In today’s economy, the only thing we can be certain of is uncertainty. For finance and operations teams, the pressure to provide instant, accurate answers to “What if?” has never been higher.

Traditional spreadsheet-based planning often fails here—it’s too slow, prone to broken formulas, and difficult to consolidate. That’s where Workday Adaptive Planning changes the game. Specifically, its Scenarios feature allows organizations to model the future with agility and precision, accounting for several different “what-ifs.”

Here is a deep dive into how Workday Adaptive Planning Scenarios can transform your strategic decision-making.

The Power of “What-If”: Why Scenarios Matter

Scenario planning is more than just a “Best Case/Worst Case” exercise. It is a strategic framework that allows you to:

• Anticipate Disruptions: Model the impact of supply chain delays or sudden market shifts before they happen.
• Identify Growth Levers: Test how hiring a new sales team or launching a product line will affect cash flow 12 months down the line.
• Drive Alignment: Move away from “gut feelings” and toward data-backed narratives that stakeholders can trust.

Personal vs. Shared Scenarios: The Freedom to Experiment

One of the most powerful aspects of Workday Adaptive Planning is the distinction between Personal and Shared Scenarios.

1. Personal Scenarios (Your Private Sandbox) allow planners to create a private workspace.

• Private Testing: Any changes you make—like adjusting a driver or shifting a hiring date—are visible only to you.
• No Risk of Data Corruption: You can experiment freely without worrying about overwriting the “Source of Truth.”
• Seamless Comparison: Once you’ve built your personal “what-if,” you can compare it side-by-side with the official plan to see exactly where the variances lie.

2. Shared Scenarios (Collaborative Planning)

Once a scenario is vetted and ready to be used externally, it can be shared across the organization. This allows for:

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Marketing, HR, and Sales can all contribute to the same scenario, ensuring that operational plans (like headcount) align with financial goals.
• Version Control: No more “Final_v2_Updated_REALLY_FINAL.xlsx.” Everyone works in a single, cloud-based version.

Best Practices for Effective Scenario Planning

To get the most out of this feature, consider these three steps:

1. 1. Identify Your Key Drivers: Don’t try to model every single line item. Focus on the 3–5 variables that truly move the needle for your business (e.g., churn rate, average selling price, or headcount).
2. 2. Use a Phased Approach: Start with a “Most Likely” scenario, then branch out into “Upside” and “Downside” versions.
3. 3. Merge and Promote: Once a Personal Scenario is approved, use the “Merge” or “Publish” functions to integrate those insights into your rolling forecast or annual budget.

Merging Scenarios into Base Versions (From Workday Documentation)

With a few clicks, you can add all the changes you or your collaborators made in your scenario to the base version. Merging includes data values and also the underlying formulas when applicable. When you merge scenarios:

• You delete the scenario because we save all the changes in the base version.
• The scenario no longer displays in the version pickers throughout the model.
• The scenario and its data no longer displays in charts and reports.
• The scenario moves to the Merged folder as a historic record.
• You have an option to delete all other scenarios based on the same base version.

Merging scenarios also frees up space to create more scenarios when you’ve reached your maximum. Before merging your scenario, download the changes to double check your work. We prevent merges when:

• Someone locks the base version.
• Someone locks the levels in the version in Workflow.
• You no longer have the Merge Scenarios permission.

1. 1. Select Scenarios from the main menu.
2. 2. From the scenario list, hover over the scenario that you want to merge until the 3 dots display.
3. 3. Click the 3 dots and select Merge.
4. 4. (Optional) Click the check box to delete any of your other scenarios that are based on the same base version.
   This option is useful when you have drafted several different scenarios and have picked the 1 that you want to merge. The others might be irrelevant at this point.
5. 5. Click Merge scenario and delete.

Conclusion: Planning for a Changing World

By utilizing Personal Scenarios to experiment and Shared Scenarios to collaborate, your finance team evolves from a back-office reporting function to a strategic partner that can pivot with confidence. Ready to stop reacting and start anticipating? Explore how Workday Adaptive Planning can bring agility to your organization.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Created Dimensions Through Metadata Loaders

Workday Adaptive Planning for Google Sheets

Spreading Revenue with Spread Lookups

Metadata loaders are a great way to automate the creation of dimensions such as vendors and customers. Many times, integrations fail because of unmapped dimensions values, but by creating a loader, will automate this process to ensure Adaptive’s list is up to date with all values. 

