Workday Adaptive Planning

Forecast Explanations in Predictive Forecaster

June 11, 2025 by Cameron Burke

With machine learning predictions, it can often be challenging to understand why certain forecasts were made. To bridge this gap, Workday has a new feature: Forecast Explanation in Machine Learning Predictive Forecaster. With this feature, you gain deeper insights into the factors driving your forecasted data through visual charts and explanatory text. Learn more about predictive forecaster itself!

Business Benefits

Understanding machine learning predictions is crucial for trust and decision-making. Forecast Explanation provides clear, visual representations that make it easier to review and analyze the key components influencing each forecast made by the predictor. This feature enhances transparency and enables more informed planning decisions.

Changes

In the Forecast section of new and edited forecasts, there will now be a new Forecast Explanation option. When you enable this feature, two key insights become available in the “Confidence Metrics” tab of the Forecast History page:

1. Contribution Breakdown of Forecast Components: A visual chart that displays how factors such as seasonality, trends, and residual components (when applicable) contribute to the forecasted values.
2. Forecast Explanation: A text description that clarifies the significance of each component of the chart.

These enhancements provide a more intuitive way to understand your forecast results. You can access the Confidence Metrics when you view the history of a completed forecast.

How to Enable Forecast Explanation

To turn on this feature for existing forecasts:

1. From the main menu, select Modeling.
2. Navigate to Predictive Forecaster.
3. Hover over a forecast in the list and select the More Actions menu.
4. Click the three-dot menu and select Edit.
5. In the Forecast section, check Forecast Explanation.
6. Select Run to execute the forecast immediately, or select Save to run it later.

How to Review Forecast Explanations

Once your forecast runs successfully:

1. Select Modeling from the main menu.
2. Hover over the forecast in the list and access the More Actions menu.
3. Click the three-dot menu and select View History.
4. Navigate to the Confidence Metrics tab to review the new visual breakdown and explanatory text.

What Happens If You Take No Action?

The Forecast Explanation option is available for all new as well as existing forecasts, but it must be enabled manually to access the insights.

What’s Next?

Workday is continually enhancing the Predictive Forecaster feature. In future updates, expect even more detailed explanations and additional charts to further clarify the factors influencing the data predictions.By enabling Forecast Explanation, you can leverage machine learning forecasts with greater confidence and clarity. Activate this feature today to gain a deeper understanding of your predictive models!

Revelwood is an award-winning, Platinum Solution Provider for Workday Adaptive Planning. We build solutions for the Office of Finance that minimize your risk by seamlessly incorporating business analytics into your everyday thinking. By combining the software with our best practices and out-of-the-box applications, we help businesses achieve their full potential with Workday Adaptive Planning.

2025 R1 Dashboard Improvements – Charts and Perspective Folders

June 4, 2025 by Revelwood

There is tons to be excited about in Workday Adaptive Planning 2025 R1. There are new improvements to further enhance the Adaptive interface, along with user experience. Some key improvements have been made to the dashboard feature in Adaptive. Some of the new features are focussed around chart improvements and a new perspectives folder.

The chart improvements were made with the hope that charts will be data-focused and features will be more accessible. One key feature is that the time display will now appear on the top right corner of the chart. There are additions to the appearance settings as well – such as Show Time Period and Position. The Show Time Period feature gives the user the option to show or hide the time period on a chart, while the Position feature allows the user to position the time period next to the chart name or under the chart name. Additionally, when you hover over the chart, you now will see different icons appear: reset to default, select time period, expand, and chart options. All time period related actions are now under the Select Time Period icon. Under that icon you can set the calendar stratum, alter the time period and range, and pin and unpin time.

Lastly, the 2025R1 release allows users to use folders to manage dashboard perspectives. A new “Folders” icon will be available with the goal of being able to organize your perspectives.

Reset to Default View on Sheets

May 28, 2025 by Sarah Hildenbrand

When navigating display options or filters on different types of sheets in Workday Adaptive Planning, it can get messy quickly and even cause the data for a sheet to not load and have an error message. Workday recently released a function where when this occurs, you can simply choose “reset to default” to help get back to a good starting point and not have to back track with every display option or filter you chose.

1. First, go to each of your sheets and create the “reset to default view for all users” you want by clicking on the display options button.

2. Select the display options you want and click “OK” and “Set as default for all users”.

3. After choosing the display options, make sure to always save the new view and the default now set for all users.

4. Now when the data isn’t loading for a sheet or causing issues, you can click “Reset for Default” to get back to the past saved default view for an easy way to troubleshoot.

Transforming Financial Planning: How LEARN Behavioral Streamlined Operations with Workday Adaptive Planning

May 21, 2025 by Revelwood

We partnered with our client, LEARN Behavioral, on a webinar highlighting how multi-site healthcare organizations can benefit from adopting Workday Adaptive Planning. Here’s their story

LEARN Behavioral is a leading provider of autism services, specializing in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy and school-based programs. With multiple regional brands operating under the LEARN umbrella, the organization faced increasing complexity in managing its financial planning and analysis (FP&A) processes.

