Adjusting to Collaborating with Artificial Intelligence Colleagues via Slack
In a major move for Salesforce, the tech giant scooped up Slack for a whopping $28 billion in 2021, and with the rise of agentic AI, it's evident that the workplace collaboration platform plays a crucial role in Salesforce's Agentforce strategy.
The integration between Salesforce and Slack has been swift, and Rob Seaman, Slack's chief product officer, describes the platform as a "cockpit for orchestrating" enterprise workflows.
Slack's recent announcement of Salesforce Channels has further bolstered this integration. Salesforce Channels connect Salesforce records within the collaboration app, aiming for a smoother flow of data and customer insights between the two platforms.
During a media roundtable, Seaman referred to Salesforce Channels as a "bridge between collaboration and CRM," allowing for natural, free-flowing conversations about customers, cases, opportunities, and account plans.
The launch event at Salesforce World Tour in London featured live demos of Slack users interacting in real-time with AI agents on the platform, marking the next step in the Agentforce evolution at the CRM giant. Agentic AI is now woven into the core of Salesforce's solutions portfolio, and by embedding agents in Slack, the company aims to boost user accessibility.
Seaman informed journalists that Slack is the "optimal platform to get the most value out of Salesforce and Agentforce investments." According to him, Slack will serve as the "front-end" for a majority of these experiences moving forward.
Deeper integration is also on the horizon, as teams at Salesforce are currently developing a Channel Knowledge Agent, expected to launch later this year. This agentic AI feature will act as a point of contact for Slack users to access information or materials hosted in a specific channel or from other sources within the Salesforce ecosystem.
For instance, in an IT department, if you have a help channel, the Channel Knowledge Agent will allow the manager to add the agent to the channel. This AI agent will answer questions based on content available in the channel, as well as pull data from other sources like PDFs and knowledge bases in Salesforce Data Cloud.
All in all, the Channel Knowledge Agent in Slack is an upcoming, AI-powered feature designed to act as a convenient resource for channel users to access information and materials within their respective channels and broader Salesforce ecosystem. When activated, it sets up and provisions an AI agent behind the scenes to provide meaningful answers and support.
In light of Salesforce's Agentforce strategy, the integration of Slack's AI-powered collaboration platform plays a pivotal role, serving as a "bridge between collaboration and CRM" (Rob Seaman). Furthermore, the upcoming AI-powered Channel Knowledge Agent within Slack will act as a convenient resource for channel users to access information from within their channels and the broader Salesforce ecosystem.
