Workday Rising 2026: Every Announcement and When It Ships
At Workday Rising 2026 in Las Vegas, Workday rebuilt its front door around Sana, the AI company it bought for about $1.1 billion. Sana is now the Workday Home screen, a new agent called Sana Concierge takes HR and IT requests, and four “autopilot” agents start running hiring, payroll, accounting and setup work in the background. Workday also opened its HR and finance data to outside AI agents through MCP, partnered with Anthropic to put Sana inside Claude, and agreed to buy C1.ai, an identity governance company.
The conference runs October 12 to 15. Workday made its announcements on October 13. Most of what it announced is not generally available yet, so below is each one, what it does, and when you can use it.
Every Workday Rising 2026 announcement at a glance
| Announcement | What it is | When you can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Sana as Workday Home | An AI home screen for tasks, decisions, meetings and agent activity | Available now; admins switch it on |
| Sana Concierge | A service agent for HR and IT requests | Early adopters now; general availability Q1 2027 |
| Talent Acquisition Agent autopilot | Watches open roles, finds candidates, drafts outreach, schedules interviews | Early adopters now; general availability early 2027 |
| Payroll, Accounting and Deployment Agent autopilots | Background checks on pay data, contracts, books and Workday setup | Early adopters, early 2027 |
| Sana in Claude plugin | Sana’s agents and Workday data inside Anthropic’s Claude | Early access now; general availability expected late 2026 |
| Headless Trusted Agent Platform | Outside agents read and write Workday data over MCP | Core pieces generally available now |
| Grounded Reasoning | A policy check before an agent acts | Early access, early 2027 |
| Decision Intelligence | HR and finance planning on one data model | Available now to HCM, Financial Management and Adaptive customers |
| Work Intelligence | Breaks jobs into tasks to automate, augment or keep with a person | Early access for HCM customers |
| Candidate Profile | Job seekers reuse saved details across applications | Workday Recruiting customers, early 2027 |
| C1.ai acquisition | Identity governance for people and agents | Agreed; terms not disclosed |
Sana becomes the Workday Home screen
Sana started as Sana Labs, a Stockholm AI company. Workday completed the acquisition on November 4, 2025 and relaunched it as Sana from Workday in March. At Rising, Sana stopped being a chat panel and became the screen employees land on.
- One place for the work. Workday Home pulls tasks, decisions, meetings and agent activity together, shaped by each person’s role, schedule and permissions.
- The screen builds itself. Sana uses Jev, a model from TypeSafe AI, to generate forms, calendars, approval cards and charts on the fly. Ask to schedule a meeting or take time off, and it shows a live calendar or date picker, then finishes the task once you confirm.
- It follows long work. Sana tracks jobs that run for days or weeks, like a financial close or workforce planning, across people, agents and systems.
- Admins decide. A company chooses when to turn the new Home on and whether it becomes the default.
Workday says Sana also works inside Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot, as well as Microsoft Teams and Slack, per Computerworld. The outside tools never get raw Workday data; requests pass through Sana, which applies the company’s permissions and approvals.
Claude goes furthest. Workday and Anthropic announced a partnership and a Sana in Claude plugin: employees can use Sana’s agents, analyze HR and finance data and approve things like invoice exceptions without leaving Claude, confirming every change. It is in early access, with general availability expected in late 2026. Details in Claude + Workday.
“Users shouldn’t have to decide which agent to use, just as they shouldn’t have to click between dozens of different systems,” said Joel Hellermark, Sana’s founder and now Workday’s chief AI officer. Our explainer on Workday Sana covers what it connects to and what it costs.
Sana Concierge takes HR and IT requests
Concierge is a new service agent for password resets, access requests, leave and payroll questions, onboarding and offboarding. Workday’s goal is to resolve these before they turn into tickets. For a new hire, it can set up the first week so training sessions, intro meetings and tool access are ready on day one. When a case needs a person, the specialist gets the history and suggested next steps.
Concierge is with early adopters now. General availability is expected in the first quarter of 2027.
Four agents move from copilot to autopilot
Workday’s framing is “copilot to autopilot.” A copilot waits for you to log in and ask. An autopilot runs on its own, starts when data changes, and brings you in to approve. “Our agents work like autopilots – they get the work done on their own,” Hellermark said in the autopilot announcement.
- Talent Acquisition Agent. Flags open roles at risk of missing their fill date, finds qualified candidates, and pings recruiters in tools like Slack with sourcing ideas and draft outreach. Nothing goes to a candidate until a recruiter approves. It coordinates interview scheduling, briefs interviewers, drafts feedback and remembers each recruiter’s preferences. It works with Workday Recruiting, HiredScore and Paradox. Early adopters can use it now.
- Payroll Agent. Checks pay data continuously and flags what is missing or wrong before payroll runs.
- Accounting Agent. When a contract is signed, it pulls the key terms, prepares the entries, recommends revenue recognition and billing schedules, and tests transactions year-round to keep the books audit-ready.
- Deployment Agent. Finds Workday features a customer hasn’t switched on, projects the impact, and drafts a setup and testing plan. Workday says nearly 5,000 customers have activated it since last September.
