Workday Rising 2025 @ San Francisco - Workday Illuminate and Updates for Adaptive

I was lucky to attend Workday Rising 2025. This year, we had the chance to celebrate Workday's 20th birthday, hear the talented and genuine researcher Brené Brown, witness a superb drone show at the Giants's stadium, and... I discovered that I actually knew more than 1 song from Duran Duran •ᴗ•

The focus was on Workday Illuminate, Workday's agentic AI platform, which is set to transform how HR, Finance, and Accounting operate. With this platform, you will be able to automate routine tasks, request analyses, explore your data more efficiently, and get assistance with formulas, logic, processes and guidance on training and learning (some of these features to be released later).

I was so glad to get a preview of these promises! AI will be so helpful to alleviate annoying tasks. I don't view it as a threat, rather, I see it as a giant boost to my productivity. This aligns perfectly with Workday's motto: "AI Powered, Human Centric."

AI functionalities, whether it is Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude, Workday Illuminate, Otter.AI, or Synthesia.IO, whatever-AI-tool-I-Use... feel to me like having 3 smart and polite interns and unlimited on-demand espresso shots. Since I started using these tools, I was able to accomplish tasks (e.g. programming, integrations, documentation, processes, video editing, brainstorming...) in just a few hours, tasks that used to take me several days! Yes, it's that transformative! (Wonder Woman I can be called? :-D) 

The AI that is arriving in businesses and infiltrating our personal lives is like a big wave: you can either ride it or crash into it. And this is where the risk lies; I've already started noticing the growing gap around me:

On one side: people who embrace it, curious minds, eager learners & active users. 

On the other side: those who are frightened, struggling to understand how it works, feeling  overwhelmed and (what's worse): not even open or interested in learning about it. 

This is where the big clash will occur: those who want to and can use AI versus those who don’t want to or can’t. The divide will be brutal. I truly hope people have a wake-up call and show interest in learning, because without it, this gap, whether professional, personal, or economical, will only continue to widen and split even more our society.

The good news is that AI can help you learn about AI! 

It’s reminiscent of the 70s and 80s, when some chose to stick with snail mail and calculators, while others embraced email and Excel. But here the leap is even wider. AI won’t replace all the jobs, but it will replace people who aren’t using it, and it will wipe out companies that lag behind in adopting it.

AI will help us save a lot of time and headaches... Does it mean I will have more time to play  pickleball? 😁

Enough of my rambling!

Let's dive into the SUPER COOL FEATURES coming into Adaptive. I am focusing solely on Adaptive, not the entire Workday Platform (HCM, Financials, Prism etc.)

ADAPTIVE @ Workday Rising: what's coming in future releases?

I had the privilege of attending some amazing sessions and engaging in insightful discussions with several incredible PMs: AJ Christon, Jacob Susskind, Andrew Setness, Dan Slamowitz, Cody Johnson, Marlon Sims, Greg Volpe and Ravi Patel. You likely have heard their names & voices in release videos or seen their names in Community!

Before I reveal some of the awesome features (and thank you Otter.AI for transcribing the sessions!), I have to mention the fun duo AJ Christon and Jacob Susskind who kicked off  their presentation by explaining how they decide which features to work on. Their process involves a little bit of art and a little bit of science: AJ wears a big truck hat at work. He puts some random ideas on little papers, curls them up and dumps them into the hat. Then, Jacob draws a random feature from the hat and... only if Jacob can read what AJ wrote, that's the feature they will work on!

This explanation really helped me understand why some of my old submitted ideas never got picked up! I just was not lucky enough! 

Just in case: this was a joke! One minute of comedy by Jacob and AJ! Thank you!

Alright.. here are key features released last Saturday on their 2025R2 release, as well features in the hat pipeline (in future releases)

2025R2 Release = September, 20th 2025 - Most notable updates

Here are the most notable updates:

- Awesome feature to OVERRIDE Linked accounts for specific versions! It means you can override linked accounts (for example import hard coded values, or formulas) into a Plan version's linked account! Read more here.  

