The Workday R1 and R2 Release Preparation Checklist
A practical checklist for preparing your Workday tenant before each R1 and R2 release — what to scan, what to validate, who to involve, and how to avoid the production breakages most tenants discover the hard way.
The release rhythm
Workday releases R1 in March and R2 in September. Each release ships hundreds of changes — feature additions, deprecations, security defaults, calculated field function updates, and AI capability shifts. Most tenants survive the release; some don't. The difference is preparation.
8 weeks out: baseline
Run a complete tenant health check. This is your "current good state" — the baseline you'll compare release-impact analysis against.
4 weeks out: release-readiness scan
Run a release-readiness scan against the published What's New for the upcoming release. The scan should categorize findings as Will Break, Likely Affected, Worth Validating, and Informational. See our release readiness page for details.
3 weeks out: triage
Triage findings into the change calendar. Critical and High findings need owners and remediation deadlines before release. Lower findings can wait but should be tracked.
2 weeks out: stakeholder communication
Brief your VP HR, CIO, payroll lead, and integration owners on the changes that affect their areas. Use the executive summary from your readiness report — it's already written for them.
1 week out: final pre-release scan
Re-scan to confirm every Critical and High finding has been remediated. Anything remaining is documented risk going into the release.
Release weekend
Workday updates your sandbox first, then production. Validate your most critical business processes (payroll, hire, term, comp change) in sandbox before production cutover.
48 hours after
Run a post-release validation scan. Compare to the pre-release scan. Anything new is a release-introduced issue — typically a security default change or a deprecated calculated field function. Address before the next business cycle.
The continuous discipline
The teams that handle releases best treat them as a continuous cycle, not a once-a-year fire drill. Monthly hygiene scans between releases keep the baseline clean. Pre-release scans then surface only release-specific impact, not accumulated tenant drift. See tools for Workday administrators for the full routine.
Find out what's broken in your tenant
Free first scan. Read-only access. Results in under 2 hours.
Start Your Free Scan