The last three reach early adopters in early 2027. Customers choose which tasks run automatically and which need review, every action is logged with what it used and who approved it, and companies can set how often agents run to control cost. We go agent by agent in Workday AI agents.
Workday’s data opens to outside agents
The Trusted Agent Platform is now “headless,” which Workday describes as agents doing “real work in HR and finance, without anyone logging in.”
- Agent-Ready Tools give agents access through MCP. Reworked counts 275 read tools and 54 write or delete tools in the catalog.
- Workday Data Cloud adds Live Data Query, so agents can run SQL against live Workday data, plus Agent Lake.
- Agent Harness runs every agent built by Workday, customers and partners. Customers pick the model: Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, GPT or NVIDIA Nemotron.
- Developer Agent lets developers describe agents in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or the Workday Developer Site.
Agent Harness, Agent-Ready Tools, Custom Agents, Developer Agent and Data Cloud are generally available, the agent-building pieces through Workday Extend AI. Grounded Reasoning, which checks a request against company policy before an agent acts, arrives in early access in early 2027. The release gives two different dates for Agent Context Service: late 2026 in one place, early 2027 in another.
Decision Intelligence and Work Intelligence
Decision Intelligence puts HR and finance planning on one data model. In SiliconANGLE’s example, HR asks to hire 50 people and the tool checks whether the business still needs 50, given current staff, skills and cost. Workday’s Yasmeen Ahmad said a planning scenario that used to take “six weeks, five spreadsheets” now took one prompt. It is available now to HCM, Financial Management and Adaptive customers.
Work Intelligence breaks each job into tasks and sorts them into automate, augment or keep with a person. It draws on Workday’s Skills Cloud, which SiliconANGLE says more than 3,450 customers use. It is in early access for HCM customers.
Workday agrees to buy C1.ai
C1.ai, also known as ConductorOne, manages who can access what across systems like email and cloud infrastructure, granting access when someone needs it and removing it afterward. Workday wants its record of job changes to drive those decisions for both people and agents. Terms were not disclosed.
What Workday left out
- Prices. None of the releases price Sana Home, Concierge or the autopilots. Workday sells AI through Flex Credits, an annual credit pool drawn down when an agent completes an action, but the credit cost of an autopilot running all week is not public.
- Customer results. Reworked notes there is no customer result for the autopilot and no figure for how often recruiters send drafts back: “if nobody ever sends anything back, the approval isn’t adding much.” It also says Workday didn’t explain how it calculated its headline time-savings figures for Sana.
- Dates. Concierge, three of the four autopilots and the policy check are all 2027.
Analyst Melody Brue of Moor Insights & Strategy told CIO that governance needs clear ownership of approvals, because “an agent can be authorized and still make the wrong call.”
Autopilot for teams that don’t run Workday
Workday’s idea is right: agents that start the work themselves and bring a person in to approve. But every piece of it assumes a Workday contract, and the 11,500 organizations on Workday are mostly large ones. A 10-person firm or a 60-person agency running on Gmail or Outlook has the same recruiting emails, client scheduling and follow-ups, and no Workday.
Carly brings that autopilot to the tools you already use.
- Agents that start on their own. An email landing, a form coming in or a call ending starts a workflow, with no prompt and no login.
- You approve what matters. Set approval steps before anything sends, the same draft-then-approve pattern Workday uses for recruiter outreach.
- Scheduling across every calendar. Interviews, client calls and team meetings book against several Gmail and Outlook accounts at once, and booking pages are free.
- Its own name and inbox. Build AI agents with their own email address, instructions and memory, so the recruiting agent and the client agent stay separate.
- Calls and texts too. Carly can answer your business line, text back and book the caller.
- Inside your AI chat. Add the Carly connector to Claude or ChatGPT and run it from there.
Carly connects to thousands of apps, from Slack and HubSpot to Ashby and Lever. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month. No early adopter program: get started with Carly today.
FAQ
When is Workday Rising 2026? October 12 to 15, 2026, in Las Vegas. Workday made its main announcements on October 13.
What did Workday announce at Rising 2026? Sana as the new Workday Home, the Sana Concierge service agent, autopilot modes for its Talent Acquisition, Payroll, Accounting and Deployment agents, a headless agent platform that opens Workday data over MCP, a Sana in Claude plugin with Anthropic, Decision Intelligence, Work Intelligence, Candidate Profile, and a deal to buy C1.ai.
Is the new Sana Workday Home available? Yes. Workday says the new Home is available now, with more capabilities coming. Each company’s administrators decide when to turn it on and whether to make it the default.
When will Workday’s autopilot agents be available? The Talent Acquisition Agent autopilot is with early adopters now, with general availability planned for early 2027. The Payroll, Accounting and Deployment autopilots reach early adopters in early 2027.
How much do Workday’s new AI features cost? Workday hasn’t published prices. Its AI runs on Flex Credits, a pool included with subscriptions that customers can top up, metered when an agent completes an action. Carly’s pricing is public: free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month.
Is there an autopilot AI agent for companies that don’t use Workday? Yes. Carly runs agents that start on new email, forms and calls across Gmail and Outlook, with approval steps before anything sends. It works with whatever HR, CRM and recruiting tools you already have.
More: Workday Sana · Workday AI agents · Microsoft Copilot Autopilot
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