Workday unveiled on October 13, 2026, at its Workday Rising conference a new interface built on Sana, the AI company it acquired about a year earlier, turning Sana into the default home screen that brings tasks, decisions, meetings and agent activity into one place. Each employee sees a role-tailored view and can act directly from the UI. Using TypeSafe's Jev AI model, Sana generates forms, calendars, approval cards and visualizations in real time and completes tasks once the employee approves them, and it supports multi-day work such as financial closing and HR workforce planning.

Sana also works within Anthropic Claude, Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Teams and Slack. Workday said third-party tools never get raw access to Workday data; they reach it through Sana, which applies each company's own permissions, approvals and policies and records the actions.

Workday also introduced Sana Concierge, which combines self-service capabilities with Sana for IT Service Management and Workday Help and Case Agent to handle HR and IT requests such as password resets, access requests, time-off and payroll questions, onboarding and offboarding. Employees submit natural language requests, and Concierge routes decisions to the right person when a human is needed. The Sana Workday Home experience is available today with more capabilities 'coming soon'; Sana Concierge is available now to early adopters, with general availability expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Workday also announced four autonomous autopilot agents for hiring, payroll, accounting and compliance. Joel Hellermark, former Sana CEO and now Workday's chief AI officer, said the agents anticipate what needs attention, apply company policies, advise on next steps and act once an appropriate person approves, and run on a heartbeat whether or not the user is online. The Talent Acquisition Agent monitors open job queues, finds candidates, drafts outreach for recruiter approval, explains shortlist fit, schedules and joins interviews, and takes notes, learning from recruiter feedback. It works across Workday Recruiting, HiredScore, Paradox, native Workday skills and connected sourcing providers; autopilot capabilities are available to early adopters now with general availability planned for early 2027. Payroll Agent, Accounting Agent and Deployment Agent will arrive for early adopters in early 2027.

Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Melody Brue said Workday is trying to connect more of the work around a decision, and that Sana could become the starting point for coordinating work beyond Workday's own applications. Workday Decision Intelligence, first seen in Adaptive from Workday, is expanding into more business areas. Yasmeen Ahmad, SVP and GM of Workday Data Cloud, described a case in which HR revised a hiring plan and Finance reviewed quarterly projections with the same tool; she said the work would normally have taken six weeks and five spreadsheets but was done with a single prompt.

Work Intelligence, available to early access Workday Human Capital Management customers, breaks jobs into component tasks and describes the skills needed, drawing on Workday Skills Cloud. Workday also said its Trusted Agent Platform is now headless, letting customers use their chosen development tools and models, and combines Workday Data Cloud, Agent-Ready Tools, Developer Agent, custom agents and Agent Harness. CTO Gabe Monroy said 'headless can't mean lawless.' In early 2027 Workday will add Agent Context Service and Grounded Reasoning to Agent Harness to check agent requests against company policies, processes and tenant data before action. Brue noted that customers must distinguish permission to recommend from permission to execute, and that overlap with ServiceNow could grow as Workday expands into employee-facing AI.

Workday unveiled on October 13, 2026, at its Workday Rising conference a new interface built on Sana, the AI company it acquired about a year earlier, turning Sana into the default home screen that brings tasks, decisions, meetings and agent activity into one place. Each employee sees a role-tailored view and can act directly from the UI. Using TypeSafe's Jev AI model, Sana generates forms, calendars, approval cards and visualizations in real time and completes tasks once the employee approves them, and it supports multi-day work such as financial closing and HR workforce planning.

Sana also works within Anthropic Claude, Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Teams and Slack. Workday said third-party tools never get raw access to Workday data; they reach it through Sana, which applies each company's own permissions, approvals and policies and records the actions.

Workday also introduced Sana Concierge, which combines self-service capabilities with Sana for IT Service Management and Workday Help and Case Agent to handle HR and IT requests such as password resets, access requests, time-off and payroll questions, onboarding and offboarding. Employees submit natural language requests, and Concierge routes decisions to the right person when a human is needed. The Sana Workday Home experience is available today with more capabilities 'coming soon'; Sana Concierge is available now to early adopters, with general availability expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Workday also announced four autonomous autopilot agents for hiring, payroll, accounting and compliance. Joel Hellermark, former Sana CEO and now Workday's chief AI officer, said the agents anticipate what needs attention, apply company policies, advise on next steps and act once an appropriate person approves, and run on a heartbeat whether or not the user is online. The Talent Acquisition Agent monitors open job queues, finds candidates, drafts outreach for recruiter approval, explains shortlist fit, schedules and joins interviews, and takes notes, learning from recruiter feedback. It works across Workday Recruiting, HiredScore, Paradox, native Workday skills and connected sourcing providers; autopilot capabilities are available to early adopters now with general availability planned for early 2027. Payroll Agent, Accounting Agent and Deployment Agent will arrive for early adopters in early 2027.

Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Melody Brue said Workday is trying to connect more of the work around a decision, and that Sana could become the starting point for coordinating work beyond Workday's own applications. Workday Decision Intelligence, first seen in Adaptive from Workday, is expanding into more business areas. Yasmeen Ahmad, SVP and GM of Workday Data Cloud, described a case in which HR revised a hiring plan and Finance reviewed quarterly projections with the same tool; she said the work would normally have taken six weeks and five spreadsheets but was done with a single prompt.

Work Intelligence, available to early access Workday Human Capital Management customers, breaks jobs into component tasks and describes the skills needed, drawing on Workday Skills Cloud. Workday also said its Trusted Agent Platform is now headless, letting customers use their chosen development tools and models, and combines Workday Data Cloud, Agent-Ready Tools, Developer Agent, custom agents and Agent Harness. CTO Gabe Monroy said 'headless can't mean lawless.' In early 2027 Workday will add Agent Context Service and Grounded Reasoning to Agent Harness to check agent requests against company policies, processes and tenant data before action. Brue noted that customers must distinguish permission to recommend from permission to execute, and that overlap with ServiceNow could grow as Workday expands into employee-facing AI.