Workday Benefits Custom Validations: Use Cases and Examples

Do you find yourself constantly updating elections to match coverage across insurance plans? Would you like to require that employees provide beneficiary designations within certain enrollment events? Are you frustrated with reviewing every enrollment for duplicate spouses or domestic partners? Custom validations can automate these processes and make your job easier!

Custom validations help streamline data entry and ensure that your specific requirements are met during the benefits enrollment process. These validations can either block submissions as critical errors or display warning messages that employees must review before submitting their enrollments.

How Custom Validations Work

Custom validations are configurable through the Maintain Custom Validations task in the “Set Up: Custom Validations” domain within the System functional area. There are three categories for Benefits:

1. Benefit Election
   Uses the Benefit Election business object and evaluates per benefit plan. For example, if you create a validation limiting employees to adding only one spouse or domestic partner per plan, the validation will check each plan and display error messages if the employee adds more than one spouse or domestic partner across multiple plans.
2. Benefit Employee Enrollment Event
   Uses the Enrollment Event business object and evaluates the entire enrollment event. For instance, if you want employees to enroll in the same coverage for two insurance plans, the validation will display a single error message, as Workday evaluates the entire event, not just individual plans.
3. Benefit Coverage Type
   Uses the Enrollment Offering business object and evaluates based on coverage type. For example, if you want to issue a warning when an employee waives all plans under a specific coverage type, the validation will generate one message per coverage type.

How and When Validations Trigger

Custom validations only trigger when the employee submits their enrollment.

Let’s say you want to require that employees provide beneficiaries for their insurance plan elections, but you don’t want the validation to trigger if the event is an Administrative Correction performed by an admin. This can be achieved with a custom validation! The employee will proceed through their enrollment, and then the validation to add a beneficiary will trigger when the employee hits Submit. The employee can then cancel the submission, add their beneficiary, and return to the enrollment without restarting the entire process. Their selections will be saved when they return to the enrollment. By excluding the Administrative Correction event from the validation, admins will not receive this validation when doing an Administrative Correction event for an employee. 

Customizing Error and Warning Messages

You can further customize error or warning messages to provide employees with clear instructions. These messages can include both static text and dynamic external field values, pulled from report fields or calculated fields, to give more context and guidance.

How to configure a validation message:

• “Maintain Custom Validations”
• Related actions off your validation
• Validation > Configure Validation Message

Important Considerations

Please note that custom validations do not work when correcting a benefit event. Furthermore, custom validations are not effective dated and will go into effect immediately after creation. Lastly, the Workday mobile app only supports custom validations for critical errors, not alerts.

Custom Validation Examples

More than 1 Spouse or Domestic Partner Elected for Benefit Plan

Calculated Fields:

1. Type: Count Related Instances
Business Object: Benefit Election
Related Field: Dependents
Related Business Object: Dependent
Count: Instance where condition is true: CF TF Dependent is Spouse or Domestic Partner

2. CF TF Dependent is Spouse or Domestic Partner
Type: True/False
Business Object: Benefit Election
Condition: Dependent – in the selection list – value specified – Spouse, Domestic Partner

Employee Enrollment Event- Life & AD&D coverages must match

Calculated Fields*:

1. CF LRV Employee Life Coverage Enrollment

Type: Count Related Instances
Business Object: Enrollment Event
Lookup Field: CF ESI Employee Voluntary Life
Related Business Object: Insurance Election
Return Value: Coverage

2. CF ESI Employee Voluntary Life Enrollment

Type: Extract Single Instance
Source Field: Insurance Elections – Elected
Related Business Object: Insurance Election
Condition: CF TF Benefit Plan is Voluntary Employee Life
Sort Field: Any is True
Sort Direction: Ascending (A to Z)
Instances to be Returned: Last Occurrence

3. CF TF Benefit Plan is Voluntary Employee Life

Type: True/False
Business Object: Insurance Election
Condition: Benefit Plan – in the selection list – value specified – Voluntary Employee Life, Life

*Repeat the same process for CF LRV Employee AD&D Coverage, but replace Voluntary Employee Life with Voluntary Employee AD&D. You will end up with 6 calculated fields to be used in the condition, shown above.

Waiving All Medical Plans

Beneficiaries Required for Basic Life Unless Administrative Correction

The days of manual validation and chasing down employees to correct their enrollments are over. Custom validations will save you time and energy – two things we all need as we are in the thick of end-of-year activities. These validations not only enhance data accuracy but also improve the overall efficiency of your enrollment process by preventing common errors. Start using custom validations today to make your benefits enrollment process smoother, more reliable, and less time-consuming. Reach out to Kognitiv if you’d like support in doing so!