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Short answer: Sana is an evolution of Workday’s search-first experience, not proof that every legacy menu has disappeared. Workday’s existing interface already included configurable global navigation, role-based hubs, Workday Everywhere and natural-language search. Sana adds a conversational front door that can return information, provide deep links, invoke agents and, where enabled and permitted, help carry out work.
The important distinction is interaction and scope. Traditional Workday navigation and search mainly help you locate a record, report, task or destination. Sana is designed to interpret a request in context and connect the answer to an action or an orchestrated workflow. Workday’s public material describes those capabilities, but it does not provide an independent benchmark proving that Sana is faster, more accurate or more productive than the older tools.
What changed in Workday, and when?
Workday completed its acquisition of Sana on November 4, 2025. In that announcement, Workday said it would combine Sana’s AI-powered search, agents and learning with Workday data and context. President of Product and Technology Gerrit Kazmaier called the intended result “a single, intelligent interface that connects the systems, data, and actions employees rely on — becoming the new front door for work.” That is product positioning, not an independent assessment of user outcomes.
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On March 17, 2026, Workday announced Sana from Workday as available to customers worldwide. The announcement described Sana for Workday as a unified conversational AI interface that replaces traditional menus and navigation for the new experience. It also said Sana for Workday and the Sana Self-Service Agent were available through Workday Flex Credits without an extra license or separate paywall. Those were the terms stated in that dated announcement; packaging, entitlements and regional or tenant-level availability can change, so customers should verify their current contract and administrator settings.
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The wording about replacing menus should not be read as evidence that all older navigation and search affordances have been removed. Current Sana Workspace documentation still describes search-as-you-type navigation and conversational search, while Workday’s AI-ready user-experience material continues to describe configurable navigation, a search-first homepage, role-based hubs, Workday Everywhere and natural-language search.
Existing Workday interface and search: how it works
Configurable global navigation
Workday’s traditional experience gives organizations a configurable global navigation structure. What a user sees depends on role, tenant configuration and enabled applications. A person normally starts from a homepage or hub, chooses a functional area, and then opens a task, report, person record or business process.
Search-first homepage
The search-first homepage is intended to reduce the need to remember where a function lives. Users can search for information or destinations and then open the relevant result. Workday’s AI-ready experience materials also describe natural-language search and a simplified results page, so the pre-Sana interface was not limited to rigid menu browsing.
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Role-based hubs organize commonly used information and actions for a particular employee, manager or specialist. Workday Everywhere extends access to Workday information and actions into supported workplace contexts. These patterns are useful when a user knows the business area or wants a predictable set of links, but they still make the destination—the report, task or record—the main unit of interaction.
What the older model does well
- It makes approved destinations visible and repeatable for users who prefer menus and known workflows.
- It exposes the organization’s configured structure, which can help with training, auditability and support instructions.
- It can take a user directly to a task or report without requiring an open-ended conversation.
- Its behavior is familiar to organizations that have built procedures around Workday pages, hubs and search results.
What Sana adds
A conversational front door
Sana is positioned as a chat-based interface for finding information, answering questions and helping complete work. Instead of starting with a menu path, a user can describe an outcome in ordinary language. Workday’s launch examples include “How many vacation days do I have left?” and “What’s the current contract value of Acme Inc.?” These are examples supplied by Workday, not a measurement of the most common or most successful queries.
Two search patterns inside Sana Workspace
Sana Workspace documentation describes two distinct search behaviors:
- Search-as-you-type navigation: In the main chat dropdown, typing can surface links to Workday people, reports and tasks. Selecting a result still takes the user to a destination, so this is an evolution of navigation rather than a complete replacement for it.
- Conversational search: A user asks a question in chat, refines it with follow-up language and receives an answer with clickable deep links. The conversation can narrow the request without requiring the user to know the exact report or page name.
Both Sana Core and Sana Enterprise are documented with these search features. Sana therefore combines familiar destination search with a conversational layer; it does not require every interaction to be handled as an autonomous agent action.
