> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://developers.techwolf.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Skills in Workday > The Workday Skill vocabularies (Skills Cloud and Maintained Skills), how the Skills Cloud evolves through quarterly updates and Synonym Management, and what TechWolf integrations expect from your Workday tenant ## Skill Vocabularies In the scope of TechWolf, Workday's Skill features draw on two distinct vocabularies: * The **Workday Skills Cloud**: the vocabulary of Skills that Workday itself maintains, shared across tenants and continuously improved by Workday. It contains: * **Canonical Skills**: the redundancy-free core of the vocabulary. TechWolf integrations exchange canonical Skills only. * **Synonyms**: alternative names for canonical Skills, such as historical names, spelling variants, or genuine synonyms. Unless disabled or excluded, Workday resolves these to their linked canonical Skill through [Synonym Management](#automated-skill-management-synonym-management). * **Maintained Skills**: customer-specific Skills maintained in your own tenant, separate from the Skills Cloud. Unless disabled or excluded, where possible, Workday resolves these to their canonical Skills Cloud Skill equivalent through [Synonym Management](#automated-skill-management-synonym-management). TechWolf allows customers to choose Workday as their preferred Skills language. Workday Skills are then shown in all downstream applications, such as the Skill Assistant, the Console, or any other application built on top of the SkillEngine API. By default, only the canonical Skills from the Skills Cloud vocabulary are supported. However, TechWolf provides methods to create custom skills within the TechWolf platform, which can optionally be synchronized to Workday as Maintained Skills when using the [Skill Sync integrations](/integrations/workday-skill-sync-integration/how-it-works#custom-skills). For broader questions about Skills Cloud itself, Workday maintains a [Workday Skills Cloud FAQ](https://community-content.workday.com/content/workday-community/en-us/faq/products/talent-management/the-next-level/workday-skills-cloud-faq.html?lang=en-us) on Workday Community, with more documentation in the Community space itself too. ## Vocabulary Updates Four times a year, on the *first Wednesday of February, May, August, and November*, Workday runs a background process for Skills Cloud ontology updates. As a result of the ontology update procedure, impacted Skills in your tenant are automatically replaced by their latest Skills Cloud version. A Skill can be affected in three ways: * **Canonical Added**: a new canonical Skill is introduced. * **Skill Deprecated**: an outdated Skill is retired. * **Synonym Added**: a Skill is merged into a canonical Skill as a synonym, and references to it are moved to the canonical Skill. This cadence is part of how Workday keeps Skill data accurate and up to date; see the [Workday Skills Cloud Ontology: Insights and Cadence](https://doc.workday.com/release-notes/en-us/doc/9220027.html?lang=en-us) release note and future related release notes for the full details. ### Updates in Workday Workday announces each update through the **Skills Cloud Updates report**. The report is made available on the first Wednesday of the update month (February, May, August, or November) and remains available in Production tenants for 28 days, until the update takes effect. Users with access receive a Workday notification when the report is ready. To view the report: 1. Make sure you have the required permissions. The report is secured to the **Skills Cloud Updates** domain; typically the **HR Administrator**, **Integration Administrator**, and **Talent Administrator** security groups have access. You can verify the configuration in your tenant with the *View Security for Securable Item* task, searching for "Skills Cloud Updates". 2. Open the **Skills Cloud Updates** report by typing its name in the Workday search bar. The report shows two key dates: * **Task Last Updated Date**: when Workday last refreshed the report's contents. * **Effective Date of Skills Cloud Update**: when Workday migrates the listed Skills in your tenant, 28 days after the Task Last Updated Date. For each impacted Skill, the report lists the Skill in your tenant, the Skills Cloud Skill that replaces it, the change type, and usage counts showing where the Skill is referenced (Employees, Job Profiles, Job Postings, and so on), so you can assess the impact before the changes take effect. Skills that are not referenced in your tenant, but updated, are not in the report. ### How TechWolf handles these updates When Workday is used as the preferred Skills language in your TechWolf environment, TechWolf applies the same vocabulary changes as Workday to that environment, timed around Workday's rollout, so that the Skills you see through TechWolf stay consistent with the Skills in your Workday tenant. However, this process happens gradually, in the following manner: * **28 days before the roll-out**, Workday makes the **Skills Cloud Updates** report available. * At the same time, the TechWolf Console informs Console users about the upcoming changes, including a report of the exact changes that will be applied. The list of Skills lets you understand which Skills are affected. * The notification also indicates the **time window** in which you may see inconsistencies between Workday and what is visible in the Console. * TechWolf applies the vocabulary update **right before Workday's update**: the TechWolf update is executed at a fixed time shortly before the earliest Workday rollout (1am UTC+13), and the transition is complete once Workday's own rollout has fully finished. * Workday's rollout itself can start somewhat later than 1am local Workday tenant time, and can take multiple hours to complete. Your tenant's local time depends on the [Workday data center region](https://community-content.workday.com/en-us/reference/get-help/support/workday-data-centers/workday-data-center-locations-and-tenant-mapping.html?lang=en-us#accordion-fb3b7063f1-item-092a1db9e6) your tenant is hosted in. The exact combined process is as follows: 1. On the first Wednesday of February, May, August and November, Workday generates the impact report at 1am local datacenter timezone. 