Learn How Agentforce and Slack Work Together
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify use cases for agents in Slack.
- Find agents in Slack.
- List the actions available for an agent to take in Slack.
Before You Start
Before you complete any steps in this module, make sure you complete the hands-on challenges in Connect Your Agentforce Org with Slack using the same Agentforce Developer Edition org. The work you do in the hands-on challenges here builds on the work you complete in that badge.
Make Slack the Home for Agents
Magic happens when you bring AI-powered agents into your Slack workspaces. These intelligent agents can enhance productivity and collaboration for your employees by automating routine tasks and providing contextually relevant support where they already spend their day—in Slack.
Benefits of Integrating AI-Powered Agents and Slack
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Improved contextual relevance: AI-powered agents can tap into Slack’s conversational data to provide more accurate and contextually relevant responses to employees.
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Increased productivity: Employees can focus on the highest-value tasks while agents automate simpler ones in Slack. Agents can act as assistants for routine tasks like setting up channels, sending messages, and updating canvases.
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Improved customer experience: Agents can search and summarize information and suggest proactive actions for your employees. This leads to faster and more personalized service for a better customer experience.
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Trusted security: Agentforce’s Einstein Trust Layer and Slack’s security standards keep AI use safe and private, with features like secure data retrieval, data masking, zero data retention, and controlled access by workspace owners and admins.
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Combined structured and unstructured data: Slack is ideal for agents because it combines the power of structured data from your CRM and Enterprise tools with unstructured data from conversations in Slack. This combination provides agents with the insights and context to drastically improve their output and effectiveness.
Think of Slack as your work operating system that brings your people, data, and systems into one place. Introduce AI-powered agents to the mix, and you've got a recipe for a cohesive experience—no more data silos, context switching, or lost communications. Employees can seamlessly engage with agents to be more productive and collaborative. Let’s explore the various ways agents can be used in Slack.
Use Cases for Agents in Slack
Agents in Slack can support employees across many departments for a variety of use cases, improving productivity and efficiency. Here are a few examples of how you might use agents at your organization.
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HR agents can assist with onboarding new employees, answering questions about benefits, and guiding career development.
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IT agents can handle tasks like resolving help-desk tickets and managing incident communications.
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Service agents can find experts and use past knowledge to resolve customer issues.
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Sales agents can help with preparing executive briefings, creating proposals, and reaching out to customers proactively.
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Marketing agents can improve campaigns, produce content, and develop marketing plans.
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Legal agents can simplify compliance processes and automate approvals.
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Product and engineering agents can support planning, design, development, and quality assurance efforts.
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Supply chain management agents can oversee supplier relationships, automate warehouse tasks, and improve demand forecasting.
The list doesn’t end there! Customize agents to meet the needs of any team within your organization.
Find Agents in Slack
The Agentforce Hub in Slack assists employees in discovering agents, understanding how relevant agents are most helpful to them, and reviewing suggested prompts for a more intuitive experience. Users can interact with agents in a single conversational thread and engage with role-specific agents like any other team member.
From the Agentforce Hub, users can:
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Browse available agents: The Agentforce tab in the Slack UI provides many options for selecting available agents that meet your needs.
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View the agent’s credentials: Each agent has a nifty little bio in the Agentforce tab, showcasing their skills and abilities.
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Collaborate with Agents like a teammate: Engage with agents via direct message (DM), either by selecting suggested prompts or asking a question directly to the agent. Agentforce surfaces that information directly from your knowledge base and other connected systems and takes action on your behalf.
Allow Agents to Take Actions in Slack
Agents are configured in Agentforce Studio to perform specific tasks or functions autonomously without human intervention. Topics represent the jobs you want your agent to handle, using a set of instructions and actions. For example, a topic called Deal Management might include actions that help a sales rep find opportunities, create to-do items, and log calls without sharing personally identifiable information (PII).
Slack actions provide a powerful way to simplify work and enhance productivity for Slack users. By adding Slack-specific actions to your agents, they can significantly improve the day-to-day operations of every employee.
What can agents do in Slack?
- Search message history and links.
- Send a direct message (DM).
- Create or update a canvas.
- Look up a user.
Examples of Agents Taking Slack Actions
Check out some examples of common challenges your employees might face and how Agentforce with Slack Actions can solve them.
Scenario |
Solution |
Slack Action(s) |
|---|---|---|
An account review needs to be prepared for a high-profile customer. The account executive needs a summary of account info and the account team needs to be kept up-to-date. |
Use a Meeting Assistant agent to summarize the account using CRM data, and add the summary to a canvas that the larger project team can view. |
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An employee wants to invest in a fitness watch. They need to know if the expense is eligible for reimbursement through their employee benefits. |
Use a Benefits agent to search the eligibility list and confirm items that can be reimbursed. |
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A new hire needs to find and complete any training or enablement available for a product. New trainings are being scheduled all the time, making it difficult to keep up with the latest options. |
Use an Employee Onboarding agent to find any training sessions or enablement materials about the product in question. The team asks for any new sessions to be automatically added to their team canvas at the beginning of every month. |
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Agents can assist in various departments, from HR and IT to sales and marketing, and can be easily discovered and managed through the Agentforce Hub in Slack. By adding Slack actions to an agent, it can work autonomously alongside your employees in Slack to get things done. In the next two units, follow the steps to configure an agent in Agentforce Builder in preparation for use in Slack.