Change job attachments are strange 🤷

Outdated content warning!

Just 3 months after wrestling with this, Workday 2023R2 includes an update to the Change Job and Import Change Job web services that fixes this behavior. The release notes state:

We update these web services to add attachments using business process attachment data instead of worker document data

In regards to security, the update mentions:

The security groups listed on Staffing Actions: Attachments domain will now be added to the Attachments section on the Change Job business process security policy.

This update was originally scheduled for September 9, 2023, but last I checked the release notes the date is set for March 9, 2024.

Original Post:

Change Job business process attachments are strange. They don't work like attachments on other BP's, like say, Hire.

If you run the task Business Process Configuration Options and compare Change Job to Hire, you'll see Hire allows attachments and Change Job doesn't...

If you try to upload an attachment with a Change_Job API request, you'll likely see one of:

"This Business Process Type has been configured to not accept Event Attachments."

"This Business Process Type has been configured to not accept Attachment Categories."

So how do you fix this?

Security

For Hire, the business process security policy has configuration for attachments. For Change Job, you'll need the domain Staffing Actions: Attachments.

Web service (API) requests

On many of Workday's web service operations, attachments would pass in the Business_Process_Parameters –

...
<wd:Business_Process_Attachment_Data>
 <wd:File_Name>Some File.pdf</wd:File_Name>
 <wd:Event_Attachment_Category_Reference>...</wd:Event_Attachment_Category_Reference>
 <wd:File>ABCD....</wd:File>
</wd:Business_Process_Attachment_Data>
...

The Change_Job API has the same fields, but kept resulting in the errors described above. But you can add attachments in the Change_Job_Data section like –

...
<wd:Worker_Document_Data>
 <wd:File_Name>Some File.pdf</wd:File_Name>
 <wd:Document_Category_Reference>...</wd:Document_Category_Reference>
 <wd:File>ASDF...</wd:File>
</wd:Worker_Document_Data>
...

And that works!