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Workday’s Sana for Workday is a conversational and agentic interface intended to become a new starting point for employee work. Instead of navigating menus, a worker can ask a question, find information, start a workflow or request an action in natural language. Workday’s Self-Service Agent can also search and summarize approved sources and help with tasks, but it does not mean unrestricted autonomous access: security roles, policies, delegations and approval chains still govern what happens.
For employees, the change is mainly about how work is initiated. For administrators, the substantial work is behind the interface: configuring security, registering and monitoring agents, provisioning users, enabling access, setting up connectors and deciding which actions require approval. The word “autopilot” is useful shorthand for agentic assistance, not a promise that an agent can independently change anything in a tenant.
What Sana is in Workday
A conversational front door
Workday completed its acquisition of Sana on November 4, 2025. Workday said the combination brought Sana’s enterprise knowledge capabilities together with Workday data and context. Gerrit Kazmaier, Workday’s president of product and technology, described the goal as creating “a single, intelligent interface that connects the systems, data, and actions employees rely on.”
On March 17, 2026, Workday announced Sana for Workday, the Sana Self-Service Agent and Sana Enterprise. Workday described Sana for Workday as a unified conversational AI experience that can replace traditional menus and navigation for many interactions. A user can phrase a request in ordinary language instead of knowing the name of a report, business process or navigation path.
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Agentic does not mean unrestricted
A chatbot generally answers a prompt. An agent can combine information retrieval with a task: it may identify the relevant record, prepare a proposed action, ask for confirmation or approval, and then invoke a permitted Workday process. Workday’s product descriptions place those steps inside existing controls. Sensitive actions can present a proposed change and request approval before anything is committed.
Whether an agent can complete a particular task depends on the tenant’s enabled skills, security configuration, policies, approval chains and connected systems. The interface may feel like an autopilot, but the underlying system still evaluates identity, authorization and business rules.
What employees can do with Sana
Ask, find and summarize
Workday says employees can ask for help, see what needs attention and receive answers from Workday and supported knowledge sources. The Self-Service Agent can search and summarize information rather than requiring a worker to open several pages and interpret each one. The exact sources available are controlled by the organization.
Start or advance a task
Workday’s examples include questions and actions involving pay, time and absence. A worker might ask about a pay item, check an absence balance or begin an absence-related process. Managers can use the same conversational model for work that is available to their role. These are Workday-stated capabilities, not a guarantee that every customer has every skill enabled.
Propose an action before changing data
For a sensitive operation, Sana may show what it intends to do and request approval. The approval can be routed through the organization’s configured chain. A user therefore needs to distinguish between an answer, a draft or proposal, and a completed transaction. A conversational response is not proof that a record has changed; the resulting Workday status and audit information remain authoritative.
Work across supported systems
Sana Enterprise can add third-party connections and cross-application orchestrations. Where those features are configured, an employee may request work that spans Workday and another approved system. Workday says cross-system actions are logged and available for audit, and that role and permission mirroring can carry authorization expectations into connected work.
How an agent request is controlled
A useful way to understand the experience is to separate the conversational layer from the transaction layer:
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- Context and retrieval: It searches the Workday knowledge and data sources that the tenant has made available to that user and agent.
- Authorization: Security roles, domain policies, delegations and other configured controls determine whether the requested information or action is allowed.
- Proposal or execution: The agent returns information, prepares a proposed action or performs an approved operation. Sensitive actions can require an approval step.
- Record and review: The resulting transaction and relevant agent activity can be reviewed through Workday’s controls and audit reporting.
This model matters when a response sounds confident. A natural-language answer can still be limited by incomplete source coverage, unavailable skills or a permission boundary. Employees should use the normal Workday record, approval status and organizational policy when a decision has financial, payroll, compliance or employment consequences.
Sana Core and Sana Enterprise compared
Workday describes two scopes. The distinction is about systems and administration, not a universal ranking in which one is simply “better.”
| Comparison area | Sana Core | Sana Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| System scope | Conversational and agentic use across Workday HCM and Financials. | Core scope plus third-party connectors and cross-application work. |
| Typical employee experience | Questions, answers and actions based on Workday data and processes available to the user. | Work that can be orchestrated across Workday and approved connected systems. |
| Additional setup | Security, agent configuration, user provisioning and Sana access must be configured. | All Core setup plus Enterprise domain and connector configuration. |
| Commercial prerequisites | Applicable agreement, product conditions and Flex Credits terms vary by customer. | Additional purchase and Flex Credits policy requirements may apply. |
| Governance | Agents are registered, authorized, activated, monitored and reviewed through the Agent System of Record. | The same lifecycle controls apply, with connector permissions and cross-system audit considerations. |
Connected-system capability should not be inferred merely because an organization has Sana. An administrator must configure the connector, permissions and policy controls, and the target system must support the intended operation.
What administrators must configure
Rolling out Sana is an administration project, not just a switch for an employee-facing card. Workday’s setup sequence identifies these activities:
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- Set up the Agent System of Record. Register the agents, define their configuration and establish how they will be activated, deactivated, accessed and monitored.
- Edit relevant domain security policies. Align Sana and each agent with the organization’s Workday security model. A conversational interface should not bypass domain-level restrictions.
- Provision employees. Identify who receives access and ensure user identities, roles and any required groups are correctly provisioned.
- Enable the Sana card or access point in Workday. Make the interface available to the intended population only after security and provisioning checks are complete.
