Integration
Timetabling alongside Workday Student
Workday splits the course into three objects where most systems have one, and the split is exactly where a timetabling boundary wants to be. This page is about that, in Workday’s own object names.
Three objects, and why it helps
A Course Definition is the course as the catalogue describes it. A Course Section Definition is the administrative pattern behind an offering — section controls, contact hours, the owning Academic Unit. A Course Section is the offering a student actually sees and registers for, in one Academic Period.
Meeting patterns, instructors and locations are assigned at the section level. That is convenient: the boundary between what Workday should own and what a timetable should decide falls on an object line rather than through the middle of one.
Which Workday object holds what
| Workday Student | What it holds | What the timetable does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Course Definition | The course in the catalogue | Becomes the course. |
| Course Section Definition | The administrative pattern — section controls, contact hours, Academic Unit | Becomes the turn and its parts. Contact hours are what the week has to accommodate. |
| Course Section | The offering students register for, in one Academic Period | The thing being scheduled. |
| Academic Period | The semester or term, with its start and end dates | The year and the week range. |
| Academic Unit | The owning faculty or department | Which planner owns it, and which rooms it may claim first. See faculty synchronisation. |
| Meeting Pattern | The days and times a section meets | The session. Assigned at section level, which is where the timetable writes back. |
| Delivery Mode | In person, online, hybrid | Whether a room is needed. Hybrid is the one worth agreeing a rule for before you start. |
| Section Status | Preliminary, open, closed, waitlist, canceled | Preliminary is the draft schedule; anything past open is committed and should not move without notice. See modifying timetables. |
| Program of Study | Majors, programmes, concentrations, minors, certificates | The student structure the groups are built from. |
| Grading Basis | Which grades an instructor may assign | Nothing. It travels with the section and stays in Workday. |
| Registration Appointment | When a student may register | Nothing directly — but it is the deadline the whole schedule build works back from. |
Which direction each thing travels
Into the timetable: the section list for the Academic Period, with delivery mode, contact hours, expected enrolment and the owning Academic Unit.
Out of the timetable: the meeting pattern and the location, back against the section — which is the level Workday holds them at anyway.
The one to settle early is status. Sections in preliminary can be moved freely; once they are open, moving one is a change a registered student sees. Agree with the registrar which statuses the timetable may still touch, and what happens when it must touch one that is open.
The general form of this argument is in integrating your timetable with your SIS.
What we do not have, said plainly
There is no Workday connector, no Workday Extend app and no partnership. An institution mid-migration to Workday Student should hear that before it hears anything else.
What there is: Excel, CSV, XML and a documented REST API, described in importing data and SIS integration. Workday reports export cleanly, and a report is a file.
GET https://wise-tt.com/api/v2/meta answers with no token and no account — see the REST API.
Want to see this working?
Book a 45-minute online presentation and we will walk through it against your institution's own scheduling problem.