When it comes to Workday Student, the volume of new releases is bigger than many expect—and the workload that comes with them can be surprising. In this short video, Legato CEO, Kristina Kelpe, walks through how to find the actual number of student-related releases in Workday Community, what that means for institutions, and why higher education feels the impact differently than HR and Finance.
Click below to watch:
At Legato, we often hear institutions say: “We didn’t realize how many releases were coming out—or how much testing would be required.” Here are a few key takeaways from the video:
Sheer Volume: In just the past year, nearly 1,000 Workday Student updates were released. That’s a massive testing load for campus teams.
Unique Complexity in Higher Ed: Unlike HR or Finance, higher ed policies aren’t standardized. Financial aid, academic policies, curricula design, and faculty governance all create unique configurations at each institution.
Release Risk: Even “opt-in” or “low-impact” releases can cause unexpected issues depending on how a campus configured Workday Student. For example, we’ve seen real-world cases where updates conflicted with catalog-year-based advising models.
The Takeaway: Institutions need not only visibility into what’s being released, but also the resources and processes to test effectively—because the workload is heavier than it looks on the surface.
We’ll be diving deeper into strategies for managing release workload and testing in upcoming posts. In the meantime, what’s been your biggest challenge with Workday Student releases? Drop us a comment—we’d love to hear how your team is handling it.
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