There are multiple ways to engage with Agentforce for Salesforce and Slack. This guide demystifies AI apps, assistants, and agents from a developer's perspective.
AI Agents are autonomous, proactive applications designed to execute specialized tasks to help employees and customers. Using large language models (LLMs) to analyze and understand the full context of customer interactions or an automated trigger, they reason through decisions on the next steps autonomously. Agents can be instructed to generate responses that are consistent with your company’s brand voice and guidelines using trusted business data sourced from your CRM, Slack, and external applications. They are capable of operating 24/7, handling tasks proactively within set guardrails. When faced with complex issues beyond their scope, agents can escalate the matter to a human counterpart.
Agents can solve a variety of use cases in any industry. Knowing that the Salesforce Data Cloud, AI models, Slack, and third-party integrated apps are your data sources, the world is your agent's oyster. Take for example these use cases for agents across service, sales, marketing, and commerce:
Depending on your use case and needs, you may choose to use a third-party agent or develop one yourself—also known as a first-party agent.
Third-party agents (available in the Slack Marketplace) are made by Slack partners and leverage AI in Slack with out-of-the-box functionality.
Developing a first-party agent gives you more flexibility with how you implement AI with a custom AI app in Slack. You will choose and implement your own LLM or internal-only database with this option.
In terms of Salesforce and Slack, there are two ways to create a first-party agent:
Agentforce allows you to build and customize autonomous AI agents powered by the Salesforce platform via no/low-code with the Agent Builder or coded solutions. Build these with the Agentforce Agent Builder and further customize them using the Salesforce-provided standard Slack actions or code your own custom Slack actions.
AI apps are Slack apps with the Agents & Assistants feature added, enabling them to interface with LLMs. Toggling the Agents & Assistants feature on in the app settings allows you to utilize the assistant entry point and split view in Slack. This is an app assistant. To make your app an agent, you will have to code the logic of the actions you want it to take, including interfacing with an LLM.
An app assistant or agent provides an interface to AI for Slack users. It can communicate with external AI sources, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as access Slack data to source relevant answers to user queries. Agents can take actions on behalf of users, whether that is by messaging a channel, sending them a reminder, or even creating a canvas with requested content. Agent functionality serves alongside bot functionalitly in Slack to streamline tasks.
Learn how to build an AI app in Slack with the AI apps guide.
➡️ Learn how to set up and manage Agentforce in Slack, including how to connect Salesforce and Slack and add an agent to Slack with this help article.
➡️ Build your own AI app in Slack with this guide.
➡️ Learn how to further customize your Agentforce agent with Slack actions in this guide.
➡️ Browse which third-party agents are available for Slack in the Slack Marketplace.
➡️ Explore Agentforce documentation.