Workday Release Planning
5 Questions to Ask Your Workday Team After Rising
Introduction
The keynotes are over and the slides are all saved. After Workday Rising 2026 (12 to 15 October, Las Vegas), most teams are left holding a long list of new agents, features and release dates, with no clear plan for any of them.
Sana as the Workday Home screen, autopilot agents and MCP access sound exciting, but excitement does not protect a live tenant. A set of decisions made early, before anything goes live, does.
This post gives you five questions to take to your next Workday team meeting, covering ownership, testing, approvals, security and cost. Each one has a simple readiness test: if the room cannot answer it, you are not yet ready to turn that feature on.
Key takeaways
Turn Rising announcements into owners, dates and decisions within two weeks.
Decide which actions agents may run alone and which need a human approval.
Test approvals, security roles and integrations before any agent goes live.
Ask about cost and timing early, because many features are early access or arrive in 2027.
Keep a regression suite and rerun it after every Workday release.
Why this matters now
Conference energy fades fast. Within a month, the notes are forgotten and the questions that matter slip into the backlog.
Meanwhile, Sana Home is already available for administrators to switch on, and the first autopilot agents are with early adopters. Autopilot agents can start work when data changes and ask a person to approve. Outside AI tools can now reach Workday data through MCP. Each of these changes who can do what in your tenant.
That is why the weeks after Rising are the right time to ask five questions:
Which new features will we actually use, and who owns each one?
What has to be tested before anything goes live?
Which actions run on their own, and which need a person?
How will we keep security and integrations under control?
What will it cost, and when does it arrive?
If your team can answer all five, you have a plan. If not, the gaps tell you where to focus first.
Example: the five questions in action
Here is an illustrative scenario, not a real customer. Imagine an HR operations team that leaves Rising wanting to switch on the new Home screen now and try a Payroll autopilot agent later. This is how the five questions could play out.
Question | What the team decides |
|---|---|
1. Features and owners | HR operations owns the Home screen. The payroll lead owns the payroll agent. Connecting an outside AI tool through MCP is parked for next year. |
2. Testing before go-live | User acceptance testing with real roles for the Home screen. Regression tests for pay runs and retroactive changes for the payroll agent. |
3. Automatic or approval | The agent may prepare results alone, but a payroll specialist approves before anything posts. The team tests that a rejected approval stops the process. |
4. Security and integrations | Security groups the agent can act as are reviewed, and inbound and outbound payroll integrations are tested. |
5. Cost and timing | The Workday account team confirms early access dates and what the contract covers. Testing time is added to the business case. |
After two weeks, the team has owners, rules, tests and dates. Nothing has been switched on yet, and that is the point: when it does go live, everyone knows who approves what and how it was checked.
How PeopleFlow helps
PeopleFlow provides 1000+ pre-built tests for HCM, Payroll, Finance and Integrations, so your team can cover question 2 through no-code Workday testing instead of writing scripts. PeopleFlow also offers AI agents for Workday, including Configuration, Report, Support, Testing and Integration agents. As a Workday Innovation Silver Partner, we help teams keep each release and each new feature predictable.
Frequently asked questions
What should my team do first after Workday Rising?
Hold one short meeting to list the features you actually plan to use, assign an owner to each, and decide what to skip for now. Then set a testing window before anything goes live. Doing this within two weeks keeps the conference momentum and stops decisions from drifting.
Do I need to test new Workday AI agents before turning them on?
Yes. Agents act on data, approvals and permissions, so one wrong setting can repeat many times. Test approvals, security roles, integrations and edge cases before rollout, and add those processes to your regression suite so you can rerun them after every Workday release.
Who should own Workday testing after Rising?
Usually a QA lead or Workday administrator owns testing, with process owners signing off their own areas. HR, IT and finance should agree responsibilities up front. No-code testing tools make it easier for non-developers to take part without writing scripts.
How do I check what Workday actually announced?
Read the announcements on Workday's newsroom, then confirm dates, availability and contract coverage with your Workday account team. Conference summaries can miss details, and many features are early access, so check current status before you plan any rollout in your own tenant.
Conclusion
Workday Rising gives you plenty to be excited about, but excitement is not a plan. Five simple questions turn announcements into owners, rules, tests and dates. Ask them in the next two weeks, write down the answers, and revisit them after every release. Teams that do this adopt new Workday AI agents with confidence, not surprises. Start with the first question today.
