How Workday Acquiring Sana is Reinventing AI Learning and Workflows

 

12.02.2025 | Technical Articles

 

Dig down into any profitable company and you’ll find a workforce filled with proactive learners who know how to use the knowledge at their fingertips. These people not only love to grow and acquire new skills, but they have access to processes and programs that make learning on the job easy and approachable.

That doesn’t happen by accident. Sophisticated systems are essential to rapidly creating courses and supplemental materials that workers need to absorb and retain new information. Better yet, the best platforms are using AI agents to empower employees to act on that knowledge. By acquiring Sana, Workday is helping organizations do just that.

Let’s explore how Sana’s capabilities are making it easier for Workday customers to expand the individual knowledge of their workers as well as leverage the company’s knowledge with easy-to-build agents.

What Sana Brings to the Table

For those who aren’t familiar, Sana is an AI company dedicated to building knowledge tools that help employees learn and automate company knowledge through AI agents.

Since their founding in 2016, they have raised $130 million and served over 1.5 million users, which has caught the attention of Workday. Workday will acquire all outstanding shares of Sana for approximately $1.1 billion.

What does Workday acquiring Sana bring to the table? It helps to further flesh out their AI agent capabilities with the acquisition of Flowise and Paradox. Here are the key capabilities that Workday customers will be able to enjoy.

Find Critical Information

Sana’s AI-powered agents are going to make finding information effortless. Instead of digging through multiple systems or waiting on colleagues, Workday users can now simply ask questions in natural language and get answers instantly. Employees can retrieve policy documents, training materials, job descriptions, employee evaluations, and more as quickly as they need them.

Better yet, this AI-native capability understands context and can retrieve the most relevant content right inside Workday. That means these new Sana-powered features can pull from Microsoft, Snowflake, and other systems integrated with your Workday ecosystem. And, if needed, Workday can now generate personalized training materials from the information it finds to help employees retain their new knowledge.

Act Based on Enterprise Knowledge

Beyond finding information, Sana empowers employees to act on it. During his portion of the keynote, Joel Hellermark, CEO and Founder of Sana, illustrated the platform’s ability to turn information into results. He walked through a hypothetical situation where Sana employees, needing a recharge after preparing for Workday Rising, asked the system about paid-time-off policy. The AI agent could review the policy as well as any remaining time per employee and request time off.

But these new Workday AI agents aren’t simply helping with time-off requests. They can manage a broad range of knowledge-driven actions:

• A manager could ask about training course completion, and the agent could send reminders to individuals and generate a completion report
• A recruiter could request interview summaries on five recent candidates, and the agent could compile notes, feedback, and performance in a ready-to-share dashboard.
• A finance team could inquire about quarter-over-quarter budget summaries, and the agent could send a formatted document with relevant figures and context.

Build Dashboards in an Instant

Sana’s AI capabilities in Workday will make HR and finance insights instantly accessible by generating dynamic dashboards, pulling from across enterprise systems. Instead of manually compiling data or waiting on analytics teams, users can create visual, actionable summaries in seconds.

These dashboards go far beyond basic reporting. They can visualize dashboards around the previous training-completion example, connecting learning outcomes with quota achievement. Or they can build interactive charts from metrics within the recruiting workflow, helping find the cream of the crop. No matter the Workday function, these AI agents can give you on-demand dashboards ready to empower decision-makers to see the full picture faster.

Automate Workflows from Internal Knowledge

These expanded AI agents won’t just automate tasks; they’ll do so with the power of your organization’s internal knowledge.

The example given by Joel Hellermark at Workday Rising 2025 was of a CHRO prompting the new Sana-powered Workday to create a workflow for annual performance reviews. This executive would have access to a comprehensive workflow that is informed by the various internal systems necessary.

Yet that’s just one example. Workday can also generate onboarding sequences from existing documentation, launch approval processes when certain conditions are met, or surface compliance actions automatically. By connecting Workday’s data foundation with Sana’s knowledge-driven automation, routine work can become smarter, faster, and deeply aligned with how organizations actually operate.

A Better Workday Experience (If You Use the Right Partner)

“We’re introducing the new front door for work where AI is the new UI.” That’s how Aneel Bhusri, CEO and Co-Founder, nicely captured the acquisition.

Ultimately, the combination of Workday and Sana will redefine the employee experience. Instead of navigating complex menus or juggling multiple systems, users can now simply ask and act. AI will do the rest. This seamless design transforms Workday into a true conversational workspace, where knowledge, learning, and action come together in one place.

For organizations, the opportunity is enormous. But realizing it requires thoughtful planning and expertise. That’s where a partner like Agilysis can make all the difference.

With deep experience in Workday implementations and integrations, Agilysis helps companies design, deploy, and optimize these new AI capabilities so they deliver measurable impact from day one. From configuring intelligent workflows to training teams on new use cases, Agilysis ensures that Sana’s innovations enhance, not overwhelm, your organization’s operations.

Want to explore how Workday acquiring Sana can transform your HR, finance, and operations? Schedule time with us to map out this new feature.

 

 

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