What is Dreamforce, anyway?
Dreamforce is the largest marketing event organized by Salesforce for many years, and as every year, people within the ecosystem are wondering what will be announced this time.
The list of new features is consistently quite long, which is no surprise given the number of products in this giant’s full portfolio. Fortunately for me and for you, the main theme here is Slack, so that’s all I’ll be focusing on 😉
Since there were other announcements happening simultaneously during the event, I took the liberty of gathering everything in one place:
- Slack Agent
- Slack AI new features
- Salesforce Channel
- Slack Templates
- Slack Marketplace
- Slask Dev platform
Additionally, I have to admit that some of the information even surprised me, and because of that, I haven’t had the chance to dive into all the details yet. However, if needed, we’ll catch up on that later 😉
Slack Agents
I’ll probably start with the biggest news – during this year’s Dreamforce, Salesforce announced the launch of a new product called Agentforce (formerly Einstein Copilot).
What exactly is it? We could probably find several similar definitions, but in this case, I’ll use the one provided by Salesforce:
“AI agents are autonomous, proactive applications designed to perform specialized tasks to assist employees and customers. These agents leverage large language models (LLMs) to analyze and understand the full context of customer interactions or an automatic trigger, and then autonomously make decisions about the next steps. Agents generate responses that are consistent with the brand voice and company guidelines, using trusted business data”.
You can find more information at Salesforce Agentforce.
Sounds great, but how does this relate to the Slack platform? Here’s what we hear:
- “Agentforce” is our new conversational assistant that helps teams find information from their CRM so they can act faster. And now, you can bring all your corporate agents and AI assistants into Slack through a new interface specifically designed for agents.
- All Slack users will now have their own AI-based personal assistant, capable of retrieving data, gathering content, and taking actions in CRM and beyond.
- Autonomous agents will also be deployed into Slack channels, providing a wide range of support to teams that need them the most: sales, marketing, services, and more.
What does all of this ultimately mean for us?
Since Salesforce acquired Slack, the narrative has been that Slack would become our Digital HQ. However, we are increasingly hearing terms like Work OS / Work Operating System, and to be honest, I’m slowly coming around to this idea.
Just like when choosing Windows or Mac, we’re opting for a certain, somewhat predetermined (to an extent) way of working and interacting with the computer and available applications (or games). Similarly, by choosing different work tools, we’re shaping our workflow and how we carry out our daily tasks.
In this case, Slack is aiming to support your daily work by building your very own AI-powered assistant (agent) that has access to the same information as you – both on the Salesforce platform and Slack. We’re talking about generating summaries, answering questions, or performing various tasks on your behalf, all based on your CRM data. You can think of Agentforce as the “face” of your own Salesforce instance.
Of course, that’s not the end.
In addition to the proprietary agent, we also have access to agents/assistants created by several partners like AdobeExpress and Writer, with more on the way. From this list, the ones I’m most curious about are those created by Perplexity and Claude from Anthropic.
Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that we can also build our own agents. Although we can’t monetize them or list them on Slack’s official directory yet (for now, this is only possible for selected partners), we can find a dedicated section in the documentation and build something locally.
Slack AI
AI agents aren’t the only new thing when it comes to AI. Although it’s been a while since Slack AI was launched, there were still some features I was waiting for. In addition to the existing capabilities like summarizing messages in channels or asking specific questions, we can now use Slack AI to write notes or meeting summaries for Huddles. We can also create prompts that will be used to build Workflows by the AI (I’m currently in the testing phase for this feature).
It’s important to remember that Slack AI is a paid add-on.
Hint: If you’re short on ideas for how AI can be used in the Salesforce world, check out https://www.salesforce.com/artificial-intelligence/use-cases/ 😉
Salesforce Channel
Of course, there’s also something for Slack Elevate users. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an add-on specifically for users who work with both Slack and Salesforce. In theory, it’s designed for sales teams and allows them to work directly on Opportunities (a Salesforce object) from the Slack interface. A new type of channel, Salesforce Channel, has now been added, which automatically connects to CRM and enables work with a wider range of objects, including Accounts, Cases, and Custom Objects.
Slack Templates
Keeping in mind that Slack’s main goal is automation and saving our time, it’s no surprise that we’re getting a new set of templates once again. To clarify, we currently have standard templates for Workflows, Canvas, and Lists, and on the Enterprise Grid plan, we can even create custom templates for Canvas. However, this time Slack has taken it a step further. According to the announcements: “With a single click, anyone will be able to create a structured channel for their work, featuring consistent formatting, pre-filled list and canvas details, and pre-built workflows.”
I’m really intrigued by this idea and can’t wait to see the final version (we’re still waiting for the rollout to environments).
Slack Marketplace
At first glance, one of the changes that will likely have little impact on users (or at least most of them) is the renaming of the App Directory to Slack Marketplace, along with a minor visual refresh of the site itself.
What is Slack Marketplace, and what was the App Directory? In short, it’s a listing of apps built by users, business or technology partners, or entirely independent companies that create applications to extend the functionality of the Slack platform.
If you work with Salesforce technology, you can think of it as the equivalent of AppExchange, and if not, comparing the Marketplace to the Apple App Store or Google Play on Android should also be a fair analogy.
For now, beyond the visual changes and the complete name change, nothing else has happened here. However, the fact that Slack wants to shift people’s perception of this part of the platform from being just an app directory to, as they put it:
“(…) a place where anyone can easily find the tools they already use, the use cases they recognize, and discover the potential of Slack to truly make work life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive”,
suggests that this won’t be the last change.
Slack Dev Platform
Lastly, a little nod to the developers. The Slack team has finally decided to gather and centralize all the essential materials for us in one place. By “all”, I mean tools, documentation, blogs, links to educational resources, certifications, and the new developer program. You can find all the information here: https://slack.dev/
This platform is created with the community in mind, so if you’re building something interesting or have materials worth sharing, you can do so to support others and help grow the ecosystem 😉
Summary
Thanks for making it to the end! Even I have to admit, there was more content than I initially planned, but hey – it’s the biggest batch of Slack updates in months. This topic will also come up at the next spotkaniu Slack Community (22.10),so if you’d like to chat about it, you’re more than welcome!
As always, feel free to send over suggestions for other articles, and I’ll do my best to make something happen with that 😀