In order to create the loader, your data source must include a take with a list of all the dimension values you would like to automate. Each value on the list must be unique. From there, you create a new loader and select the Planning Dimension Loader. 

Once you create the loader, you select the source table, which dimension you would like to automate, and select the box to Create dimension value if not found in Planning. Next, you go to the Column Mapping Tab and assign the Vendor ID, Code, and Name. If your table of dimensions includes and attributes, you can map them here as well. The Vendor ID and Code are normally the same.

Once you are done, you can save the loader. To ensure the data is correct, click preview loader output to validate the codes and name are correct. Once that is complete, the loader is finished and you can add it to a task to run as often as you would like.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Spreading Revenue with Spread Lookups

Boosting Data Accuracy with Modeled Sheet Data Validation in Workday Adaptive Planning

How to Edit a Dashboard

Required: To request this feature, contact your Named Support Contact (NSC) to submit a Workday Customer Care: Adaptive Instance Management type case (request). After confirming that you’re eligible, Workday will enable the feature. This is the only way to access the feature for now. 

Note: Verify with your organization’s IT department that you have the necessary approval and access before installing. Review the permissions that Adaptive for Google Sheets requests (requires) from Google as it may grant more access than desired.

Overview

Similar to Workday’s OfficeConnect add-on for Microsoft Excel, Workday now enables users to connect their Adaptive Tenant to Google Sheets. Upon installing the Google Workspace Marketplace add-on and adding their tenant, users can pull Adaptive Planning data directly into Google Sheets. They can then modify and refresh this data to generate reports and more.

What makes the extension for Google Sheets unique is its seamless functionality. Simple or summary reports can be generated quickly and easily shared—even with users who don’t have the extension installed. Reports also display live updates, and signed-in users can use the Explore Cell function to drill directly into their Adaptive instance in seconds.

The add-on also includes Ask Workday, a generative AI feature. Users can interact with data, generate summaries, detect anomalies, identify key trends, and more using freeform questions or auto-populated suggestions.

Using Adaptive for Google Sheets

How to Install Workday For Google Sheets

Navigate to the Google Workspace Marketplace and search for Workday for Google Sheets. Confirm you’ve selected the correct one and click install.

Within the users Adaptive Planning tenant, make sure the permissions for “Access Workday for Google Sheets” and “Access Ask Workday for Adaptive Planning” are both selected. Without these user permissions the user will not be able to connect the tenant to Google Sheets. Have your Named Support Contact (NSC) submit a Customer Care Case with Workday to get the feature enabled which grants access to the functionality. Enable the Writeback from External Sources permission if you wish to use writeback functionality.

Note: Have your organization’s IT team review the permissions that Adaptive for Google Sheets requests (requires) from Google as it may grant more access than desired.

Adding a Tenant

Once installed, create and open a new Google Sheet. Access Extensions in the top ribbon then select Workday for Google Sheets –> Workday. Before you’re able to sign in and create reports you will need to add your instance (tenant). Select add tenant then Adaptive Planning if your instance is standalone of other Workday products (FINS/HCM) or Adaptive Planning via Workday if your organization uses FINS/HCM. To add either type of tenant Workday will ask for the name (recommend the same as instance name), API Endpoint URL, and the Authorization Endpoint URL. Additionally, if you’re adding the tenant type Adaptive Planning via Workday you will need the client ID. 

API and Authorization Endpoint URL: https://login.adaptiveinsights.com

Building a Report

Once you have added and saved your tenant you can sign in using your Workday Adaptive Planning credentials. Select Build Report and choose which accounts you would like to include (this can be very basic to start and later expanded). Once selected, it will automatically generate a basic report for those accounts. Adaptive for Google Sheets breaks out reporting sections/elements using segments. The user can drag and drop additional reporting elements to an existing segment or create new segments. By default the first Segment is the accounts (Rows) and the second is time (Columns). Additionally users can add filters, change the display, explore cell, use writeback mode, and more.

Tip: I recommend enabling the auto refresh in the sheet (report) settings so you don’t have to manually refresh for each change.

Below is an example of creating a basic Income (P&L) Statement.

Tip: You can use the related actions (3 dots next to an element – in this case the element is the account) on the account within a given segment to include additional children/descendants (accounts rolling up to them). 

