The Dreamforce ’23 Developer Keynote was awash with new ways for developers to optimize and enhance the Salesforce platform. This keynote was broken down into four areas: Deliver Success, Engage Stakeholders, Automate Solutions, and Build Success.
In this post, we’ll dive into the announcements and features you may have missed at Dreamforce ’23, and how you can start applying them right now.
1. Three Requirements for Success with AI
Salesforce spoke about the three requirements for success with AI: understanding human impact, composable iteration, and treating AI as a user.
Treating AI as a user was the one that really caught my attention here, as it wasn’t something I’d given too much thought to until this point. But treating AI as a user makes complete sense in the development cycle, identifying specific jobs for AI to do, gathering requirements, and creating dedicated AI user stories.
2. Generations API
We’ve all seen how prompts can be used in Salesforce via the Einstein sidebar. Not much has been shown on how to leverage this via Apex, but this all changed in the Developer Keynote, courtesy of the Generations API. This API allows you to leverage prompts in classes, and the Generations API is currently being trialed by select ISVs and should be coming to everyone in Spring ‘24.
3. Upcoming Flow Announcements
I can’t remember too many Developer Keynotes where Flow was spoken about to the extent it was this year. 226B record-triggered flows are being executed monthly. 38B invocable actions are being executed monthly. 1.2B screen flows are being executed monthly. These are ridiculous numbers for automations being run, which shows the extent of the enhancements that have been made to Flow in recent releases.
We were also told about the number of new features coming to Flow Builder in the Winter ‘24 release. Data Cloud-triggered flows, custom error messages, HTTP callouts, and reactive components, are all becoming generally available in the Winter ‘24 release. Einstein for Flow is launching in pilot for Winter ‘24, and both Flow Transform and Flow Repeaters are all coming to beta in Spring ‘24.
4. Apex Guru
Apex Guru Insights offers customized and timely enhancements in response to the ‘Critical,’ ‘Major,’ or ‘Minor’ issues detected within your instance, which could affect performance. These AI-generated recommendations aim to save you time while maintaining a strong focus on best practices. This added feature is sure to make a lot of developers’ lives easier, making spotting and fixing bugs in their code an awful lot easier than previously.
Summary
There weren’t a lot of surprises in the Developer Keynote at Dreamforce this year, but what we did get is a greater explanation of how things actually work. Many developers are likely to find this valuable because, once we grasp the ‘how,’ we can then begin to implement these features.
What do you think it’s the most promising Developer Keynote highlight? Tell us in the comments below!