MD Connect Change Releases and Procedures

Overview

Describes MD Connect monthly change release cycle, procedures, available reports, and details about Workday production system changes.

Any production system change that impacts Workday functionality for campuses (e.g. new or existing Workday business process design/configuration, integration, report, security item, training content, or other tenant changes) is tracked in a change ticket in the MD Connect Support Portal ticket system (Team Dynamix). 

Change request process visual:

Change workflow visual showing review step order and owners of each step. Essentially changes to production must be reviewed and approved by internal team leads, and also by campus governance teams if applicable, then tested by the appropriate change testers before they can be deployed to production.

Changes typically begin as a service request ticket in Team Dynamix, and they are reviewed and approved by MD Connect team and an appropriate governance group or lead(s).  These governance groups meet regularly as shown in our MD Connect/Campus meeting calendar below:

 https://usmd.sharepoint.com/sites/MarylandConnect/Lists/Meetings/ 

These teams help set a priority and justify, clarify requirements, timelines, and approve and test change requests. Team leads or assigned MD Connect technicians will identify campuses impacted, campus owners and testers, and other details during governance team meetings or other requirements gathering sessions and coordinate with those groups as a change progresses.

MD Connect also has an internal change review that meets every Friday to discuss, identify, coordinate, and schedule change requests for our monthly change release cycle.  This group focuses on changes to production that should be scheduled and communicated in our monthly release calendar to appropriate campus stakeholders in the recurring MD Connect meetings above.  The monthly change release schedule is below showing when MD Connect will design/configure/unit-test approved changes, and when user testing will occur before each monthly change release date:

https://usmd.sharepoint.com/sites/MarylandConnect/Lists/Releases/calendar.aspx

Campus Governance teams - decision makers and committee roles:

Governance Team member list

 

