Project WakeDay: January 2024 update

A Message from Provost Michele Gillespie and Executive Vice President and CFO Jacqueline A. Travisano, Ed.D.

Dear faculty and staff,

Thank you for allowing us this moment to update you on Project Wakeday, the University’s implementation of Workday Student. As we have shared, this implementation is expected to improve the Wake Forest experience for all faculty, students and staff by reducing manual processes, encouraging stronger interdisciplinary and cross-school collaborations, and increasing efficiencies related to academic operations, analytics and reporting.

In mid-December you received an email outlining upcoming changes to the planning and registration process, including self-service registration tools for students. Self-service registration is just one of many Workday benefits that will offer our students increased agency over their academic journey at Wake Forest. You can find or review the message at this link on the project website.

Wake Forest is launching Workday Student functionality at four key milestones. You can find a description of each, as well as the full go-live timeline, on the Project WakeDay website. The first milestone, or move-to-production (MTP1), occurred Oct. 9 and resulted in a successful launch of various functions related to the Office of the Registrar, including setting up our academic structure, programs of study, and courses and course sections in Workday. The team is now focused on MTP2 in early March, when advising and registration will go live in Workday.

Since early October, the project team has led intense end-to-end (E2E) testing for the March launch. E2E testing is a comprehensive review of every process, task and activity that will take place in Workday, rather than manually or in Banner, to be sure everything is working as expected. Compared with E2E testing for the first launch in October, which included roughly 800 test cases, the testing for this phase included almost 4,000 cases. We are happy to report that testing is on track for a successful finish this month. A sincere thank you to everyone involved — numerous faculty, staff, students and members of the testing team — who gave their time and focus to complete this monumental task.

The testing team next moves into a mock semester, which is an opportunity to simulate key semester activities, including updating student contact information, waiving prerequisites and viewing waitlists, removing student holds and more. Select faculty, students and staff will execute these activities just as they would in a live system. Performing a mock semester is important because it builds confidence in what has been configured and shows that Project WakeDay is ready to move processes into a live production environment.

Finally, an update on training. Many of you will soon receive invitations to sessions related to your roles at the University and based on how and when you will use Workday for daily activities. Sessions start in February, with the first set related to advising. Advisors are strongly encouraged to attend in person to receive hands-on instruction, learn how to access support materials, and to ask questions. As dates are finalized and information becomes available, all will be published on the appropriate pages of the project website’s training section.

Additionally, faculty, staff and students from the broader campus community will be invited to attend readiness sessions led by the Change Management team. At these sessions, team members will introduce you to the look and feel of Workday Student and demonstrate functionality related to key tasks. The times, dates and locations for these events are published on the project website. Invitations to events, including Zoom links, will arrive soon from the Project WakeDay team.

To stay up to date with Project WakeDay, we encourage you to bookmark the website, watch this series of videos, and subscribe to The Word on WakeDay. Please note that for the videos, your WFU log-in may be required. You can also request a presentation for your unit from the Change Management team, and as always, you can submit questions and feedback through this form.

We look forward to continued engagement throughout this semester, and we thank you for supporting this journey toward a stronger, more innovative Wake Forest.