2.1 Tenant Types & Tenant Management Tasks
Key Takeaways
- Workday documents three production tenant types - Production, Sandbox, and Sandbox Preview - plus implementation tenants for testing, prototyping, and training.
- Sandbox holds a copy of Production data for testing configuration; Sandbox Preview is also a copy of Production but additionally carries functionality from the upcoming feature release.
- Global Modern Services (GMS), Alma Mater University (AMU), and Green Oak Valley (GOV) are demonstration tenants with prepopulated sample data, not customer environments.
- Each tenant is a unique instance with its own URL, and the database securely segregates tenant data through password-controlled access.
- Tenant configuration is performed through Tenant Setup tasks reached from the Tenant Setup report - Edit Tenant Setup - System applies custom banners, logos, and colors, and Edit Tenant Setup - Search maintains synonyms.
What a tenant is
A tenant is a unique instance of the Workday system. The database securely segregates data through password-controlled access, each tenant has its own unique URL, and each is configured to meet that customer's needs. Every customer runs on the same Workday codebase - the separation is logical, not a separate installation.
The customer tenant types
Workday documents three types of production tenants, and the exam expects you to identify each one by purpose.
| Tenant | Purpose | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Production | The live environment where the customer's active data is managed and stored | Real transactional data, confidential worker and business information |
| Sandbox | Where administrators and consultants develop and test new features, customizations, and configurations before deploying to Production | Typically a copy of the Production data |
| Sandbox Preview | Also a copy of Production, but with the functionality coming in upcoming Workday releases | Production copy plus next-release features |
In addition, Workday provides implementation tenants, which give a secure space for testing, prototyping, and training. Customers may have several - for testing integrations, loading legacy data, and running unit and end-to-end user testing.
The distinction the exam actually tests: Sandbox and Sandbox Preview are both copies of Production. The difference is that Sandbox Preview carries the next release's code, which is what makes it the environment for release regression testing. Sandbox is where you test your configuration change; Sandbox Preview is where you test Workday's upcoming change.
Demonstration tenants
These contain prepopulated sample data for a fictitious customer and are used for research, learning, and testing. They are not customer environments.
| Tenant | Audience |
|---|---|
| Global Modern Services (GMS) | General - HCM and Financials deployments |
| Alma Mater University (AMU) | Education customers |
| Green Oak Valley (GOV) | Government customers |
If you have taken Workday courseware, GMS is the tenant in nearly every screenshot and exercise.
Metadata versus tenanted data, applied to tenants
Recall from the object model that metadata is the Workday-delivered framework you cannot change, and tenanted data is your configuration and data. Tenant management is entirely a tenanted-data activity: you are shaping your instance, never the framework.
Tenant management tasks
The objective is perform tenant management tasks. Workday provides several tasks that configure specific areas of the tenant, and the entry point is the Tenant Setup report - run it and select the tenant setup task matching the change you need.
| Task | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Edit Tenant Setup - System | Custom banners, logos, and colors to align Workday with your brand; also the target URL behind the Help link in the Worker Profile menu |
| Edit Tenant Setup - Search | Search synonyms that map your organization's vocabulary onto Workday terminology |
| Edit Tenant Setup - HCM | Custom ID sequencing, system-wide transaction settings, and defaulting behaviors |
| Edit Tenant Setup - Security | Tenant-wide security settings |
| Maintain Functional Areas | Enable or disable delivered functional areas |
| Maintain Dashboards | Run, edit, and delete dashboards, and configure Home worklets, announcements, and external links |
Branding trap: administrators reach for a task named after the outcome ("Edit Branding"). The task that applies custom banners, logos, and colors is Edit Tenant Setup - System. Similarly, synonyms are not under a "Search Configuration" task - they live in Edit Tenant Setup - Search.
Working safely across tenants
Two operational realities shape every platform administrator's week.
Sandbox is refreshed from Production. Configuration built directly in Sandbox and not reproduced elsewhere is not permanent - a refresh overlays the Sandbox with a fresh copy of Production. Treat Sandbox as a place to prove a change, and keep the definitive record of what you changed so it can be rebuilt in Production. This is the single most common way administrators lose work.
Proxy is unavailable in Production. As covered in the navigation section, proxy access policies apply to nonproduction environments only. When you need to verify what a security group actually sees, you do it in Sandbox or an implementation tenant, not in Production.
Choosing the right tenant for a task
| You need to... | Use |
|---|---|
| Test a configuration change against realistic data | Sandbox |
| Test how the upcoming feature release affects your configuration | Sandbox Preview |
| Run the business | Production |
| Prototype, train users, or load legacy data during a deployment | Implementation tenant |
| Explore a feature against neutral sample data | Demonstration tenant (GMS / AMU / GOV) |
| Proxy in as another user to verify their access | Any nonproduction tenant |
Answering that table correctly under time pressure is most of what the tenant portion of this exam asks.
An administrator must verify that a heavily customized Hire business process still behaves correctly under the feature release that goes live next month. Which tenant is designed for this?
Which task applies a custom logo and brand colors to a Workday tenant?
A project team needs a secure environment to load legacy data and run end-to-end user testing during a deployment. Which environment does Workday describe for this purpose?