Tip: Here I added quarters in our time section of our column segment and expanded immediate children to get the months for a more complete report. Additionally I added the account attribute GAAP P&L as a filter. Users can add entirely new column or row segments using the + Add icon at the bottom of the given section. Optionally they can add to an existing one like I did in my example by hovering over the element and clicking the plus sign where related actions appear.

Tip: Finally, I want to touch on my personal favorite feature, Explore Cell. In the screenshot above, if I wanted to get a more detailed breakout of my Product Revenue for Jan 2026 I can select cell C 10 and select the explore cell option in my task pane.

Tip: In seconds this button will take you directly to your Adaptive instance at the intersection of data selected where the user can further drill through and explore the cell in detail. Be sure to check out additional functionality such as keep/remove only, writeback mode, and more.

Note: Some of the functionality such as writeback mode may still be a work in progress so we recommend testing before relying on it. 

Summary

Workday Adaptive Planning for Google Sheets is a great reporting tool that users have as an additional resource at their disposal for no extra cost. If your organization is looking for a more efficient way to create summary or management style reports with your Adaptive Data seamlessly, I would highly recommend giving this extension a try. This feature allows users to work with live Adaptive data in a collaborative environment that makes sharing easier than ever. Leverage other functionality in this feature like explore cell, writeback, and Ask Workday. Utilize the intuitive user interface and its hierarchical setup to easily build reports by dragging and dropping, selecting, and more. Give this feature a try and see if it’s the kind of seamless and collaborative reporting tool your team has been missing.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Spreading Revenue with Spread Lookups

Boosting Data Accuracy with Modeled Sheet Data Validation in Workday Adaptive Planning

How to Edit a Dashboard

Spreading revenue over time is a common requirement in FP&A, especially for implementations, phased projects, or ramp-up initiatives where revenue is recognized gradually rather than all at once. Manually allocating revenue across months can be time-consuming and error-prone—but Workday Adaptive Planning offers a powerful, built-in solution to handle this automatically.

In this Tips & Tricks guide, Robbie Nordhagen walks through how to use Spread Lookups in modeled sheets to efficiently distribute revenue (or expenses) over multiple periods. This approach helps ensure accuracy, consistency, and flexibility while reducing manual effort.

Using Spread Lookups in Modeled Sheets

Spreading Revenue over months is a common practice especially when Revenue is related to an implementation, a ramp-up, or a project. For example, a project may have total Revenue of $1,000,000, but the million is paid out over time as the project progresses. Adaptive has a feature for Revenue spread (can also be used for Expense spreading). The Adaptive feature is called Spread Lookups and is available in modeled sheets.

Spread Lookups

Set Up Requirements

To get started, you’ll need a modeled sheet with the following columns:

• Revenue (or Project) ID
• Revenue Amount
• Start Date

You’ll also need two accounts:

• One account to hold the total project revenue
• A second account defined as a spread account, which will distribute the revenue across periods

Step 1: Create the Modeled Sheet

First, create a modeled sheet and add the three required columns:

• Project (or Revenue) ID
• Project Amount (Revenue Amount)
• Start Date

Set up the Project ID column with a Spread Lookup.

1. Create a modeled sheet

2. Set up the columns: Create the 3 required columns

3. Set up Project ID with a spread lookup

Step 2: Define the Spread Expression

After saving, click the pencil (edit) icon to define the spread expression.

The syntax follows this structure:

• Period(s) : Ratio
  • Example: .05 or 3/20 (where 20 represents the total number of periods over which the revenue is spread)

This defines how much revenue is allocated to each period. Use a comma , to define additional periods in the expression.

💡 Tip: Click the information (i) icon next to Spread Expression to view examples of valid syntax.

These steps complete the column setup.

Step 3: Define the Accounts

Next, configure the accounts for the modeled sheet:

• Total Revenue Account (e.g., Project Revenue), which displays the full project amount in the appropriate start month
• Spread Revenue Account (e.g., Proj Rev Spread), which distributes revenue over time

1. Set up an account to define the Total Revenue which is the column Project Amt

This account needs to display the Project Amt in the correct month, so use a formula such as:

2. Set up the spread account

3. Select the Spread radio button under “Type”

Then these two selections appear:

4. Select the account you just created (Project Revenue) as the Source Account

5. Select Proj_Rev_Spread as the “Spread Using”.  Proj_Rev_Spread is the spread definition that was defined above in step 3 under “Set up the Columns”

See the results by going to the sheet and entering data and selecting row details.

