Are we done with Dreamforce announcements yet? Almost, but not quite!
A week post-Dreamforce, as we all recover from the excitement (and in some cases the extreme jetlag – me, I’m talking about me), it’s time to do one final roundup of the Dreamforce ‘24 announcements you need to know in a nutshell. Let’s go…
1. Agentforce
The big announcement at Dreamforce was Agentforce. Agentforce delivers autonomous agents to Salesforce, capable of operating independently without needing external control or continuous intervention. An Agent can make decisions based on predefined rules or learning algorithms – much smarter than a chatbot, let’s put it that way!
You’ll get different types of agents out of the box, including those designed for sales and service.
This isn’t all new though… Copilot Builder has been rebranded to Agent Builder which is where you configure your agents.
Key takeaway:
- Einstein Copilot is now Agentforce
- Copilot Builder is now Agent Builder
For Sales
Salesforce has introduced two new Agents for sales, SDR Agent and Sales Coach Agent, expected to become generally available in October 2024.
- SDR Agent: Interacts with leads around the clock, addressing inquiries, handling objections, and scheduling meetings by leveraging both CRM and external data. This enables sellers to concentrate on fostering stronger customer relationships.
- Sales Coach Agent: Offers customized role-play sessions for sales teams, utilizing Salesforce data and generative AI to enable sellers to practice their pitches and address objections specific to individual deals.
For Service
Einstein Service Cloud Agents utilize advanced reasoning and natural language processing to engage customers in intelligent conversations. They autonomously handle inquiries by analyzing customer data to provide accurate answers and solutions, such as processing returns in online retail.
With easy setup and the ability to communicate across different channels, these agents make customer interactions smooth and friendly. Plus, if things get a bit tricky, they know how and when to hand off the conversation to a human agent without making the customer repeat themselves, making customer service feel more personal and efficient!
For Developers
Einstein for Developers has been rebranded and expanded into Agentforce for Developers, enhancing its functionality for users. The previous version featured inline code autocompletion and a single prompt option, which some found distracting. While inline autocomplete remains, the new Agentforce offers a more interactive experience, allowing for multi-step conversations with the AI to refine prompts.
Additionally, three new commands have been introduced:
- /explain for summarizing code
- /test for generating tests
- /document for documentation purposes, all aimed at improving the coding process
Discover more Dreamforce ‘24 announcements for developers here.
For Slack
Slack channel human members can now converse with agent members in natural language. Responses are based on both structured CRM data and unstructured conversational data. In the image below, you can see there are 25 humans, and next to this, a new button shows how many agents there are.
2. Atlas
Atlas is the reasoning and learning engine behind Agentforce, otherwise known as the “chain of thought”. Atlas keeps “looping” until it’s confident it can achieve the goal that’s been set by your organization in line with the user’s request, whether that user is someone internal in your workforce or a customer/prospect. It then performs “reinforcement learning” based on human feedback – in other words, with every interaction, Atlas will get smarter for your own organization.
From a security standpoint, Altas respects the sharing model as defined at the application layer (e.g. which of these sales reps have access to which customer records?). As explained by one of the leaders close to this processing engine, Atlas is Salesforce’s upgraded copilot engine.
The diagram below is helpful in understanding the core components of the process – the ultimate aim being to generate precise and factual results.
3. Data Cloud / Data Cloud One
Salesforce’s Data Cloud is a powerful platform designed to handle huge amounts of data across multiple sources, enabling you to unify and leverage disparate data in real-time. What makes it special is its ability to seamlessly integrate structured and unstructured data, including high-velocity data streams, while providing rapid data ingestion and activation—often in sub-seconds.
With Data Cloud at the heart of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, it’s important to keep up to date with the latest innovations:
- More Unstructured Data Formats Accessible: Earlier this year, the Vector Database highlighted the importance of unstructured data, which makes up 90% of company information. With native support for processing video and audio, companies can now analyze previously untapped data – like sales demo and customer service calls – to gain valuable insights for segmentation and activation.
- Additional Connectors: Salesforce is launching 50 new pre-built connectors, bringing the total to over 200, which simplify integrating disparate data sources into Data Cloud. These connectors unify data, like inventory from third-party systems, enabling Agentforce agents to make decisions based on comprehensive insights. There are horizontal connectors for general use, hyperscale connectors for handling large data volumes, and industry-specific connectors for tailored use cases.