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The stated difference is that Sana can move from information retrieval toward recommended next steps and task completion. The Self-Service Agent can perform supported Workday read and write actions, subject to the user’s permissions, workflow rules and any required approval. A question about absence balance might remain an answer, while a supported follow-up could initiate a self-service process. Whether a particular action is available depends on the tenant, the agent’s skills and the business process configuration.
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Sana versus existing Workday tools: side-by-side
| Comparison point | Existing Workday interface and search | Sana from Workday |
|---|---|---|
| Primary interaction | Configurable menus, hubs, homepage search and natural-language search leading to results or destinations. | Conversational requests in Sana Workspace, with search-as-you-type navigation and chat-based answers. |
| Search scope | Workday information, people, reports, tasks and configured navigation. | Workday information plus, in Sana Enterprise, supported external sources through connectors and orchestrations. |
| Result format | Search results, pages, reports, hubs and task destinations. | Conversational responses, cited answers and clickable deep links, alongside navigational results. |
| Action scope | Users open a destination and complete the configured process. | The Self-Service Agent can execute supported read/write actions and coordinate steps, subject to permissions and approvals. |
| Cross-application work | Not established as a general capability of the existing Workday navigation and search tools. | Sana Enterprise is documented as adding third-party connectors and orchestration across supported applications. |
| Security model | Role and tenant permissions govern visible data and available tasks. | Documentation describes shared tenant single sign-on and role and permission mirroring; connector administration is controlled by administrators. |
| Measured performance comparison | Not stated in the available public material. | Not stated in the available public material; no independent accuracy, response-time, adoption or productivity benchmark is established. |
Search scope: Workday records versus connected systems
Sana Core is described as conversational, agentic AI for HCM and Financials within Workday and Sana Workspace. Sana Enterprise adds third-party connectors and orchestrations, allowing work within Workday and across external applications. The distinction matters because a conversational answer is only as broad as the systems the tenant has connected and authorized.
Workday’s March 17, 2026 launch announcement listed Enterprise connectors for Box, Confluence, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Drive, Google Tasks, Jira, Linear, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Microsoft Outlook Email, Miro, Notion, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SharePoint and Slack, with more planned. That is a launch-time list, not a permanent catalog. Connector availability, supported operations and administrator controls should be checked for the specific tenant.
A connected source does not automatically make every document or field visible. Sana documentation describes role and permission mirroring, and the connector model requires administrative enablement. A user who lacks permission in the underlying system should not assume that asking in chat bypasses that restriction.
How to use the two Sana search modes
When you know the destination
- Open Sana Workspace in the tenant where it has been enabled.
- Use the main chat dropdown and begin typing the person, report or task name.
- Review the search-as-you-type matches and choose the relevant Workday link.
- Complete the task in the destination page using the normal Workday workflow and approval rules.
This route resembles existing global search, but the entry point is the Sana Workspace chat interface.
When you know the outcome, not the page name
- Ask the question in ordinary language, such as “How many vacation days do I have left?”
- Read the response and inspect any citation or deep link supplied in the chat.
- Refine the request if the result is too broad—for example, specify the date range, worker or business unit.
- Open the deep link when you need the underlying report, record or task.
Conversational search is most useful when the user knows what they want to learn but does not know which Workday object contains it. It should still be treated as an interface to governed data, not as permission to access everything in the tenant.
When you want an action
- Describe the supported task and provide the context the agent needs.
- Review the information Sana presents before submitting a change.
- Confirm the action when the workflow requests confirmation.
- Complete any manager or business-process approval that remains required.
The exact action set is tenant-dependent. A conversational request does not guarantee that Sana can perform an unsupported process or approve a transaction on the user’s behalf.
The Self-Service Agent is not the same thing as Sana
Sana is the interface and broader AI experience. The Sana Self-Service Agent is a Workday-built capability that Sana can use to answer employee and manager HR questions and support common self-service tasks. Workday said the agent launched with more than 300 skills across areas including pay, time and absence. That is a vendor-reported launch-time count, not a score for accuracy, completion rate or business impact.
