There are multiple ways to engage with Agentforce for Salesforce and Slack. This guide demystifies AI apps 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, then deploy them for use in Slack.
AI apps are Slack apps that make significant use of AI in their product offerings or that have the Agents & AI Apps feature added. Toggling the Agents & AI Apps feature on in the app settings allows you to utilize the AI apps entry point and split view surfaces in Slack. Code your app to interface with an LLM and have the user-app interaction take place in the split-view to have the AI app work alongside your users in the flow of Slack.
An AI app 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. AI apps can be programmed to 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. AI app functionality serves alongside bot functionality in Slack to streamline tasks.
Learn how to build an AI app in Slack with the AI apps guide.
Ready to start exploring Agentforce with Slack? First things first: you need to set up your orgs and connect them to each other.
Create a Salesforce org. There are a couple of options for the Salesforce end of setup.
Create a Slack org. The best way to play around with Agentforce without touching any production environment is to set up a sandbox org.
Agentforce in Slack and custom AI apps are available on all paid Slack plans without the need for an additional add-on or SKU. A trial, complimentary, or sandbox workspace or grid all support adding an Agent to Slack or installing an AI App without any additional enablement.
To create a Slack developer sandbox, join the program here. The developer program is a quick, self-serve way to spin up a Slack enterprise grid when needed. Provisioning a sandbox may require approval from your production Slack admins (if applicable). While you are using a sandbox workspace, there are some basic sandbox limits to be aware of.
Connect Salesforce and Slack orgs. Follow these instructions to connect your Salesforce and Slack instances. You may also want to review this article to Set up and manage Agentforce in Slack.
➡️ 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.