Use case: you lock a plan version and you want to override it with hard coded numbers, so they will NEVER change :) well unless you delete a level or something, obviously…

 

- Multicoordinate cell explorer: cell explorer with multi level and multi dimensional support: in Dashboards and reports, you can now pick multiple levels and multiple dimensions selections in filters. 

- Collaboration features with tagging in dashboards (for example you can tag a user to ask them a question on a specific number, or a reminder to update something).

- Slack integration for notifications (for standalone instances)

- Scheduling pipeline tasks for Cloud Data Connector (CDC) for data integration. --> Intro to CDC here.

- Cloud Data Connector drill through capabilities! Users can now access transactional data directly from their cloud data warehouse without having to import them into Adaptive Planning! 

- Unified user provisioning, authentication and access management (for platform customers)

- The Agent! (see next section)  

For a full and detailed list of 2025R2 updates: click here.

The WAP* Agent (Ask Workday)

*WAP: Workday Adaptive Planning (not talking about the song from Cardi B)

You can ask things to the agent. It is like your virtual butler... When you go to Adaptive, check the navy blue chat icon on the top right:

What does the agent offer as of the latest release?

- Natural language interaction with the agent 
- Contextual assistance: meaning, the agent knows where you are in Adaptive and will adapt its answer.
- Can explain system features and processes
- Is accessible across different skill levels
- Provide intelligent insights and analysis with detailed driver breakdown (for ex: breakdown of revenue variance by product)

- Ability to generate visualizations, eg. mini charts. 

What will the agent offer in future releases?

- Embody four personas: Analyst, Planner, Modeler and Administrator
- Automate some manual planning processes
- Automate model building
- Offer formula generation, optimization and explanation (great if you need to understand a model so you don't have to bug your Admin or Architect 😁).

Predictive Forecasting and Anomaly detection Key features updates

GREAT session with duo: Dan Slamowitz + Cody Johnson

- 8 different AI/ML algorithms for forecasting (use their AI to understand which one to choose!) depending of your industry, forecast methodology and type etc.

- Automatic Seasonality detection

- Ability to include external and internal regressors*

*Regressor = In statistical analysis and machine learning, a regressor is an independent variable (or predictor variable) used in a regression analysis to predict the outcome or dependent variable. It provides information about the relationship between an input and an output, helping models to make forecasts or understand patterns. Examples include factors like fertilizer levels to predict crop yield, or a company's marketing budget to predict sales.

- Automatic ongoing predictive update of your Rolling Forecast

Anomaly detection: 

- Alerts planners to data pattern variations
- Gets smarter with continued use
- Highlights significant deviations from historical trends

More info on ML here.

Future features in the pipeline:

- Google Sheets integration: Office Connect equivalent (early adopters possible)

- And the submission of data back to Adaptive from G Sheets!

- Planning hubs for consolidating planning activities (super cool feature): you can have everything in 1 place: reports, processes and workflows, dashboards, notes & comments --> For example you will create 1 planning hub for expenses, 1 for headcount, 1 for revenue, etc.

Looking ahead...

Tools like Workday Illuminate, and Agentic AI represent a strategic imperative for a company's survival and stay in the competition. By combining AI with user friendly UI, the platform empowers organizations to move from reactive reporting to proactive, insight driven planning. 

I’m so thrilled to see Workday releasing these incredible features! For a while, I started to worry that Workday was falling behind competitors like Pigment, but it’s clear now that they were hard at work developing these innovations, and they’ve finally delivered the babies. The new capabilities not only cement Workday Adaptive's place as a leader in planning and analytics but also showcase their commitment to empowering businesses with robust and cutting-edge tools. Like I said, these features are just tiny babies, the growth ahead is massive.

With these new developments, there’s no doubt that Workday Adaptive is pushing its limits, ensuring users stay ahead of the curve in the Agentic AI world. It’s exciting to think about the possibilities these features will bring! 

To read more on Workday Illuminate platform, check their last year's Investor's relation announcement here.