BSU​

CSU​

FSU​

SU​

UB​

Executive​

Manish Kumar​

Michael Atkins​

Maurice Tyler​

Steve Danik​

Dionne Curbeam​

Troy Donoway​

Tim Pelesky​

Aurora Edenhart-Pepe​

Ken Kundell​

Barbara Aughhenbaugh​

Dave Bobart​

HR​

Billye Pounds​

Dr Lisa Early or Chynia Lewis​

Lisa Hersch​

​

Tina Boyd​

Sally Reed​

Payroll​

Sandy Lockett​

Charmaine Glass & Jack Jones​

Amy Nightengale​

Laurie Stroud​

Alt Lynn Adkins​

Diana Eglitis/ Teresa Weaver​

Finance​

Wayne Felder​

Crystal Mosely & Cherlyn Brace​

Mike Sheetz​

Lynn Adkins​

Natasha Walker​

HR/Finance Combined​

Sandy Lockett​

Wayne Felder​

​

Dr Lisa Early or Chynia Lewis​

Charmaine Glass & Jack Jones​

Crystal Mosely & Cherlyn Brace​

Lisa Hersch​

Amy Nightengale​

Mike Sheetz​

​

Tina Boyd​

Lynn Adkins​

​

Sally Reed ​

Natasha Walker​

Seyed Mohammadi​

Change Management​

Sheryl Dove​

​

​

Ken Kundell (interim)​

Jim Campbell​

Security​

Carmela Falcone​

Joe Brooks​

Lori Bennett​

Terri Stuck alt Duke Darringo​

Ron Vickers​

Non-HR/Finance Integrations​

Carmela Falcone/Cathy Lee​

​

Chris Kennedy​

Reid Bluebaugh​

Terri Stuck​

Chris Manthorne​

Governance Team Role descriptions

Committee​

Cadence​

Mtg Purpose​

Participants​

Responsibilities​

Executive​

Bi- Weekly​

  • Awareness​

  • Decisions​

  • Accomplishments​

  • Feedback​

  • VPAF​

  • CIO​

​

  • Budget Approval ​

  • Approval for new services/large features​

  • Roadmap Approval​

  • Share institution initiatives​

  • Decisions on cross functional/ or multi-institution requests​

  • Assist in institution communications​

  • Resolve escalation of issues​

  • Continue to champion uniformity​

  • ​

Combined HR & Finance​

Bi-Weekly​

  • Awareness​

  • Review change requests that impact HR and Finance​

  • Decisions​

  • HR Committee​

  • Finance Committee​

  • Review and approve cross functional requests​

HR​

Bi-Weekly​

  • Awareness​

  • Prioritize requests​

  • Develop roadmap​

  • Institution HR Leaders that can make decisions​

  • Review & approve Workday HR priorities​

  • Monitor Workday initiatives​

  • Consider impact of system changes​

  • Champion Change​

Governance Team Role descriptions

Committee​

Cadence​

Mtg Purpose​

Participants​

Responsibilities​

Finance​

Bi-Weekly​

  • Awareness​

  • Prioritize requests​

  • Develop roadmap​

​

  • Finance Leaders that can make decisions​

  • MD Connect Workday Manager​

​

  • Review & approve Workday finance priorities​

  • Monitor Workday initiatives​

  • Consider impact of system changes​

  • Champion Change​

Security​

Bi-Weekly​

(Monthly)​

  • Awareness​

  • Prioritize Requests​

  • Institution Security Leads that can make decisions​

  • Review and approve features related to security & Audit​

Non HR/Finance Related Integration​

As Needed​

  • Awareness​

  • Prioritize Requests​

  • Institution Integration Leads that can make decisions​

  • Review and approve features related to integration​

Change Mgmt/ Helpdesk​

Monthly​

  • Awareness ​

  • Prioritize Requests​

  • Helpdesk​

  • Change team​

  • Information Sharing​

  • Planning for change​

Workday Team​

Weekly​

  • Review change requests​

  • Recommend requests to be approved for backlog​

  • Workday Team​

  • Facilitate governance meeting​

  • Analyze requests​

 

 

Release Schedule Dates and Framework
  • Change Release schedule: https://usmd.sharepoint.com/sites/MarylandConnect/Lists/Releases/calendar.aspx 
  • Releases typically occur the last Friday of each month.  Changes typically get installed between 9AM and 9PM ET on release dates.
  • The schedule and list of changes included each release will be adjusted depending on key consortium activities or program-wide projects that impact team availability to deploy or complete testing.  Changes that are not tested will get deferred to a future cycle..
  • Releases include
    • Projects, Enhancements, Configuration Changes, Reports, Break/Fix if complicated
  • Releases exclude
    • General maintenance (emergency break/fix, off-cycle, individual's security changes)
    • Compliance related requests (e.g. Audit issue)
  • 2026 Release Dates
    • Jan 30
    • Feb 27
    • Mar 27 
    • Apr 24
    • May 29
    • June 26 (FYE)
    • Jul 31
    • Aug 28
    • Sep 25 (TBD, depends on R2 Workday Release impact)
    • Oct 30 
    • Nov 20
    • Dec 18
  • Production Deployment Guidelines
    • There must be approval to do the work
    • It must be tested
    • It must be approved for production
    • If an item needs to be released outside of a release date, it must be approved by the MD Connect product owner.
    • All configuration, development and unit testing will occur in MD1 & MD2
    • UAT will be in Sandbox
  • Campus Owner Responsibility
    • Is responsible for, and has the authority to, determine if this item is needed for their campus.
    • Is responsible for communicating which stakeholders would need to be involved with design sessions.
    • Is responsible for facilitating requirements gathering.
    • Should attend design sessions. If the owner has identified someone else to gather requirements, the owner should ensure that person attends all design sessions.
    • Is responsible for communicating whether this is a compliance related request as well as any deadlines, if applicable.
    • Is responsible for facilitating testing the request
    • Is responsible for approval for production

 

Change Reports / Dashboards Available to Campuses

 

 

Terminology 

Release Install Date (date picker) - For closed change tickets, this date is when the change was installed or effective in Production.  For open changes, this date is an estimated date of when the change will be moved into production.


Justification - multi-select field, showing any/all reasons or justification for the change based on governance team feedback.  This field is used to identify Off-Cycle or Emergency Break/Fix changes that can occur outside the scheduled release date window, after all testing is completed and appropriate change owners approve the change. List of justifications:

Shows justification values that can be applied to a change ticket. These show up on change reports.

There is also an optional justification note field that may contain additional information about the need and justification for the change and its timeline.  

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