6. Enter data:

7. Once set up, enter data into the modeled sheet and view Row Details (picture of row 1 below).

You’ll see that the total revenue amount—such as $14,000 starting in March 2025—is automatically allocated across months based on the defined spread expression.

Spread Lookups are a powerful way to automate revenue and expense spreading in Workday Adaptive Planning. By defining the logic once, finance teams can eliminate manual calculations, improve accuracy, and ensure consistent treatment across projects. This approach is especially valuable for implementation-driven revenue, long-term projects, and complex planning models where timing matters.

With Spread Lookups in place, FP&A teams can spend less time managing allocations and more time analyzing results and guiding better business decisions.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Unified Provisioning Authentication (UPA) for Customers Using Adaptive Planning with Workday Single Sign-On (SSO)

Leveraging Repeating Reports in Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect

The Power of Split Rows in Workday Adaptive Planning Modeled Sheets

As planning models grow more complex and collaborative, ensuring the accuracy and consistency of entered data is crucial! Workday Adaptive Planning’s Modeled Sheet Data Validation feature offers powerful capabilities to proactively prevent errors and maintain clean, reliable data across your planning environment. Whether you’re planning headcount, capex, sales, or whatever the case may be, validation rules help enforce logic at the point of data entry to prevent these inevitable human errors!

What Is Modeled Sheet Data Validation?

Data validation in modeled sheets allows you to create custom rules that evaluate the data that users enter. If the data violates a rule, Adaptive displays an alert — either blocking the save or issuing a warning — based on how you configure the rule.

These rules apply not only in modeled sheets but also:

• On dashboards using modeled sheets
• During data API imports
• When using Planning Data Loaders

Additionally, they work across all versions of your modeled sheet data, meaning no versioning loopholes to bypass the rules.

Key Benefits

• Prevent Common Data Errors: Catch mistakes like incorrect dates, blank key values, or out-of-range entries.
• Enforce Business Rules: Ensure all records meet the logic your business depends on.
• Improve Data Imports: Apply validations even when importing data via APIs or loaders.
• Guide Users: Use custom help text to show users how to fix their incorrect input.
  

How It Works in Practice

When a user enters data that breaks a validation rule:

• Critical errors are highlighted with red borders and prevent the sheet from being saved until corrected.
• Warnings are shown in orange, and the user can still save — great for soft guidance.
  

Users can hover over the error to read your custom help text and correct the data immediately.

Let’s take a look at an example:

In this Data Validation Rule, the expression is saying that there cannot be a value in both the Design Phase Amount Row and the Design Percent row. The goal of this rule is to make sure users only enter a value in one of these fields, not both.

As you can see, entering a value in one of these fields causes no problems.

However, when a user tries to enter a value in both fields, the row will become highlighted and an error message displays, which is the same error message I configured in the backend of the rule!

Setting Up Modeled Sheet Data Validation

Pre-Configuration Steps

1. 1. Enable Validation in Administration
   Go to Administration > Visual Preferences and select:
   
   • Data validations in Sheets
   • Data validations in Import Data (if you want to apply validations during data import)
     
2. 2. Clean Column Codes
   In Model Management, make sure to remove any spaces from column codes for the fields you plan to reference in your rules.
   
3. 3. Ensure Permissions
   Your role must include permissions for:
   • Sheets
   • Accounts
   • Dimensions
   • Formulas
     

⚠️ If you’re using Workforce Planning applications, make sure the Purpose is set to Plan in Adaptive Planning. This can’t be changed later.

How to Create a Validation Rule

1. 1. Navigate to Model Management > [Your Sheet Type] (Level Assigned or User Assigned Sheets).
   
2. 2. Click Edit next to your modeled sheet.
   
3. 3. Select the Data Validation Rules tab.
   
4. 4. Click + Add Rule and fill in the details:
   

Field	Description
Expression	Use row dot notation (e.g., Length(ROW.ID) = 4) or the Expression Builder
Help Text	User-facing message (max 128 characters)
Name	Unique rule name (max 65 characters)
Type	True – error shown when condition is falseFalse – error shown when condition is true
Action	Critical (blocks save) or Warning (alert message pops up but still allows save)

Use the Expression Builder for an intuitive interface to build and test expressions using dropdowns for columns and logical operators.

