Note: Workiva Calendars, Calendar-related features (such as using business days in processes), process templates, process monitoring charts and insights, and the process copy summary card are currently only available in some of our Financial Reporting and Financial Services solutions.
In the process’s Settings, under the Calendar tab, you can configure business days for the process. This configuration is useful if you typically set your process’s task due dates relative to a specific business schedule, so that it’s easier to update those due dates if your business schedule changes or if you need to reuse the process again for future dates.
Configure business days
For example, if you have a process task that is due by the 5th business day of a two-week cycle running from Thursday, January 1st to Wednesday, January 14th, you can configure business days as such:
- In your process, click Settings in the toolbar and go to the Calendars tab. Toggle on Business days.
- Set the First business day to the first day of the two-week cycle, which is Thursday, January 1st. Set the Last business day to the last day of the two-week cycle, which is Wednesday, January 14th.
- Set the typical working days to Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, and Fri.
- For our business, Thursday, January 1st is New Year’s Day and is a holiday, so add that date as an exception using the Add exception button or by clicking on that date on the calendar to the right.
- Review the calendar to the right to make sure your configurations look correct. Unshaded dates indicate business days, while shaded dates indicate days off. The circled numbers indicate the n-th business day of your schedule.
- In our example, the unshaded dates should be: January 2nd, January 5th to January 9th, and January 12th to January 14th.
- In our example, the shaded dates should be: January 1st, January 3rd, January 4th, January 10th, and January 11th, along with the dates outside of the business cycle.
Set process task due dates to business days
After configuring your business days, when you create your process task, you can set the task’s due date to business day 5. This will automatically set the due date to Thursday, January 8th, because that is the 5th business day of your configured two-week cycle.
If the dates of your two-week cycle change to Monday, January 5th to Sunday, January 18th, you can update the First business day and Last business day as such, and remove the exception on Thursday, January 1st. Once this new configuration is saved, your task’s due date will automatically update to Friday, January 9th, because that is the 5th business day of your new two-week cycle.
In cases like these, business days make it easier for you to update task due dates if your business schedule changes.
Reuse the process for a future business schedule
You can copy processes to reuse them for recurring events, like quarterly reporting workflows. In our example, if you want to reuse the process and task again for a two-week cycle running from Sunday, February 1st to Saturday, February 14th:
- Copy the process that you used for the two-week cycle in January.
- In the new copied process, click Settings in the toolbar and go to the Calendars tab.
- Set the First business day to the first day of the new two-week cycle, which is Sunday, February 1st. Set the Last business day to the last day of the two-week cycle, which is Saturday, February 14th.
- Keep the typical working days as Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, and Fri.
- For our business, there aren’t any extra days off between Sunday, February 1st and Saturday, February 14th, so don’t add any exceptions.
- Review the calendar to the right to make sure your configurations look correct. Unshaded dates indicate business days, while shaded dates indicate days off. The circled numbers indicate the n-th business day of your schedule.
- In our example, the unshaded dates should be: February 2nd to February 6th, and February 9th to February 13th.
- In our example, the shaded dates should be: February 1st, February 7th, February 8th, and February 14th, along with the dates outside of the business cycle.
- Save your new configuration.
Because you configured business days in the original process for January and set the task’s due date to business day 5, the task’s due date in the copied process for February will now automatically update to Friday, February 6th, because that is the 5th business day of your new two-week cycle.
In cases like these, business days make it easier for you to update task due dates when reusing processes for the future.