused on organizational readiness and preparing the Northwest community for change. The Change Team drives project communications and training based on changes to the end-user experience.
- Cloud-Based
Refers to software and services that run on the internet instead of on a server at Northwest or locally on your computer.
- Cross-Functional
Workday functional area comprised of representatives from all other areas on the implementation project who design, review, test and modify system functionality that reaches across multiple functional areas.
- Curriculum and Advising
A functional workstream focused on advising, academic plans, degree audit (academic progress reports), and curriculum/course creation and management.
D
- Data Conversion
The process to migrate data from legacy systems to Workday.
- Data Governance
Guidelines and standards to effectively manage data. Aligned with policies and procedures set forth by Northwest's Governance Model.
- Data Load
The process of importing legacy system data into Workday.
- Data Validation
The process of confirming that data form Northwest legacy systems has loaded properly into Workday.
- Deploy
Stage during Workday implementation; final preparations occur during this stage prior to systems going live for end users.
- Discovery Stage
In advance of the Workday implementation, the Northwest project team engaged in a Discovery Phase with Alchemy (implementation partner) consultants to better position the project for success. Phase 1 Discovery occurred from June 2025 to July 2025.
E
- End-to-end (E2E) Process
A series of tasks and activities that includes each step of an action that may occur across functional areas. An E2E process may be fully within Workday or may also include external systems.
- End-to-end (E2E) Testing
A comprehensive review of the end-to-end process. E2E testing includes moving through all steps of a process to ensure that the steps and functionality is as expected and produces the desired end result.
F
- Finance (FIN)
Workday system for managing financial data and processes.
- Financial Aid
A functional workstream focused on areas related to financial aid.
- Functional Area
Group of related processes and data that support a core administrative, academic, or student activity or function, such as human capital management (HCM), payroll, finance, advising, student records or student financials. Much of the Workday project work is organized around functional areas.
- Functional Lead
Northwest project team member assigned to lead the configuration of a Workday functional area. The functional lead is responsible for driving the design of Workday processes, policies, and integrations.
G
H
- Human Capital Management (HCM)
Workday system for managing human resources data and processes.
I
- Inbound integration
Inbound integrations move data from a different system into Workday.
- Integration
A connection between different systems currently being used by Northwest so data can be shared to meet business functionality goals in Workday.
- Integrations Workstream
Workday implementation workstream focused on developing integrations between Workday and other university systems.
J
K
L
- Legacy System
Current technology system or application in use at Northwest.
M
- Milestone
Often referred to as a "Business Function Milestone" indicating a goal date by which designated processes and functionality within a business area will be fully built, tested, confirmed and ready for end user utilization within Workday.
- Mock Semester
Mock Semester is a simulated experience designed to practice business functions within Workday Student, involving both students and administrators. It replicates activities that typically occur over a semester, allowing participants to engage in scenarios that span several days or weeks.
- Move to production (MTP)
Workday Student implementation term; denotes the dates during which Workday configuration and data move into the production tenant. MTPs are different from go-live, which is the point at which the university will begin using specific functionality in Workday. There are two moves to production in the Workday Student implementation timeline.
- Move to production 1 (MTP1)
The first move to production.
- Move to production 2 (MTP2)
The second move to production.
O
- Outbound Integration
An outbound integration takes data from Workday and loads it into a different system.
P
- Plan
An initial stage during implementation in which Northwest works with Alchemy consultants to map out the calendar of work, identify resource needs, and address any potential roadblocks prior to beginning the Architect and Configure stage.
- 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.
Platform is also the term used to represent Phase 1 of the Workday Implementation Project with includes functionality related to HCM, Finance, and PATT (Payroll, Absence and Time Tracking).
- Production Tenant
The version of Workday that is being used to complete live transactions.
- Production
A system is “in production” when it is being used to complete live transactions.
Q
R
- Recruiting and Admissions
A functional workstream focused on student recruitment, admissions and entry into Northwest institutions.
- Reporting
Informational summaries that extract data from Workday in order to inform decisions or actions.
- Role
A grouping of specific responsibilities within an organization that are assigned to positions. A role is assigned to a security group to gain access to data associated with the role's responsibilities. People are assigned to one or more roles in Workday based on their job responsibilities.
S
- Security Role
Security roles are how Workday manages what each user can see and do in the system. Roles are assigned to position types in Workday to enable data access and the ability to perform certain tasks.
- Security
The framework for managing user access within the system.
- Student Information System (SIS)
The Student Information System, or SIS, is the official record of the University and contains academic records and data for all students. At Northwest, the legacy SIS is Banner which will be replaced by Workday Student in Phase 2 of the project.
- Student Financials
A functional workstream focused on calculating charges, producing bills, receiving payments and preparing tax statements for students.
- Student Records
A functional workstream focused on academic records and registration.
- Subject Matter Expert (SME)
A member of a Northwest community who possess the operational knowledge around a specific subject including related policies and governance for changes.
- Supervisory Organization
Supervisory organizations group workers into a management hierarchy and are the primary organization type in Workday HCM. All workers are hired into supervisory organizations. Organization assignments such as company, cost center, and region can be configured for supervisory organizations, and unique business processes can be configured for them as well.
T
- Tenant
A tenant is a Workday software environment, similar to development, test, stage and production environments. Northwest will use and manage several Workday tenants throughout the course of the implementation.
- Test Stage
Workday implementation stage during which the project team conducts several rounds of testing to confirm that the system works as designed.
U
- User Readiness Review
Testing activity designed to help select end users become familiar with the Workday system and provide feedback on their user experience.
V
W
- Workset
A workset contains a collection of objectives to be completed within a defined timeframe during the Architect and Configure stage of Student (Phase 2). Workset objectives include the design and functionality of processes that will be conducted in Workday Student. Northwest's implementation will have four worksets: A, B, C and D.
- Workstream
Workday implementation term used to organize related project work areas. Various representatives and subject matter experts from across Northwest are a part of each others workstreams.
X
Y
Z
» Workday
