Get Started with Agentforce Operations
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe Agentforce Operations and the business problem it solves.
- Identify both the user roles in Agentforce Operations and what each one grants.
- Explain the relationship between blueprints, workflows, stages, and tasks.
Agentforce Operations is a standalone application that operates separately from your Salesforce org. It requires a separate Agentforce Operations license. Contact your Salesforce account executive to purchase one.
What Is Agentforce Operations?
Every business has processes. They can be simple, like a software approval, and they can be complex, like a hiring process or supplier onboarding. There are people, decisions, and even systems involved at every point in the process. The people involved can be external or internal to the business. The decisions can be simple to make, or they can involve analysis of multiple assets, data, or even previous decisions. Agentforce Operations turns those complex, manual processes into structured digital workflows.
Why Use Agentforce Operations?
By converting to digital processes in Agentforce Operations, you:
-
Standardize and reduce errors: Structured digital workflows replace ad hoc, error-prone processes.
-
Start quickly: Generate a digital process in minutes with or without AI. No technical expertise required.
-
Automate the repetitive work: AI agents handle rules-based tasks like screening documents or routing requests, freeing your team for decisions that need human judgment.
-
Collaborate without extra logins: Employees, vendors, and partners can complete tasks and approve work directly from email.
This video demonstrates how Agentforce Operations works at a high level.
What Are the Key Components of Agentforce Operations?
Before you learn about how Agentforce Operations converts your manual processes into digital ones, you need to know a few definitions.
Term |
Definition |
Compare it to… |
|---|---|---|
Workspace |
The workspace is your company’s private environment in Agentforce Operations where all your users, processes, and data live. Think of it like your organization’s dedicated home base. Everything your team builds and manages stays contained within your workspace and remains separate from any other company’s data. |
An organization or account |
Blueprint |
The blueprint is the instruction that describes what’s supposed to happen in a process and in what order. It also defines who is responsible for each task. Blueprints are reusable, so you only need to design them once. You can create blueprints manually from scratch, generate them with AI, or by uploading a file. You can even create variations of blueprints to match different scenarios of the same process, such as product lines, seasons, or regions. |
A template |
Workflow |
A workflow is built off of the blueprint’s structure. It’s a single running instance of the blueprint that it’s based on. Each workflow has its own data, task assignees, and timeline. For example, if a blueprint defines a supplier onboarding process, each onboarded supplier gets its own workflow. The blueprint stays the same while each workflow tracks a separate supplier through the process. |
A running instance |
Stages |
Stages are groups of related tasks within a blueprint or workflow. They break a process into logical phases. Stages can have dependencies on other stages so that the process follows the correct order. Before you can start a workflow from a blueprint, it must have at least one stage with one task. |
The structure |
Tasks |
Tasks are the individual units of work inside a workflow. Tasks can request information through custom fields and forms, require document uploads, or ask for approvals and signatures. The person, team, or AI agent assigned to a task is the task assignee. Task assignees can be internal employees or external partners such as vendors or contractors. External task assignees don’t need an account: They can complete tasks by email or web form without logging in to Agentforce Operations. Tasks become active based on their start conditions, which can be when the stage starts or when a prior task completes. |
The work |
The relationship between blueprints, workflows, stages, and tasks follows this pattern.
- A user creates a blueprint that defines the structure, stages, tasks, and rules for a process.
- A user creates a workflow from that blueprint, which generates a running instance of the process with its own data and timeline.
- As the workflow runs, stages activate based on their dependencies. When a stage starts, the tasks within it become active.
- Task assignees complete their tasks, and the information flows from task to task until the process finishes.
What Are the User Roles in Agentforce Operations?
Agentforce Operations has six system roles that control what users can build and manage. You can assign one or more system roles to any internal user, and you can create custom roles to give users a specific combination of access. System roles can only be assigned to internal users. For external users such as vendors, contractors, and partners, you use custom roles instead.
Role |
Access Level |
Assigned users can… |
|---|---|---|
Admin |
Full access to settings, people, processes and data in a workspace. |
Set up the workspace, manage users and teams, configure integrations and data sources, and control workspace-level settings. |
Creator |
Blueprint, form, and field creation and editing in a workspace. |
Design and build the automated process templates (blueprints) your team runs workflows from. |
Data Source Admin |
Data source creation and management in a workspace. |
Bring external reference data into the workspace so it’s available in blueprints and workflows. |
Integration Admin |
Integration creation and management in a workspace. |
Connect Agentforce Operations to external systems like SharePoint so blueprints can interact with them. |
People Admin |
Management of people, teams, and roles in a workspace. |
Add and deactivate users, organize people into teams, and assign roles. |
Publisher |
Blueprint publishing in the workspace. |
Review finalized blueprints and make them available for others to run workflows from. |
Summary
In this unit, you learned that Agentforce Operations is a standalone workspace that turns manual business processes into automated digital workflows. You explored how blueprints, workflows, stages, and tasks work together: Blueprints define the process, workflows run it, stages break it into phases, and tasks are the individual units of work.
You also learned about the six Agentforce Operations system roles. Each system role gives a different level of access to the workspace and can only be assigned to internal users. In the next unit, you explore how to identify the right process to automate. Then, you follow one team as they transform their hiring process into a digital workflow step by step.