Agenda

9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.  Welcome and Introduction to the NERCOMP Workday User Group
Speaker: Kevin Kane, Director of Enterprise Systems, Wesleyan University

Welcome to the second annual NERCOMP Workday Users’ Group! This year is focused on data, reporting, and integrations. This session will provide an overview of the day and crowdsource some feedback on NERCOMP’s future Workday-related professional development offerings.

9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.  Data-Driven Integrations: Streamlining Group Management with Workday
Speakers:
Sheetal Ghadse, Integration Developer, Amherst College
Marion Cronin,  Assistant Director for Enterprise Solutions and Reporting, Amherst College

This session will explore how integration can drive operational efficiency, using the optimization of Google Groups as a core example. We’ll share how our team leveraged Workday reports and data structures to support Google Group integrations for automated access and communication management. 
The session will highlight the process of translating legacy system requirements into Workday-compatible logic, identifying and validating key data elements—such as Academic Appointment data used to define Faculty group membership and Committee data used to identify Administrative Staff entitled to attend Faculty meetings.  We’ll also discuss how thoughtful integration design, aligned with reporting requirements, can streamline processes. In addition, we'll showcase the strategic value of SnapLogic as a low-code integration tool and emphasize the importance of reusability in building scalable,
maintainable solutions.  Attendees will gain insight into the challenges we encountered and the lessons learned while developing a sustainable, data-driven approach to role-based group management.

10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.  Break

10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. The Right Tool for the Job: How IR Uses Workday Discovery Boards
Speaker: Rachael Coombes, Associate Director for Institutional Research, Wellesley College

In 2019, Wellesley College went live with Workday Student, and soon after began preparing to move from its existing student data analytics system to a Workday cloud-based solution using Prism and Discovery Boards. Learn about the collaborative work between IT and Institutional Research - how we planned our data model, handled the system changeover, and continue to build upon and expand our available data, and how Institutional Research utilizes
Discovery Boards to fulfill our data needs. This presentation will include a live demo so you can see how we develop institutional dashboards, build quick reports, and create custom datasets.

11:45 a.m.  – 12:00 p.m.  NERCOMP Professional Development Update
Speaker: Amy Schack, NERCOMP

Learn about NERCOMP's upcoming professional development offerings, the Mentorship Program, and NERCOMP 2026!

12:00 p.m.  – 1:00 p.m.  Lunch

1:00 p.m. – 2:00  p.m.  Foundation, Platform, and Future: An Essential Guide to Cloud, Data, Integrations, and Development
Speaker: Sam Donnan, Workday

This session is an essential guide to the strategic changes and technical capabilities driving Workday’s platform future, from its cloud foundation to its AI roadmap. We will provide an update on the key platform initiatives you need to understand to maximize your investment and plan your technical roadmap. 

The Foundation: Public Cloud Migration & The Data Core

Migration: Understand the transition of Workday's infrastructure to hyperscale Public Cloud providers (AWS, GCP). We will cover the key customer impacts (and the long-term benefits of enhanced resilience and speed of innovation.
Workday Data Cloud: Learn about this major new strategic data layer. The Data Cloud enables zero-copy access to your core HR, Student and Finance data, allowing seamless, secure, bidirectional sharing with external platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, and Salesforce—eliminating data silos and fueling external analytical models.

2. The Platform: Extensibility, Integration, and Development

Workday Build & Extend: Discover the new unified developer platform, Workday Build, which empowers customers and partners to create, share, and scale solutions directly on Workday. This is powered by Workday Extend, the low-code platform for building custom, secure, and update-safe apps that run natively within the Workday user experience.
Workday Orchestrate: See how this powerful, low-code tool enables you to visually design and manage end-to-end, cross-enterprise workflows. Orchestrate serves as the connective tissue that automates processes between Workday (including your Extend apps) and all your critical external systems.

3. The Future: Workday AI – Delivered Today & The Vision

What’s Delivered Today: Explore the measurable, embedded AI features you can be using right now.
Future Vision: Agentic AI: Delve into the next wave: Agentic AI. Workday is transitioning from "AI inside" to "AI as action," with intelligent agents that reason, plan, and autonomously execute complex workflows (e.g., sophisticated recruiting or financial auditing).
Governance with ASOR: Understand the critical role of the Agent System of Record (ASOR), Workday’s foundation for securely managing and governing all AI agents—Workday-built or custom—with the same security and lifecycle management as human employees.

2:00  p.m. – 2:10 p.m.  Break

2:10 p.m.  – 3:15 p.m.   All Things Workday Integration Panel Discussion
Speakers:
Andre Birenzi,  Senior Director of Enterprise Systems, Bowdoin College
Julia Keller, Director of Enterprise Systems and Integration Services, Smith College
Criss Laidlaw, Director of Administrative Information Services, Williams College
Kevin Kane,  Director of Enterprise Systems, Wesleyan University

Workday has become a cornerstone for modernizing HR, payroll, and student information systems across higher education. Yet, integrating its robust capabilities into diverse institutional ecosystems remains both a strategic opportunity and a significant challenge. This moderated panel discussion brings together experts from Bowdoin, Smith, Williams, and Wesleyan to explore the multi-dimensional aspects of Workday integrations, focusing on strategy, common pain points, lessons learned, and tangible benefits. 

The panel will cover topics ranging from core HCM implementations and student modules to the technical and organizational hurdles of platform integration. Attendees will gain insight into how these institutions have aligned Workday adoption with their broader digital transformation strategies, managed cross-campus stakeholders, and addressed data governance complexities. The session will highlight real-world experiences and provide actionable takeaways on
optimizing Workday’s platform for both administrative efficiency and student success.

3:15 p.m.  End