What is Sana?
Sana is now Workday’s AI brand and the foundation on which Workday builds its AI products. It is not a single feature or add-on. It is the platform behind Workday’s AI agents, the experience through which users interact with those agents, and the layer that connects Workday to the broader enterprise application landscape.
Workday acquired Sana because it solves a real problem. Workday is a powerful platform, but many employees never get fully comfortable with it. They interact with it infrequently, find it confusing, and rely on HR or Finance teams to do things on their behalf. Sana changes that. It puts a conversational layer on top of Workday so that employees and managers can get things done without needing to know where anything lives in the system.
The simplest way to think about it: Sana is the new front door to Workday. Not for every interaction, but for the day-to-day questions and tasks that most employees currently avoid or escalate. The platform behind it (the data, the processes, the security) remains Workday. What changes is how people interact with it, and increasingly, what the platform can do on their behalf.
What has changed for users?
The most visible change is the interface. Workday has modernised its UI across all customers as part of this shift, and this is included in every existing subscription automatically with no additional SKU or cost required.
Beyond the interface, the Self-Service Agent is a significant step up. Rather than searching through Workday or raising an HR case, employees can ask the Self-Service Agent a question in plain language and get an immediate, accurate answer. They can also take action, requesting time off, updating personal details, checking pay information, and reviewing their benefits, all directly through the conversation. Managers can do the same for their teams.
It is worth being clear about what the Self-Service Agent replaces.
Workday Assistant, which many organisations will be familiar with as the existing conversational tool in Workday, is being retired. It will remain available until September 2027, at which point the Self-Service Agent takes over entirely. If you enable the Self-Service Agent now, Workday Assistant is automatically disabled. The two cannot run simultaneously.
For organisations using Workday Learning, Sana Learn is also worth noting. Sana’s original product, before the Workday acquisition, was a learning platform, and that capability comes with it. Rather than building content through traditional authoring tools, Sana Learn uses AI to generate courses and learning materials from existing source material, and surfaces content to employees based on their role and context. It includes performance tracking, centralised content management, and organisational branding. Whether and how it sits alongside your existing Workday Learning configuration is worth understanding early.
What are the three tiers, and what do they cost?
This is where it gets important to be precise, because the picture is more layered than most communications make clear. There are effectively three levels, and where your organisation lands depends on what you have signed.
It is also worth understanding what the Sana acquisition signals about Workday’s broader direction. Workday is building toward a model where it becomes the central hub through which organisations interact not just with HR and Finance data but with their wider technology landscape.
Sana Enterprise is the clearest expression of that ambition. For customers thinking about their longer-term technology architecture, understanding where Workday is headed commercially is as important as understanding what is available today.
What does it mean commercially?
The commercial implications of Sana are still developing, but there are a few things worth understanding now.
First, nothing activates automatically. The interface update is automatic, but Sana Core and the Self-Service Agent require UMSA and Flex Credits to be in place. If your organisation is still on the legacy Main Service Agreement, you cannot access this capability in production until you migrate. Migration happens at renewal, or you can sign an Early Migration Amendment outside of a renewal cycle.
Second, Flex Credits are a consumption model. The Self-Service Agent uses credits each time it successfully completes a tool call – retrieving information, taking an action, or completing a process step. Conversations that do not result in a tool call do not consume credits. Each customer receives a complimentary annual credit entitlement based on organisation size, and additional credits can be purchased as needed.
Getting a clear picture of your likely costs requires some upfront modelling , and understanding your expected consumption before you commit avoids surprises later.
Third, Sana Enterprise is a separate commercial decision. For most Workday customers, the right starting point is understanding whether Sana Core delivers the value they need before considering the additional investment that Enterprise requires.
What should you do now?
For most Workday customers, the practical priority is straightforward, even if the commercial picture is not.
Start by understanding your contract status. If you do not know whether you are on UMSA or the legacy MSA, find out. It is the single biggest determinant of what you can and cannot access right now. Your Workday account team can confirm this, and so can a Workday partner.
Then have a realistic conversation about readiness. Sana Core and the Self-Service Agent are available butavailable but activating them well requires more than getting the commercial agreements in place. Your data needs to be in good shape. Your security configuration needs to be reviewed. Your employees need to know the capability exists and how to use it. The organisations that will get the most from Sana are the ones that treat activation as a programme of work rather than a technical switch.
Finally, if you are approaching renewal, go in prepared. The UMSA conversation will happen at that point, whether you initiate it or not. Understanding what you want from Sana and what it will cost you to get it, before that conversation starts, puts you in a much stronger position.
If you want an independent view of where you stand and what Sana realistically means for your organisation, get in touch.
