Three changes ship together, and they are best understood as one. A new homepage that makes 'find and act' faster. A conversational self-service agent that supports questions and actions in one flow. And Sana behind the scenes, which is what turns search and chat from a feature into something that actually feels like a useful coworker.

What changed in the UI

The homepage now leads with a single search box and a set of quick actions ('Time Off Balance', 'Take Time Off', 'Create Expense', 'View My Goals', 'Health Benefits') rather than a list of inboxes. Awaiting Your Action sits in a clean stack with timely suggestions next to it. The left navigation is simplified and brandable. The overall effect is that the user lands on a page that looks like a productivity tool rather than an HRIS task queue.

Branding controls are also broader. You can put your company colours and imagery into the global navigation and the homepage header. For internal communications teams, this turns the Workday landing page into a usable surface for company-wide messaging, not just an admin tool.

The self-service agent

The agent is the part that changes daily behaviour. Four things make it different from the old 'ask Workday Assistant a question' experience.

  • You speak in your own voice. No need to phrase your question 'the Workday way' to get a useful answer.
  • It combines multiple Workday data points into one answer, so you do not search, click, search, click for the same question.
  • It can complete actions, not just answer. Add a dependent, request time off, look up a manager's team, all in one flow.
  • Policy intelligence pulls from Workday Help knowledge articles, so the answer reflects your company's actual policy rather than generic documentation. This specific feature requires Workday Help.

Designed properly, this is the feature that takes the largest chunk out of HR ticket volume. Most HR tickets are some version of 'how do I' or 'where do I find'. The agent is built to answer those first, so the HR team only sees the ones that genuinely need a human.

Sana Core versus Sana Enterprise

This is the part that creates the most confusion. Sana Core is the Workday agent experience: the new front door, the self-service agent, and the first-party agent coverage Workday ships natively. If you opt into the new front door, you get Sana Core. Sana Enterprise is the broader product, with connectors across your tool landscape (ServiceNow, Salesforce, Google Drive, SharePoint direction, and many more), plus build and automation capabilities so you can compose your own agents that span beyond Workday.

Translation: Sana Core makes Workday itself smarter. Sana Enterprise makes Workday the orchestration layer for your entire HR tool stack. The two are separately licensed, and the decision to adopt one does not commit you to the other.

“Sana Core makes Workday itself smarter. Sana Enterprise makes Workday the orchestration layer for your entire HR tool stack.”

What is included and what is not

Four practical points HRIS leaders should walk into the conversation knowing.

  • The new homepage, navigation, and search uplift do not require a new SKU. They are an opt-in UI experience.
  • AI summaries and AI search require either Illuminate Search and AI (ISA) or the Unified Manager and Self-service Agent (UMSA) SKU.
  • The policy intelligence feature specifically requires Workday Help. Without Help, you still get the agent, but the policy answers will not pull from your knowledge base.
  • Sana, as a broader platform (Enterprise), requires Flex Credits.

None of these are surprises if you have been following Workday's licensing logic over the last 18 months. They are worth flagging early in the rollout conversation, because the question 'is this just a UI uplift or does it need new credits' comes up in every steering meeting.

Where to start

The most useful first move is to opt in to the new Workday Experience (homepage, navigation, search) in a non-production tenant and walk a few real users through it. The user response usually tells you whether to fast-track the rollout or stage it. In parallel, turn on the self-service agent in that same tenant and measure how many of your common HR tickets it would resolve on its own. That number is the business case in a single line, and it travels well into a steering committee. The Sana Enterprise question (whether the broader cross-system platform belongs in your roadmap) is a separate decision that should wait until you have a clear picture of the multi-system use cases that would justify it.

For most HRIS teams, the right pattern is to opt into the front door and the agent in production within Q2 2026, treat policy intelligence as a fast follow that depends on Workday Help, and put a separate decision gate on Sana Enterprise once you have a clear picture of the multi-system use cases that justify it.

If you opt in to production and want to opt back out, the standard tenant configuration tasks allow you to disable Sana per area; full rollback is configuration, not data migration. That makes the production opt-in genuinely reversible, which is worth knowing when the governance board asks how exposed they are to a bad first impression.

A short signal worth noting

This release is the first time Workday has shipped a unified agent experience that is genuinely first-party rather than bolted onto the side of the platform. The pattern (homepage plus search plus agent plus governance) is the pattern most of the AI-native enterprise stack is converging on. Whether or not your team plans to use Sana heavily, the rollout teaches you something about how your users will experience every HR tool over the next two years. Treat it as a learning opportunity, not just an opt-in toggle.