We’re using scenario-based demand planning in Workday and have built executive dashboards to visualize forecast data across different scenarios. The problem is that our dashboards are not updating in real-time when planners adjust forecasts. Sometimes we need to manually refresh multiple times before the latest data appears.
This is creating issues for decision-making during our weekly planning meetings, as executives are viewing outdated forecast numbers. The dashboard shows last week’s projections even though planners have submitted updated forecasts. Is there a way to force real-time updates or at least ensure the dashboard reflects the most current scenario data without constant manual refreshing?
Your dashboard lag issue involves three interconnected factors that need to be addressed systematically:
Scenario-Based Planning Workflow:
The core issue is likely your scenario publishing workflow. In Workday demand planning, forecast updates go through a state management process. When planners adjust forecasts, those changes are saved to the scenario but may not be immediately visible to reports depending on your configuration. You need to verify:
Are planners clicking ‘Submit’ after making forecast changes? Unsaved edits won’t flow to reports.
What is your scenario approval workflow? If scenarios require approval before being considered ‘active’, your dashboard won’t show unapproved changes.
Check your dashboard’s report data source - is it filtered to show only ‘Published’ or ‘Approved’ scenarios? Change the filter to include ‘In Progress’ or ‘Submitted’ scenarios if you want to see working forecast data.
Dashboard Real-Time Limitations:
Workday dashboards are not real-time by design - they operate on a refresh cycle. Your 4-hour refresh setting means the dashboard queries data every 4 hours, but that doesn’t guarantee you see the absolute latest data. Here’s why:
When a dashboard refreshes, it pulls from the underlying report cache, not directly from transactional data
If the underlying report hasn’t refreshed since the forecast was updated, the dashboard will show stale data even after you manually refresh
Each report in your dashboard has its own refresh schedule - check all source reports, not just the dashboard setting
To improve timeliness, set your critical forecast reports to refresh every 1 hour during planning periods. Navigate to the report definition > Schedule > Refresh Frequency.
Manual Refresh Workaround:
The manual refresh button you’re clicking only refreshes the dashboard visualization, not the underlying report data. To truly force a data refresh:
Open each source report individually (not through the dashboard)
Click the refresh icon on the report itself to force data reload
Wait for the report to complete processing (watch for the loading indicator to finish)
Return to the dashboard and refresh
For your weekly meetings, I recommend creating a pre-meeting checklist:
Planners submit/publish all scenario updates by 2 hours before the meeting
Admin manually refreshes each underlying report 1 hour before the meeting
Dashboard auto-refresh occurs naturally, or manually refresh dashboard 15 minutes before meeting
Long-Term Solution:
For R1 2024, consider implementing a scheduled business process that automatically publishes approved scenarios and triggers report refreshes at specific times aligned with your meeting schedule. This ensures data consistency without manual intervention. Also, add a ‘Last Updated’ timestamp field to your dashboard so executives can see when the data was last refreshed, providing transparency about data currency.
This multi-layered approach addresses the scenario workflow, refresh timing, and manual processes needed for reliable dashboard data during planning cycles.
This draft is based on general Workday knowledge. It has not been verified against your specific version and environment. Practitioners: verify the steps and share your experience below.
Dashboards in Workday aren’t truly real-time by default - they refresh on a schedule. Check your dashboard settings to see what the refresh frequency is set to. You might have it configured for daily refresh when you need hourly or more frequent updates. Also, if your dashboard is pulling from multiple reports, each report has its own refresh schedule that could be causing the lag.
The scenario-based planning aspect adds complexity here. When planners update forecasts in a specific scenario, there’s a processing delay before that data flows through to reporting objects. Workday needs to recalculate dependent fields and aggregations. If your dashboard is pulling from a report that uses calculated fields based on scenario data, you’re adding another layer of processing time. Consider simplifying your dashboard data source to pull directly from the forecast transaction object rather than through multiple calculated layers.
I checked the dashboard refresh settings and they’re set to refresh every 4 hours, which should be adequate for our weekly meetings. But even when I manually click the refresh button during meetings, we still see stale data. The forecast updates were submitted hours before the meeting, so the 4-hour window should have captured them. Is there something else that could be blocking the data flow?
I suspect your issue is related to scenario publishing. In demand planning, when planners make forecast adjustments, those changes exist in a draft state until the scenario is published or approved. If your dashboard is configured to show only published scenarios, you won’t see draft changes even after refreshing. Check with your planning team about their workflow - are they publishing scenarios after making updates, or are the forecasts sitting in draft status? Your dashboard might need to be configured to show draft scenarios if you want to see real-time planner inputs.
Beyond the scenario publishing workflow, you should also verify that your dashboard reports are using the correct effective date parameters. Scenario-based planning data is effective-dated, and if your underlying reports are filtering by a static date rather than ‘Today’ or ‘Current Planning Period’, you’ll consistently see outdated data regardless of refresh frequency. I’ve seen this exact issue where dashboards were hardcoded to a specific effective date from when they were initially built.