Challenges Before Workday Adaptive Planning

Prior to implementing Workday Adaptive Planning, LEARN Behavioral encountered several roadblocks in their budgeting and forecasting workflows:

Long Turnaround Times: The process of creating and updating budgets was time-consuming and inefficient.
Manual Excel-Based Templates: Reliance on spreadsheets led to errors, inconsistencies, and difficulties in consolidating data.
Lack of Insights Across Locations: With multiple sites operating under different brands, gaining a unified view of financial performance was challenging.

These challenges highlighted the need for a scalable and integrated solution to support LEARN Behavioral’s growth and operational complexity.

A Game-Changing Implementation

LEARN Behavioral adopted Workday Adaptive Planning to transform its FP&A capabilities. The implementation brought significant improvements, including:

Streamlined Processes: By automating data collection and reporting, LEARN drastically reduced the time required for budgeting and forecasting.
Enhanced Data Visibility: Centralizing financial data improved consistency and provided a single source of truth for decision-making.
Rolling Forecasts: The ability to maintain monthly rolling forecasts enabled greater flexibility and responsiveness to changes in the business.
Scenario Analysis: LEARN gained powerful scenario modeling tools to evaluate financial impacts and make informed decisions.

Empowering Operations with Data-Driven Insights

One of the most impactful outcomes of the implementation was empowering the operations team with direct access to financial data and dashboards. This self-service approach enabled managers to:

Monitor performance in real-time.
Identify trends and variances quickly.
Make data-driven decisions without relying heavily on the finance team.

Integration and Unified Systems

Another critical benefit was the seamless integration of billing, payroll, and financial data into a single platform. This unified system eliminated data silos, ensuring consistency and enabling better collaboration across departments.

Measurable Results and Future Outlook

Since adopting Workday Adaptive Planning, LEARN Behavioral has seen:

Reduced budgeting and forecasting timelines.
Improved accuracy and consistency in financial data.
Better insights to support growth and multi-site operations.

Looking ahead, LEARN Behavioral is well-positioned to continue scaling its services while maintaining financial discipline and operational efficiency.

LEARN Behavioral’s journey with Workday Adaptive Planning serves as an example of how technology can transform financial processes in complex, multi-site organizations. By streamlining workflows, enabling better data access, and enhancing forecasting capabilities, LEARN is now equipped to focus on its mission of providing high-quality autism services to families across the country.

Watch the webinar to learn more!

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Report Parameter Behavior

May 14, 2025 by Julia Seelin

Recent updates to reporting tools in 2025 R1 of Workday Adaptive Planning streamline the creation and management of report parameters. These updates offer key benefits such as:

Consistent parameter creation across level, dimensions, and attributes, and
Automatic inclusion of new values as they become available.

This eliminates the need for manual updates and ensures reports are always up-to-date.

Users should review existing reports to take advantage of these improvements, potentially eliminating outdated attributes like “values only” filters, which were previously used to exclude uncategorized members.

This feature only applies to all new reports. For any existing reports, you need to manually update the available parameter choices and save them to reflect the latest functionality. If you don’t make any changes, the feature will only apply to new reports.

Learn The Ins and Outs of Reporting in Workday Adaptive Planning

May 7, 2025 by Revelwood

We have another new course offering in our Workday Adaptive Planning Open Enrollment training program. Our Workday Adaptive Web Reporting & Dashboards course is designed for both beginner and intermediate users who want to expand their reporting skills in Workday Adaptive Planning.

Participants will learn how to:

Use the matrix report builder, including basic and advance calculations and formula options
Design a P&L report
Create a version comparison report
Report on modeled sheet data
Use conditional formatting and display options
Understand the benefits of the upload file “report”

Learning from Revelwood’s Workday Adaptive Planning Certified Experts

Revelwood’s Open Enrollment training courses for Workday Adaptive Planning are conducted online by our seasoned, Workday-certified instructors. Their goal is to give you the technical skills needed to understand, use and master Adaptive Planning.

These instructor-led courses allow you to ask questions and get instant answers from your instructor. They also provide you an environment where you can learn from your classmates – unlike many online classes. Participants will come away from the courses with best practices and new tips and tricks. Workday Adaptive Web Reporting & Dashboards training courses are virtual (online) and occur regularly.

View our class schedule.

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Greatest & Least Formulas

April 30, 2025 by Cameron Burke

Many of you have probably used the MIN and MAX formulas in Excel when working with financial models, reporting, and data analysis, comparing and selecting minimum or maximum values in a range is a common requirement. In Workday Adaptive Planning, we achieve these results by using the “least” and “greatest” functions. While these functions serve similar purposes, there are key differences in their syntax, use cases, and behavior. Let’s explore these differences to help you transition smoothly between Excel and Workday Adaptive Planning.

