On this page you’ll find information, How To guides, resources and support for graduate students related to Workday Student, UBC’s student information system.
What is Workday Student?
Workday Student is UBC’s primary student information system interface where students can update their personal information, register for courses, view exam schedules, get transcripts and more. This new system launched in February 2024, meaning current UBC students who started their program before September 2024 will be familiar with both the old system, the SISC, and the new system, Workday Student.
Transition Period
If you are beginning your program in September 2024 or later, you will only need to use Workday Student.
If you are a current student who started their program before September 2024, you will continue to use the old information system, the SISC, until August 31, 2024 for some tasks. For example, you may register for 2024 Winter courses in Workday, but you may need to apply to graduate in fall 2024 using the SISC.
Current students' courses, credits, and grades have been moved to Workday Student. Some discrepancies in these records have been identified and are being fixed. Impacted students will be notified of any discrepancies directly.
Students were notified about the upcoming change on May 13, and sent an access email on May 22.
Accessing Workday
When accessing Workday Student, you may see a Multi-Factor Authentication challenge by UBC's MFA provider Cisco DUO. Newly admitted students should register a device prior to completing course registration.
Students gained access to Workday Student on May 21, 2024.
How to Guides Use these tutorials to familiarize yourself with Workday Student.
We will be publishing more How To guides over the next few months as they become available. Publication dates are listed below where known.
Familiarize yourself with UBC's information system. The following guides introduce some of the basic personal information you can update within the Workday Student system.
- Updating your preferred name
- Updating your Indigenous self-identification
- Adding your emergency contacts
- Adding your Social Insurance Number (SIN) or International Tax Number (ITN)
- Adding your third-party authorizations
- Updating your contact information
- Viewing your residency and citizenship
- Viewing your date of birth
- Viewing your legal name
- Updating your pronouns, trans experience, and gender identity
- Viewing your "Dual Status" profile (switch between Student and Worker Profiles)
- Viewing the course schedule
- Creating a saved schedule
- Viewing your saved schedule
- Editing your saved schedule
- Reviewing saved schedule alerts
- Finding course conflicts in a saved schedule
- Resolving a hold on your academic record
- Troubleshooting your saved schedule
- Continuous Enrolment for graduate students (GRTU Course)
- Viewing your registration appointment
- Registering from a saved schedule
- Dropping a course
- Swapping a course
- Withdrawing from courses
- Registering for individual course sections
- Adding a course waitlist to your schedule
- Adding yourself to the waitlist for the individual section of a course
- Checking a course waitlist and capacity
- Registering in a course from a waitlist
- Viewing your waitlisted courses
- Troubleshooting course registration
- Viewing your tuition amount and payments
- Paying your tuition and student fees in TouchNet: Pre-authorized debit
- Paying your tuition and student fees in TouchNet: TransferMate payment
- Paying your tuition and student fees in TouchNet: Credit Card payment
- Setting up your Direct Deposit
- Setting up Pre-Authorized Debit in TouchNet
- Downloading your proof of tuition payment
- Applying to the UBC Bursary Program
- Viewing your financial hold
- Reviewing your award offers (expected August)
- Applying for a UPass Exemption (expected August)
- Accessing your Tax Forms (expected August)
- Viewing your grades and academic record
- Understanding your academic record
- Understanding your program of study status
- How to find your graduate advisor
- How to find your Accessibility Advisor
- Applying for a Standing Deferred & Supplemental Exam
- Viewing your exam schedule
- Evaluating your academic requirements
- Viewing your academic progress report
- Viewing your transfer credit
Please note that most graduate programs are not currently using the "Academic Progress Report." If you have questions about your degree progress contact your program.
- Applying for graduation
Note, if you are a current student applying to graduate in fall 2024, you will do this in the SISC.
- Downloading your Program Completion Letter
- Ordering a Transcript
- Ordering a Diploma
How can I get support?
You will need to use your campus-wide login (CWL) to access Workday Student and other UBC services. Problems with your CWL? Contact UBC IT.
UBC is now using Multi-factor Authentication. Review the instructions on how to set up this service using the DuoMobile app.
If you are logging in online and experiencing connection issues:
- Check your browser (you may also use incognito/private browsing mode) using Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. Some mobile devices or older browsers may cause issues.
- Clear your cache
Contact your Graduate Program Office for inquiries related to registration, course planning.
Connect with Enrolment Service Advisors for general Workday support.
Issues with your record
Current students' courses, credits, and grades have been moved to Workday Student. Some discrepancies in these records have been identified and are being fixed. Impacted students have been notified of any discrepancies directly (email sent May 22 PDF). When viewing your academic record in Workday Student, you may notice inaccuracies or missing information such as:
- Missing course registrations
- Missing or inaccurate letter grade
- Missing transfer credit details
- Inaccurate program of study
If you notice inaccuracies in your Workday Student record and you were NOT notified of any data sync issues, please contact Enrolment Services immediately.
The Workday Student team is working to resolve known data issues as soon as possible to clear any problems in advance of 2024W course registration.
TerminologyCurrent students using the SISC will notice some of the terms have changed.
If you are a current student, you may notice that terms in Workday Student are different from the SISC. Here are some common terms you may find helpful.
| Term in the SISC | Term in Workday Student |
|---|---|
| “Degree Navigator” | “Academic Progress Reports” |
| “Approved” for graduation | “Approved for Completion” |
| "Add/Drop Deadline” | “Drop without Record End Date” |
| Graduation | "Program Completion" |
| Domestic student | Resident |
| International student | Non-resident |
| "Major/Minor/Option/Specialization" | “Program of Study” |
frequently asked questions
Most continuing graduate students will be registered into a course named “GRTU 001 - Continuous Enrolment for Tuition Installment” for each active Academic Period. Registration in these courses will ensure you are continuously enrolled and assess your required tuition installments for your program. For more information, see the GRTU guide.
In Workday, you have both ‘Home’ and ‘Work’ contact information if you are an employee and a student. You can enter an address, email and telephone for each location. If you are not getting email notifications, you may want to check the emails you have in the system for BOTH your ‘Home’ and ‘Work’ locations, and be sure to designate one of the emails as primary. For example, if you have a gmail and ubc.ca email in your ‘Home’ contact, but you only check the gmail address, set the gmail as your ‘primary’ email address. For more information, see the guide on updating your contact information.
When you have both a student and worker profile, you may see a different profile view when logging into Workday – either your Student profile or your Worker profile. You can change your default view by clicking on My Account in the upper right-hand corner, and then ‘Change Preferences.’ Under ‘Account Preferences’ you can change your preferred default profile view from student to worker, and vice versa. For more information and screenshots, view the guide.
At this point in time, we advise you to use the web-based version of Workday as the full functionality of Workday Student comes online. The Workday app is still undergoing development – for the best user experience, we recommend the web version.
There are a lot of various apps in Workday, and it can be tricky to find them. To add a shortcut to the Finances app, first login. From the home page, click on the Menu on the top left of the screen. From there you can click on ‘Add Apps’ at the bottom of the Menu. You should see ‘Finances’ in the app search screen, or you can search for it by typing it in. Click the plus sign next to ‘Finances’ to add it to your list of apps. Now, each time you login to Workday, you will see Finances.