- Complete Enterprise domain setup when applicable. Customers using Enterprise features must configure the additional domains and approved connectors needed for cross-system work.
Workspace settings can provide further boundaries. Workday documentation describes controls for disabling web search, support chat or particular connectors, and for restricting agentic actions to approved email domains. These settings are useful when an organization wants Sana available for internal Workday work but does not want every external source or connector exposed.
The Agent System of Record and permission modes
Agent lifecycle management
Workday’s Agent System of Record is a central framework for defining and registering agents, configuring them, activating or deactivating them, controlling access, monitoring activity and producing audit reports. Treat it as an inventory and control plane, not merely a catalog. An agent that is no longer needed should be deactivated and its access reviewed.
Ambient and delegate execution
Workday describes two important execution modes. In ambient execution, an agent acts with its own permissions. In delegate execution, it acts on behalf of a human and uses that worker’s permissions. The distinction affects both authorization and investigation: an administrator reviewing an event needs to know whether the action came from the agent identity or from delegated authority.
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Monitoring and audit
Workday recommends regular review of agent activity and provides audit trails and reports. Review should cover which agents are active, who can invoke them, what permissions they hold, which connectors they use, what approvals were requested and whether activity matches the intended business process. Agent controls reduce risk only when administrators keep the configuration and the audit review current.
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Availability, agreements and Flex Credits
Workday’s March 17, 2026 launch announcement said Sana for Workday and the Self-Service Agent were available to customers worldwide through Workday Flex Credits, without an extra license or separate paywall. That statement describes Workday’s announced commercial model; it does not establish that every tenant is automatically eligible or that every skill is available to every customer.
Workday’s administrator security guidance says prerequisites depend on the customer’s subscription service agreement. It identifies applicable product conditions, UMSA requirements and Flex Credits terms, with additional purchase and policy requirements for Enterprise. Credit consumption and eligibility can therefore differ by organization. Before enabling a feature, an administrator should confirm the tenant’s agreement, the required products, the applicable Flex Credits terms and any regional or connector conditions with Workday.
What the “300+ skills” figure means
In the March 17, 2026 announcement, Workday said the Self-Service Agent had more than 300 skills, including areas such as pay, time and absence. This is a vendor-reported launch figure, not an independently verified inventory or performance test. Skills can also depend on product scope, tenant configuration, role permissions and rollout status. Use the figure as an indication of Workday’s stated breadth, not as a promise that a particular employee can invoke all of those skills.
Practical effects for different users
Employees
- Start with a specific request and include the relevant period, worker or transaction when appropriate.
- Check whether the response is an explanation, a proposed action or a completed transaction.
- For pay, leave, financial or employment-sensitive matters, verify the resulting Workday record and approval status.
- Report an unexpected answer or action through the organization’s normal support channel so administrators can inspect the skill, policy and audit trail.
Managers
Managers may see a different set of answers and actions because their role, supervisory relationships and approval authority differ from an employee’s. A manager’s ability to ask about a team process does not automatically grant access to every employee record or permit an unapproved change.
Administrators and security teams
Administrators should design Sana around real business processes: decide which populations need access, map each skill to an owner, document approval points, restrict connectors and establish a review cadence. Security teams should test both successful and denied requests, including delegated scenarios, before broad rollout.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Common rollout pitfalls and fixes
Assuming the interface overrides security
Symptom: stakeholders expect a natural-language request to bypass a difficult role or approval path. Fix: document the governing domain policies, role assignments and approval chain; test the request with the same identity and permissions the employee will use.
Enabling access before provisioning is complete
Symptom: users see Sana but receive inconsistent results or cannot complete an action. Fix: finish user provisioning and role validation before enabling the card or access point for that population.
Adding connectors without a data boundary
Symptom: an Enterprise pilot exposes more external search or cross-system capability than intended. Fix: approve connectors individually, restrict domains and email destinations where available, and disable web search, support chat or unused connectors when they are not required.
Failing to distinguish agent and worker permissions
Symptom: an audit review cannot explain why an action was authorized. Fix: record whether the agent uses ambient or delegate execution, review both permission sets and keep the Agent System of Record current.
Treating marketing examples as measured outcomes
Workday’s announcements describe intended capabilities and examples. They do not establish independent accuracy, productivity or return-on-investment results. Establish internal measures such as completion time, escalation rate, approval exceptions and error reports, and compare them with the organization’s own baseline.
A sensible evaluation plan
Organizations deciding whether to expand Sana should evaluate a bounded set of real requests rather than relying on a demonstration. Select representative HCM and Financials tasks, identify the data each task needs, define the permitted outcome, and test both approval and denial paths. For Enterprise, include connector outages, mismatched permissions and cross-system audit records.
Have process owners sign off on the answer and transaction behavior, have security owners sign off on authorization, and have compliance or internal audit review the evidence retained for each action. Expand access only when the organization can explain who may invoke an agent, what it may do, how a human approval is captured and how an administrator can disable it.
The bottom line for employees and administrators
Sana changes the entry point to Workday from menus to conversation and adds agents that can retrieve information, prepare work and perform permitted actions. For employees, that can make pay, time, absence and other Workday tasks easier to discover. For administrators, the product is a governed system that requires security design, provisioning, connector decisions, lifecycle management and ongoing audit review. Workday’s announced availability and skill count are useful indicators of its product direction, but tenant eligibility, enabled skills and actual controls must be confirmed in the organization’s own agreement and configuration.
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