As the curtain rises on the 2023R2 release of Workday, a new set of deprecated fields emerges, prompting the need for careful management. In this article, we explore creation of logic that can be embedded within custom reports to more effectively manage these deprecated fields within Workday.
The Challenge of Identifying Deprecated Fields
Workday users are familiar with the "Do Not Use" designation that flags deprecated fields. However, the challenge lies in the identification of these fields beyond the Workday-Delivered realm. While the "All Custom Reports with 'Do Not Use' Items" report is a valuable asset, its scope is confined to identifying the deprecated field at the report usage level, leaving potentially unnoticed calculated fields that contain deprecated elements.
I like to build a couple of custom all fields reports, one being more of a general fields audit and another being a usage-based audit. In these audit reports, I have a calculated field that I create to help identify these deprecated/Do Not Use fields that are nested within other fields.
Step 1:
The calculation at the root is the "CF TF Field is Do Not Use." The need for this arises because the Workday-delivered "Do Not Use" field doesn't always seem to work, so I add extra logic to further identify a deprecated field. Note: There are additional identifiers for a calculated field being deprecated, one being the field category. Feel free to add that into the logic, just make sure you use an "OR."
The logic within is "Do Not Use" > equal to > Yes OR Field Name > contains > (Do Not Use)
Step 2:
To extract Do Not Use fields that are a level deeper within a field, we'll need to dig into the multi-instance "Report Fields Used for Security." Here, we can create an Extract Multi-Instance (EMI) field to grab those nested fields that are "Do Not Use."
Step 3:
To round things out, to understand if the top level field itself or any fields within are Do Not Use, we'll need to have another True/False (TF) field that brings these couple of pieces of logic together. This field offers an encompassing perspective on whether the top-level field or any of its nested components are marked as deprecated.
"CF TF Field is Do Not Use" > equal to > Yes OR "CF EMI Report Fields Used for Security Do Not Use" > is not empty
By utilizing this logic to thoroughly uncover nested deprecated fields a more comprehensive level of usage insight can be obtained.
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