TLDR: Workday and Microsoft have announced a strategic partnership to enable organizations to securely manage AI agents alongside their human workforce. This collaboration integrates Workday’s Agent System of Record (ASOR) with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Entra Agent ID, providing a unified platform for registering, managing, and securing AI agents within an enterprise context. The initiative aims to address challenges in AI governance, security, and performance tracking, ensuring trust and maximizing ROI from AI investments.
SAN FRANCISCO & REDMOND, WA – September 19, 2025 – Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, and Microsoft have unveiled a new strategic partnership designed to enhance the secure management of artificial intelligence (AI) agents within enterprise environments. This collaboration, announced at Workday Rising 2025, focuses on integrating Workday’s Agent System of Record (ASOR) with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, leveraging Microsoft Entra Agent ID to establish verified identities and proper business context for AI agents across platforms.
As AI agents become increasingly integral to daily enterprise operations, the ability to effectively track their access, roles, and performance has emerged as a critical priority for businesses. Without a centralized system for managing these digital workers, companies face significant risks, including fragmented operations, weak governance, and heightened security vulnerabilities. These challenges can severely limit the potential return on investment from AI initiatives.
“As AI agents become a huge part of how we work, managing and securing them across different systems is a real challenge,” stated Gerrit Kazmaier, President of Product and Technology at Workday. “Our commitment to an open ecosystem is about giving organizations the flexibility to build their fleet of AI agents on the platform of their choice. Through our strategic partnership with Microsoft, we’re giving organizations one secure system to manage both their people and their AI agents – so they can focus on results, not complexity.”
The integration is designed to provide customers with full visibility into their AI ecosystems. By registering agents built with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio within Workday ASOR, organizations can ensure that every agent possesses a verified identity and the necessary business context to operate safely and effectively. This unified approach facilitates enhanced governance and allows business leaders to access actionable analytics for measuring productivity, return on investment (ROI), and usage patterns of their AI agents.
Charles Lamanna, President of Business and Industry Copilot at Microsoft, emphasized the significance of this partnership, describing it as a breakthrough in delivering the trust organizations require to confidently adopt AI. He highlighted the importance of full visibility into AI ecosystems and enhanced governance as key outcomes of the collaboration.
The solution is also poised to improve human-agent collaboration. Employees will be able to interact seamlessly with Microsoft-based AI agents, such as the Employee Self-Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, and have their requests executed by Workday agents. This interoperability ensures that workflows remain secure, context-aware, and uninterrupted across various platforms, ultimately streamlining processes like employee onboarding.
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By combining the strengths of Workday ASOR and Microsoft’s agent platforms, the partnership offers a comprehensive system for building, registering, and managing AI agents, all while maintaining robust security, compliance, and providing valuable insights to drive business value. This initiative is expected to begin in mid-October.