- Sub-Second Real-Time Capabilities: Data Cloud enhances efficiency by processing data ingestion to activation in sub-seconds, significantly reducing lag between stages. Its Data Graphs allow users to visualize relationships between data model objects, ensuring the right data is accessible when prompting Agentforce agents for optimal results. This real-time capability enables faster identity resolution and segmentation, preparing data effectively for use.
Data Cloud One
Launching in October 2024, Data Cloud One offers a more efficient integration architecture for using Data Cloud across multiple Salesforce orgs. Previously, each org required its own Data Cloud instance, meaning separate setups for integration, data streams, and identity resolution.
With Data Cloud One, you can now have a single shared Data Cloud instance, allowing multiple orgs to access and share data bi-directionally. This streamlines data management and reduces the complexity of multi-org setups.
4. Salesforce Foundations
If you want to take advantage of what Agentforce has to offer, you’re going to need Data Cloud. One way to do this is to get Salesforce Foundations, a free* feature set that brings together new sales, service, marketing, commerce, and Data Cloud features, and also includes an updated user interface. Salesforce’s goal for Foundations is to give organizations a flavor of how powerful AI can become when using all these products together and to get Agentforce into the hands of customers.
*Free for all Sales and Service Cloud users on enterprise licenses or above. Note that some features have limits imposed on them.
5. 100+ Industry Prompts for Agentforce
For their industry-specific CRM solutions, Salesforce has developed over 100 tailored prompts, enabling you to empower agents to deliver more specialized and effective support for your industry’s unique needs.
6. Free AI Training and Certifications
If AI is the next revolution in the way we work, we must all adapt. This means learning in-demand AI skills, not just to get jobs, but also to make sure we don’t break things along the way.
To support the current and upcoming wave of AI tools and implementations, Salesforce has announced that they’re investing $50 million into initiatives designed to upskill workforces in a bid to address the AI skills gap and democratize AI learning.
You can take the AI Associate and AI Specialist certifications for free until the end of 2025.
7. Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition
Following the launch of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition earlier this year, Salesforce launched Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition at Dreamforce ’24.
Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is the first “core” marketing product built on top of Data Cloud. Marketing Cloud Advanced is the ‘big sister’ to Marketing Cloud Growth, offering more advanced features such as Path Experiment for testing different content across channels, Unified Conversations with SMS for two-way conversations, Einstein Engagement Frequency, Einstein Engagement Scoring, and Rules-based Dynamic Content.
8. Sales Cloud Go
Sales Cloud Go, available with the Winter ’25 release, offers a revamped, user-friendly setup experience for Salesforce Admins. It simplifies feature setup by providing a progress tracker, personalized recommendations based on organizational goals, and a centralized hub for discovering and enabling new features.
Admins can easily access demos, tutorials, and clear steps (both mandatory and optional) directly on one page. Sales Cloud Go also allows admins to assign permission sets without navigating elsewhere, streamlining the entire process.
Plus, it comes with a dedicated dashboard that helps track product and feature adoption at a granular level, ensuring optimal implementation and usage.
9. Customer Experience (CX) Intelligence
Have you ever wished for real-time insights into how your customers feel about your service? CX Intelligence makes that a reality by monitoring customer sentiment and providing actionable data. With real-time access to customer-agent conversations, support managers gain deep insights into feedback, helping them spot trends and improve service.
Powered by Einstein AI, CX Intelligence delivers AI-driven recommendations to boost CSAT scores and optimize strategies. It’s a powerful tool that enables managers to make quick, data-driven decisions, ensuring their teams deliver more effective, customer-centric service every day.
CX Intelligence will be generally available in October 2024.
10. Salesforce Channels for Slack
Salesforce Channels are a new type of channel in Slack that seamlessly integrates your CRM data and insights directly into the flow of work and conversations. This allows teams to collaborate effortlessly on accounts, opportunities, and more.
For example, in the merchandising use case below, the team collaborates on an order that has just been launched, leveraging real-time CRM insights for smoother execution.
Summary
That’s a wrap on my roundup of Dreamforce announcements in a nutshell! Over the next few months, as features become generally available, keep an eye out for our product deep dives and tutorials to help you get started.
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