Removing Award Analyst role from Workday

After successful testing with the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, we’re proceeding with removing the Award Analyst security role from Workday. This will streamline security roles and reduce administrative burden in Sponsored Programs Services (SPS). We are targeting May 31 for complete removal.

Why remove the Award Analyst security role?

The Award Analyst security role is assigned at the award header level in Workday to give visibility to all award lines in reports.

It must be assigned to each individual award, which is very time-consuming for SPS. If it isn’t assigned properly, then reports won’t render accurate information, resulting in reporting inconsistencies. This decreases productivity and could result in grant mismanagement.

This role is not used in any Workday business processes.

Use this security role instead

Instead of the Award Analyst role, users can access data they need with the Financials Data View Only role. This is a WSU-wide role that gives visibility into all financial reports.

There is no maintenance after initial assignment, and grant reports will render accurately with no additional work by SPS.

What we learned from testing

The Modernization department collaborated with the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture to beta test this removal, with overall success.

The test group ran comparisons for reports available to those with the Award Analyst role and reports available to those with the Financials Data View Only role. The did discover discrepancies due to the Award Analyst role not being assigned correctly.

Removing the Award Analyst role, the testers used the Financials Data View Only role to run CR GRA SPS reports successfully.

Reports to run instead

Here is a list of CR GRA PI reports and their companion CR GRA SPS reports. This is not all-inclusive; please use the My Custom Report Library feature in Workday for all grant reports.

Note: The removal of the Award Analyst role will not impact the Grant PI role assigned at the worktag, nor Contact Lead PI/Co-Investigator/Senior Key Person roles assigned at the header. The CR GRA PI reports will continue to be used by that group of users.