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Workday Introduces Sana Self-Service Agent on Microsoft 365 Copilot

On May 13, 2026, Workday Inc. unveiled its new self-service agent, Sana, now usable within the Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem. This integration allows employees and managers to conduct HR and finance-related tasks without the need to switch between applications, while maintaining security, compliance, and governance protocols.

In the previous setup, employees and managers were often required to engage in multiple exchanges via email, chat, portals, or help desks to acquire necessary information for matters such as pay stubs, leave requests, expense reimbursements, and organizational changes. This cumbersome process not only hindered operational efficiency but also added to the burden on HR and finance teams.

Sana, created by Workday, integrates HR and finance data, contextual information, policies, and processes in a unified manner on the Workday platform. With this, it seeks to automate tasks and enhance operational processes while still leveraging human judgment through its AI agents. By enabling the use of the Sana self-service agent directly within Microsoft 365 Copilot, employees can now easily access a broad spectrum of routine tasks with the intelligence offered by the agent.

For employees already utilizing Microsoft 365, they can check their remaining paid leave days and submit leave requests, verify the status of expense reimbursements, understand the steps to address preparation for upcoming performance evaluations, or search internal policies regarding parental leave or family care leave using natural language. When these requests involve Workday data and processes, Microsoft 365 Copilot can securely interact with the Sana self-service agent and execute tasks in alignment with corporate approval flows, internal policies, and business rules, returning the results back to the Copilot.

Rapid Completion of HR and Finance Tasks

The availability of the Sana self-service agent within the Microsoft 365 Copilot allows employees and managers to complete their daily HR and finance tasks faster than ever before.

For Employees

• - Check remaining paid leave days
• - Update personal information
• - View pay stubs
• - Validate tax deduction information
• - Submit leave requests

For Managers

• - Overview of team goals
• - Bulk approval of attendance requests
• - Initiate employee performance reviews
• - Submission of salary-related information

For Finance Personnel and Employees

• - Confirmation regarding expense reimbursements and travel policies
• - Check eligibility regarding corporate card usage
• - Assist in creating requests or inquiries if necessary

Existing customers utilizing Microsoft 365 can initiate the use of the Sana self-service agent with a straightforward setup process. It is available as a single application on Microsoft Marketplace, which means no additional logins, implementation efforts, or further licenses are required.

Security and Governance with AI Interactions

As a core platform for HR and finance, Workday needs to ensure trustworthiness, accuracy, and auditability. The nature of modern AI is probabilistic, where it makes inferences and suggestions based on patterns and probabilities. In contrast, Workday's operational process framework is deterministic, clearly designed from start to finish with defined flows, approvals, and governance to deliver consistently auditable results. By closely integrating Sana's agent-based AI with Workday's deterministic base, the secure utilization of AI agents in HR and finance becomes a reality, allowing for greater task automation while safeguarding critical security, compliance, and governance standards for businesses.

Through the availability of the Sana self-service agent on Microsoft 365 Copilot, all tasks can now be executed via Workday, ensuring companies maintain complete oversight and management rights concerning their data, policies, and processes. Responses to requests and inquiries are determined in accordance with the permissions set by each company's roles, and actions will adhere to existing approval flows and business rules. Moreover, companies can visualize the usage of AI agents, enabling them to monitor implementation and ensure everything functions as intended. Interactions with the Sana self-service agent will be displayed as activity history within Microsoft 365 Copilot, while Workday's data and processes are upheld within the trusted confines of its system.

Workday is intensifying its focus on interoperable agent collaboration solutions to promote the expansive utilization of AI assistants across the ecosystem. Sana from Workday offers reasoning capabilities and safeguard mechanisms allowing multiple agents to collaborate across different platforms while maintaining data governance for businesses.

Availability

The Sana self-service agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot was launched on May 13, 2026, for select Workday and Microsoft customers.

Additional Information

For more insights into how Workday developed the Sana self-service agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot, please refer to the official document.