Keeping the terms separate prevents a common misunderstanding: the presence of Sana does not mean every Workday process has become an autonomous agent workflow. The interface may answer a question, link to a task, or invoke a specific skill depending on what Workday supports and what the customer has enabled.
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Permissions still apply
Both Sana tiers are documented with Workday read/write actions through the Self-Service Agent, cited chat responses, tenant single sign-on and role and permission mirroring. Those controls are central to the comparison: Sana changes how a request is expressed, but it does not remove the underlying authorization model.
Approvals remain part of the process
Workday business processes can require confirmation, manager review or another approval step. Sana may help start or coordinate a process, but the documented positioning does not establish that it can bypass those controls.
Enterprise connectors require administration
Sana Enterprise administrators can enable supported third-party connectors. Before enabling one, an organization should identify which data is exposed, which actions are permitted, how access is revoked and how connector changes are monitored. The public material establishes the connector concept, not a universal implementation checklist for every application.
Commercial availability and edition differences
| Offering | Documented scope | What to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Sana Core | Conversational, agentic AI for Workday HCM and Financials within Workday and Sana Workspace. | Tenant enablement, included skills, regional availability and current contract terms. |
| Sana Enterprise | Sana Core capabilities plus third-party connectors and orchestrations across supported external applications. | Connector catalog, supported read/write operations, administrator requirements and entitlement for the tenant. |
| Sana for Workday and Sana Self-Service Agent at the March 17, 2026 launch | Announced as available worldwide through Workday Flex Credits without an extra license or separate paywall. | Whether the same packaging and credit treatment applies to the customer’s current agreement and to every Enterprise capability. |
The announcement’s worldwide wording describes availability of the announced offering, not a promise that every feature, connector or skill is enabled identically for every customer.
Which experience should a team use?
Choose existing navigation or search when
- The procedure is documented as a fixed sequence and users know the task or report name.
- A team needs a stable, teachable path for support instructions and compliance procedures.
- The required information is already in Workday and a direct result or deep link is sufficient.
- The organization has not enabled Sana, the relevant skill or a needed connector.
Choose Sana conversational search when
- Users can describe the business question but do not know the underlying Workday page.
- A follow-up question can narrow the answer more naturally than repeated filter changes.
- Users benefit from cited responses and a deep link to the source record or report.
- The tenant’s permissions and data configuration support the requested question.
Choose Sana agent assistance when
- The task is covered by a supported Self-Service Agent skill.
- Users want to move from an answer to a governed action without manually locating several pages.
- The organization is prepared to review confirmations, approvals, audit requirements and exception handling.
Choose Enterprise orchestration when
- The process genuinely spans Workday and an enabled external application.
- The connector is supported for the required data and operation.
- Administrators can enforce least-privilege access and maintain the integration over time.
What the public evidence does—and does not—show
Workday’s materials establish an intended product evolution: menus, hubs and search remain recognizable interaction patterns, while Sana adds conversation, context, agents and orchestration. They also establish the documented Core and Enterprise distinctions, the launch-time connector list and the 300-plus Self-Service Agent skill count.
They do not establish an independent comparison of search accuracy, response time, adoption, task completion, productivity or total cost. No controlled statistic in the available material demonstrates that Sana is categorically better than Workday’s prior interface. Organizations evaluating it should measure their own representative tasks, including ambiguous questions, permission failures, approval handoffs, stale connected content and unsupported requests.
Bottom line
Sana is best understood as a conversational layer and agent platform built on top of Workday’s governed data and workflows, not as evidence that traditional Workday navigation has ceased to exist. Existing tools remain valuable for predictable, destination-based work. Sana adds natural-language discovery, cited deep links and, where the tenant supports it, agent-assisted actions and cross-application orchestration. The practical choice depends on the user’s intent, the enabled tier, permissions, connector configuration and the specific task—not on a blanket claim that one interface is always faster or more accurate.
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