Expression Examples

• TerminationDate >= HireDate — Prevents users from entering illogical employment periods.
  
• Length(ROW.ID) = 4 — Ensures all ID fields have a standard format.
  
• PayRate <= 100000 — Flags outlier compensation data.
  

---

Pro Tips for Managing Rules

• You can have up to 15 active rules per sheet — others can be kept as drafts.
  
• Validations apply only to rows currently displayed — filter out invalid rows if needed to save valid data.
  
• If users already have a sheet open, they must refresh it to apply new or updated rules.
  
• When importing data via the importConfigurableModelData API, validation can be enforced or skipped. If enforced and critical errors exist, the import fails with detailed feedback.
  

Final Thoughts

Modeled Sheet Data Validation in Workday Adaptive Planning offers a robust layer of control to prevent bad data from ever entering your model — whether through manual input or automated imports. By combining logical expressions, user-friendly feedback, and system-wide enforcement, it’s an indispensable tool for model administrators aiming to ensure data quality and reliability.

If you’re not using this feature yet, start with a few key validations and iterate. The cleaner your input, the more confident you’ll be in your output!

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Leveraging Repeating Reports in Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect

The Power of Split Rows in Workday Adaptive Planning Modeled Sheets

What Are Level Dimensions?

Dashboards are a key way to visualize and share important data in Workday Adaptive Planning. Knowing how to edit them effectively allows you to tailor the insights for your team, track performance metrics, and ensure everyone is looking at the most relevant information.

In this Tips & Tricks guide, Sarah Hildenbrand, a Lead Consultant at Revelwood, walks you through the step-by-step process of editing a dashboard while maintaining control over shared content.

1. 1. First go to the “Dashboard” section of Adaptive Planning in Global Navigation. If you are on the dashboard and see the “Edit” button grayed out, you need to check out the dashboard Perspective. 

2. 2. To “Check it out” you need to go to the dashboard section and click on the three dots right of the dashboard which is shared with everyone.

2. 3. Now you can edit the dashboard in the “Personal” location and make changes without anyone else being able to override them but they can still view the dashboard in the “Shared” location.

4. 4. Click on the dashboard, click “Edit”, and make the changes to the dashboard as needed and once done then click “Done”.

4. 5. Then once in the dashboard section, make sure to “Publish” the dashboard so now people can see your changes and can make their own updates now.

Editing dashboards in Adaptive Planning is straightforward once you know how to work in Personal mode. This approach ensures you can customize your view, experiment with different layouts, and update information without disrupting dashboards used by others. By mastering these steps, you can make your dashboards more insightful, collaborative, and actionable for your team.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Leveraging Repeating Reports in Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect

The Power of Split Rows in Workday Adaptive Planning Modeled Sheets

What Are Level Dimensions?

What is it?

As part of Workday’s 2025R2 product release, they rolled out a powerful new feature for customers that use Adaptive Planning with Workday single sign-on (SSO). Customers can now access a delivered Unified Provisioning and Authentication (UPA) workspace to manage users more efficiently. This enhancement builds on the existing SSO framework by standardizing the user provisioning and authentication process.

What’s New?

The first big addition for this feature is the user provisioning workspace (UPW). This delivered workspace is where user provisioning is configured and managed for Workday Adaptive Planning. Within the UPW is a new migration task that enables the updating of user instance assignment information. This process automates the creation of necessary security and provisioning groups. 

With this new feature comes new and improved sign-in options for Adaptive Planning. Previously it was a worklet based sign-in process but it is now specific to each Adaptive instance. Users will have the options of signing in traditionally through the Adaptive Planning instance URL or through the new Workday UI. 

Other updates in this feature include improvements to the native Workday sign-in page, refined short message service (SMS), and new password reset option using phone number. Additionally, Adaptive Planning APIs can now be authenticated the exact same way as Workday APIs (OAuth 2.0). 

Summary

These new and improved automated processes simplify the administration experience by centrally managing user access to Adaptive Planning through security groups. This allows for a simultaneous user sync for user-based security groups and hourly user sync for role-based groups. The full user sync can be triggered to correct user discrepancies and there is additional support for ISU users. Setting up and enabling these news features will be very beneficial for user maintenance in Workday Financials and Adaptive Planning.

