Understanding the 11/2 Workday outage

The week of October 30 was eventful and challenging for members of the WSU community who use Workday, Jira, and Confluence to perform their job duties. Over the course of four days, major service interruptions to all three systems caused delays in regular business activities. While these events are rare, they provide an opportunity to help us better prepare for potential similar instances that may occur in the future. 

Below is an overview of these recent events, as well as helpful resources for employees and departments for navigating potential future service interruptions.

October 30 – November 1 Jira and Confluence service interruptions

Between October 30 and November 1, ITS reported a university-wide issue with Jira and Confluence impacting the availability of the Workday Service Desk and Knowledge Base.  

Because the community relies on these platforms as the first-line point of contact for Workday inquiries and resources, Modernization provided updates via the Modernization Known Issues page, Workday Digest listserv, and Workday Announcements.

In lieu of the Workday Service Desk, employees were instructed to reach out with emergent questions and concerns via the Modernization email account. Please be aware that the Modernization email account is only used in the event the Workday Service Desk is unavailable and is generally unmonitored during normal operations.

Service was restored to the Workday Service Desk and Knowledge Base by the evening of 11/1, and the Modernization team has worked to review and address impacted tickets.

Throughout this service interruption, ITS were in regular contact with Modernization to share solutions, time frames, and actions Modernization needed to take as the outage was resolved.

November 2 Workday outage

On November 2, 2023, a Workday outage resulted in WSU employees being unable to access the system during the business hours of 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

On the morning of 11/2, Workday reported a service interruption that affected many customer tenants nationwide, including WSU’s. This interruption prevented all WSU employees from logging in to and performing tasks in Workday. In a summary of the outage sent to system administrators, Workday’s Chief Customer Officer said:

“The service interruption was caused by an unprecedented power outage at the Portland data center, and due to unforeseeable challenges with backup power and an unstable power environment, service restoration was more difficult and took longer than expected.  We were able to restore service for all impacted customers by the evening of November 2.”

WSU employees were able to gain access to Workday around 2:30 pm 11/2.

Unfortunately, during the outage, many business activities at WSU that are performed in Workday could not proceed. This included departmental payroll cutoff activities and paylock, which was scheduled for end of day 11/2. Payroll Services and Modernization worked to develop and share a contingency plan, moving paylock forward to the following morning.

During the interruption, the Modernization communications team followed a predetermined outage protocol to keep the WSU community informed about the issue and service restoration. Modernization used the Workday Digest listserv, the Known Issues web page, Modernization’s website home page, WSU Insider, and the Sys Managers and FAO group lists to provide the community with updates. All communications channels saw steady engagement from the WSU community both during and after the outage.

Planning ahead

While major Workday outages remain rare, it is important to plan ahead for events that may impact regular business operations.

You can help prepare for potential service interruptions by doing the following:

  • Knowing how to find the latest updates and information about Known Issues and outages by:
    • Reviewing any Workday announcements that may provide information on Workday functionality issues or support platform outages.
  • Creating contingency plans for interruptions to business activities by:
    • For departments: establishing or reviewing existing contingency plans and communications strategies in the event of a major service interruption.
    • For employees: communicating with departmental leadership, managers, and peers to discuss expectations in case your work is interrupted by a service outage.

Moving forward

We’d like to thank the WSU community for their patience during these recent events. We understand that major service interruptions can be jarring and frustrating, and greatly appreciate our community’s engaged and understanding response while these issues were being resolved.

If you have questions about the recent outages, what to do in case of a service interruption, or Workday outage resources and communications, please connect with Modernization via the Workday Service Desk.