Workday has made a series of announcements recently, including a new partnership with AWS and new capabilities designed to help developers build, run, and govern AI agents on trusted HR and finance data while using the agentic coding tools and clouds they already utilize.
The new capability announcements include:
- New Developer Agent and Agent-Ready Tools for developers to move from a simple request to a working app or agent in minutes.
- Agent Passport for independent, third-party verification of an agent’s ability to safely deploy.
- New Workday Data Cloud capabilities in early access and a new partnership with AWS.
AWS added a new data cloud partner
Workday will add AWS as a new partner for Workday Data Cloud and announce that Workday Data Lake and Workday Data Connect are now available to early access customers.
By joining as a Workday Data Cloud partner, Workday HR and finance data will become a “first-class data source” for developers building on AWS.
This partnership will bring Workday data into AWS environments without extra exports, custom pipelines, or duplicate systems, and connect services such as Amazon Bedrock directly to Workday-governed data and business rules.
Agreement fuels AWS agentic AI connections
Further, through Agent Gateway, third-party agents running on AWS can trigger governed actions in Workday.
The three connected capabilities for developers added to Workday Data Cloud include:
- Workday Data Lake: A unified foundation where Workday HR and finance data lives, combined with select third-party sources, keeping data accurate, up to date, and tied to company rules and permissions, allowing teams to see a consistent picture of workforce and finances in one place.
- Workday Data Connect provides open, bidirectional access to Workday Data Lake via Apache Iceberg. Workday data will remain within Workday, while developers can query it via their preferred cloud and analytics tools, combining it with other systems without creating shadow databases.
- Workday Live Data Query provides direct SQL access via JDBC and Python for real-time access to Workday data, supporting scenarios that depend on up-to-date information, such as staffing applications that fill open shifts or dashboards that respond to changing spend.
Read more: Hear directly from AWS partners about the demand for agentic AI solutions in 2026.
The next evolution of Workday Build
Workday has also unveiled its next evolution of Workday Build, enabling developers with a trusted, AI-ready platform to build, connect, and verify AI agents across any platform.
Workday Build now includes:
- Developer Agent: A feature designed to fit into how developers already work today. It works within the agentic development tools already in use by teams – rather than forcing them into a new interface – including Cline, Claude Code, Cursor, and Google Antigravity. The Agent draws from a library of more than 50 reusable Agent Skills based on the open AgentSkills standard.
- Agent-Ready Tools: These tools serve as a new class of enterprise connectors built specifically for autonomous agents. These Tools leverage open standards such as MCP so that agents can act directly in Workday.
- Agent Passport: A new security framework that validates an agent’s safety and compliance before it hits production. The Passport serves as a digital passport for an AI agent, showing which security and compliance tests the agent has passed, who verified them, and which standards were used. This allows security and audit teams to quickly see whether an agent is approved for use.
- Cisco will also be joining as a launch partner to power the stamps that appear in Agent Passport. This move will provide independent, third-party verification that an agent meets agreed-upon security and compliance standards.
Workday has also released another AI-based research report, which found that employees are using AI in their work, but the technology’s impact is limited. Read more about the findings of this report and AI’s current impact on productivity.