Follow this link for prerequisites and configuration steps to enable these features:

https://doc.workday.com/adaptive-planning/en-us/what-s-new/releases/2025r2-release-notes/2025r2-planning-for-hcm-and-financials-release-not/unified-provisioning-and-authentication–upa–for-.html?toc=0.1.13.7

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Leveraging Repeating Reports in Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect

The Power of Split Rows in Workday Adaptive Planning Modeled Sheets

What Are Level Dimensions?

Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect is a powerful tool that integrates directly with Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, enabling users to create dynamic reports with live data feeding directly from Adaptive. One of the most valuable features within OfficeConnect is Repeating Reports, which allows users to generate reports for multiple dimensions—such as departments, regions, product lines, and many more—without manually creating separate reports for each.

In this post, we’ll explore how to effectively use repeating reports in OfficeConnect, best practices for implementation, and common pitfalls to avoid.

What Are Repeating Reports in OfficeConnect?

Repeating Reports in OfficeConnect allow you to create a single report template that dynamically updates for multiple elements of a selected dimension. Instead of manually copying and pasting the same report for different departments or business units, you can configure OfficeConnect to create duplicates for each one automatically.

Key Benefits:

• Efficiency: Saves time by automating report creation for different categories.
• Consistency: Ensures formatting and structure remain uniform across multiple reports.
• Accuracy: Reduces manual errors associated with copying and pasting data.

How to Set Up a Repeating Report

Follow these steps to create a repeating report in Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect:

Step 1: Open Your OfficeConnect Report

Ensure that you have OfficeConnect installed and connected to your Workday Adaptive Planning instance. Enabling “Access OfficeConnect” in permission sets is required. Open your existing report or create a new one in Excel.

Step 2: Define the Report Layout

Before setting up the repeating structure, design your base report. This could include:

• Row and column structures for financial data.
• Filters to display specific time periods, scenarios, or versions.
• Any necessary formatting to ensure clarity and readability.

Step 3: Enable Repeating Functionality

1. 1. Select the Dimension to Repeat:
   • In the OfficeConnect ribbon, click on Repeating Reports under the Filters section
   • Choose the Adaptive element type (e.g., Accounts, Levels, Dimensions, Versions) that should drive the repetition.
2. 2. Define the Range:
   • OfficeConnect will prompt you to specify the data range that should be repeated.
   • Select the appropriate fields you would like to repeat reports for.
3. 3. Apply the Repeating Logic:
   • OfficeConnect will dynamically generate instances of your report based on the selected dimension.
   • You can choose to apply filters or exclusions as needed.

Step 4: Refresh and Validate the Report

Once set up, click Refresh to see the report populate for each element of the chosen dimension. Review the results to ensure accuracy and consistency.

Check out this quick video demonstrating how to create Repeating Reports:

Best Practices for Repeating Reports

To maximize the efficiency of repeating reports in OfficeConnect, follow these best practices:

• Use Named Ranges: Define named ranges in Excel to make it easier to manage repeating sections.
• Keep Formatting Simple: Excessive formatting can sometimes cause issues when repeating across multiple rows or columns.
• Leverage Filters: If you don’t need reports for every department or entity, apply filters to exclude unnecessary elements.
• Test with a Small Subset: Before rolling out a full report, test with a subset of your dimension to confirm correct setup.
• Ensure Data Integrity: Double-check that calculations and formulas adjust correctly across repeated sections.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

1. Overcomplicating the Report Structure

• Keep your base report simple to ensure smooth repetition.
• Avoid excessive merging of cells, which can disrupt the repeating process.

2. Not Refreshing the Report Properly

• Always refresh the report after making changes to the repeating structure.
• If the report does not update correctly, check the connection settings to Workday Adaptive Planning.

3. Forgetting to Check Print Settings

• If you plan to export or print the reports, review page breaks and formatting to ensure clarity.

Repeating Reports in Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect can significantly enhance reporting efficiency and accuracy. By automating the process of generating multiple reports based on dimensions, users can save valuable time while maintaining data consistency. Following best practices and avoiding common pitfalls will help you unlock the full potential of this powerful feature. Are you interested in learning more about OfficeConnect? Take our Introduction to OfficeConnect training course.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

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Workday Adaptive Planning 2025R2 Release: Version-Specific Overrides for Linked Accounts