2. Workday's failure resilience retries up to 5 times to generate it, the report itself taking \~45 seconds. 3. Right after the report is finished becoming available, the timestamp is marked. That timestamp is now between `1am + 45 seconds` local time and `1am + 5 retries * 5 minutes + 45 seconds` (`= 01:25:45am`) local time. 4. Exactly 28 days later, Workday starts rolling out the Skills Cloud update. If your tenant got the report at `01:10:45am`, it is likely close to that same time. 5. Some time before that, at `1am UTC+13`, TechWolf rolls out the vocabulary update already. This means that customers in the east get the update right before their Workday tenant updates, while customers more west will have more time between the TechWolf update and the Workday update in their timezone. 6. Workday is rolling out the change, which can take up to 1 hour. The process is resilient, so will pick up failed changes at each next hour as long as there are failures. 7. The Workday update is done, the TechWolf update has passed, meaning that at this point, everything is consistent again. The inconsistencies are limited to a timespan of \< 24 hours. To mitigate inconsistencies even more, the TechWolf Console also presents an overview of which Skills changed; not only the Skills already in use, but all changing Skills. This can help you work more safely, knowing what will change. ### Considerations for users While the update is rolling out, you should prevent performing governance exercises that require exact Skills to be kept during the exercises. Even 28 days before it might already be interesting to you to be aware that Skills will be changing in the Workday Skills Cloud *and* correspondingly, in TechWolf. Additionally, because these improvements, much like TechWolf's own vocabulary updates, are intended to improve the quality and consistency of your Skill data, it is important to understand that this is a required part of the process. Workday and TechWolf are ever-evolving systems, and with the right level of reporting on what exactly is changing, you should be comfortable with the changes made during these updates. ## Automated Skill Management (Synonym Management) Synonyms can appear in your tenant over time, for example through the above-mentioned [Vocabulary Updates](#vocabulary-updates) that merge an existing Skill into a canonical Skill as a synonym. Workday's **Synonym Management** background process resolves these: it runs continuously and replaces synonymous Skills in your tenant with their canonical Skills Cloud Skill. For details on this Workday functionality, see [Concept: Automated Skill Management](https://doc.workday.com/admin-guide/en-us/human-capital-management/skills-and-skills-cloud/skills-cloud/bkh1675290302153.html) in the Workday documentation. TechWolf integrations only support canonical Skills Cloud Skills, not their synonyms. The [Skill Sync integrations](/integrations/workday-skill-sync-integration/how-it-works) rely on Synonym Management to resolve synonyms to their canonical Skill, so that full profiles can be synchronized and both systems stay consistent. However, when using custom TechWolf skills in Workday as Maintained Skills, these Maintained Skills should not be resolved to their canonical Skills Cloud Skill equivalents, but rather remain as Maintained Skills. The custom Skill synchronization is a unidirectional process, from TechWolf to Workday, and if a custom Skill in TechWolf were to be found to have no Maintained Skill equivalent in Workday (because it was resolved to a Skills Cloud Skill and deleted), a new Maintained Skill would automatically be re-created in Workday, only for this Skill to be deleted again, and so on. This results in the following required configuration: * **Keep Synonym Management enabled**, and do not exclude individual Skills Cloud Skills from it. Workday offers an *Exclude from Synonym Management* option per Skill, including directly from the Skills Cloud Updates report; excluded Skills stay synonyms and can therefore not be synchronized to TechWolf. * **When the Custom Skill Sync is live, enable the *Exclude Maintained Skills from Synonym Management* setting.** Custom skills are managed in TechWolf and synchronized to Workday as Maintained Skills; Workday must not replace them with Skills Cloud Skills. TechWolf already ensures that no custom skills are created that duplicate a Skills Cloud Skill. Workday excludes Maintained Skills from Synonym Management by default when Skills Cloud is first enabled in a tenant. Verify that the configuration matches your integration setup rather than assuming the defaults. ## References * [Workday Skills Cloud Ontology: Insights and Cadence](https://doc.workday.com/release-notes/en-us/doc/9220027.html?lang=en-us): release note describing the update cadence and the Skills Cloud Updates report. * [Concept: Automated Skill Management](https://doc.workday.com/admin-guide/en-us/human-capital-management/skills-and-skills-cloud/skills-cloud/bkh1675290302153.html): admin guide page describing Synonym Management and its exclusion options. * [Workday Skills Cloud FAQ](https://community-content.workday.com/content/workday-community/en-us/faq/products/talent-management/the-next-level/workday-skills-cloud-faq.html?lang=en-us): frequently asked questions about Skills Cloud on Workday Community. * [Workday Data Center Locations and Tenant Mapping](https://community-content.workday.com/en-us/reference/get-help/support/workday-data-centers/workday-data-center-locations-and-tenant-mapping.html?lang=en-us#accordion-fb3b7063f1-item-092a1db9e6): find your tenant's data center region to determine the local time of the rollout.