Excel’s MIN and MAX Functions

Syntax and Usage

Excel provides the following functions for determining the smallest and largest values within a range or set of numbers:

=MIN(number1, number2, …, range) – Returns the smallest number from the given arguments.
=MAX(number1, number2, …, range) – Returns the largest number from the given arguments.

Examples

=MIN(5,10,15) – Returns the number 5.
=MAX(A1:A10) – Returns the highest value within this range of cells.

Syntax and Usage

Accepts both individual numbers and ranges.
Ignores blank cells and text values within a range.
Can handle a large dataset efficiently.

Workday Adaptive Planning’s “Least” and “Greatest” Functions

Syntax and Usage

In Workday Adaptive Planning, similar functionality is achieved using:

least(value1, value2, …) – Returns the smallest value from the provided list.
greatest(value1, value2, …) – Returns the largest value from the provided list.

Examples

least(5, 10, 15) – Returns 5
greatest([Account1], [Account2], [Account3]) – Returns the highest value among the specified accounts
greatest(Account1 – Account2, 0) – Returns 0 if the formula results in a negative number

Key Features

Works with both hardcoded values, account references and formulas.
Requires specifying individual values explicitly; does not accept a single range like Excel.
Useful for comparing multiple account balances or forecast values within a model.

Understanding these differences ensures a smoother transition between Excel-based financial modeling and Workday Adaptive Planning. While the fundamental concept remains the same, adjusting for syntax and range-handling nuances will help you leverage these functions effectively in both tools.

Revelwood Offers Open Enrollment for Workday Adaptive Planning OfficeConnect

April 23, 2025 by Revelwood

We have expanded our Workday Adaptive Planning Open Enrollment training courses. We now offer a new class, Introduction to OfficeConnect.

The course is designed for report developers with minimal experience with Workday Adaptive Planning’s OfficeConnect. Participants will learn:

OfficeConnect terminology and navigation.
How to create an OfficeConnect report dynamically linked to a Workday Adaptive Planning instance.
How to work with relative and static time-elements enabling you to create rolling report periods.
How to use parameters and labels to enable creating either a tabular Excel report or one report with selection options. A report with selection options is mainly used with the Level element from Workday Adaptive Planning.
How to link selected elements from a previously created Excel report to the matching Workday Adaptive Planning data. This enables you to use all of the creative presentation already existing in the report.

Additionally, participants will see a demonstration of the connectivity between OfficeConnect and its associated Word and PowerPoint applications.

Learning from Revelwood’s Workday Adaptive Planning Certified Experts

Workday Adaptive Planning OfficeConnect

Workday Adaptive Planning OfficeConnect enables users to easily create presentation-quality financial reports in Microsoft Office. With OfficeConnect, you can integrate your latest data from Workday into Microsoft Office. For example, you can connect your existing Microsoft Excel reports to Workday Adaptive Planning. You can also create new reports. Refreshing those reports is as simple as a single click – no more need to manually transfer data.

OfficeConnect gives you full connectivity between Adaptive Planning and Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint. You latest data in Adaptive Planning easily flows from financial reports to board books to management presentations.The OfficeConnect training courses are virtual (online) and occur on a regular basis. View our class schedule.

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Editing Dimensions

April 16, 2025 by Revelwood

Both modeled and cubed sheets in Workday Adaptive Planning offer the ability to add dimensionality to the model to further enhance data visualization. Dimensions and their values are often needed to be updated and maintained. While this could be seen as an inconvenience, Adaptive offers a feature that enables the user to edit the dimension directly on a cubed or modeled sheet rather than having to navigate through modeling to the dimension home screen.

If you navigate towards the back end of your cubed or modeled sheet and press on column and levels, you will see your dimensions. Select the dimension you want to enable the feature on, and check the “Edit dimension on sheet” checkbox circled in red. Save your changes.

To use the feature, navigate to the front end of the sheet you are working on. Hover over the cell you want to edit under the correct dimension column, and click the drop down arrow. You will then hit the “Edit Dimension” button that is circled in red.

Next, the window below will pop up. Circled in red is the button to add a new dimensional value directly onto the sheet. This will also be updated on the main dimensions tab as well. Additionally, you have the ability to rename an existing dimension in this same window.

This feature is also available for text-selectors and follows the same process as dimensions.

Workday Adaptive Planning

Business Benefits

Changes

How to Enable Forecast Explanation

How to Review Forecast Explanations

What Happens If You Take No Action?

What’s Next?

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Challenges Before Workday Adaptive Planning

A Game-Changing Implementation

Empowering Operations with Data-Driven Insights

Integration and Unified Systems

Measurable Results and Future Outlook

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Participants will learn how to:

Learning from Revelwood’s Workday Adaptive Planning Certified Experts

Excel’s MIN and MAX Functions

Syntax and Usage

Examples

Syntax and Usage

Workday Adaptive Planning’s “Least” and “Greatest” Functions

Syntax and Usage

Examples

Key Features

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Learning from Revelwood’s Workday Adaptive Planning Certified Experts

Workday Adaptive Planning OfficeConnect

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

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