In Workday HCM, consolidated approvals are used within business process definitions to reduce approval fatigue by grouping multiple related approval steps into a single task for the approver. This is especially useful for senior leaders, such as HR executives, who otherwise might receive several separate approval tasks for the same transaction—such as hire details, compensation, and organization assignments.
When you add a Consolidated Approval step to a business process, that step alone does not define what information is presented to the approver. To complete the configuration and make the consolidated approval functional, you must also complete the Configure Consolidated Template task. This task defines the approval layout and content, specifying which sections, fields, and business process steps are grouped and displayed together in the single approval task.
Without configuring the consolidated template, Workday does not know how to combine the approval content, and the consolidation will not behave as intended. The template controls the user experience for the approver and ensures all required information is reviewed in one place.
The other options do not meet this requirement. Maintain Step Conditions controls when a step runs but does not define consolidation behavior. Configure Consolidated Approval is not a delivered standalone task; consolidation is driven by the step and its template. Maintain Step Delay controls timing, not task grouping.
From a Workday Pro HCM best-practice perspective, adding a consolidated approval step must always be paired with Configure Consolidated Template to complete the setup. Therefore, the correct and Workday-verified answer is Configure Consolidated Template.
