Explore Data 360 and Agentforce
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain why Data 360 is required for Agentforce.
- Identify benefits of building agents that use unified customer 360 data from Data 360.
Before You Start
Before you start this module, consider completing this recommended content.
Explore How Data 360 and Agentforce Interact
You took the plunge and got Agentforce in your Salesforce org. You’re excited to build AI agents that know your customers and business. Let’s explore how Data 360 relates to Agentforce so you understand the connection and how to use them together.
There are two layers of Data 360 for Agentforce: enablement and implementation.
- Enabling means you provisioned and enabled Data 360 in your org.
- Implementing means you enabled Data 360 in your org, connected data, and mapped it to data models. You also may have harmonized data with identity resolution rulesets and set up other Data 360 features.
Enabling and implementing Data 360 impacts Agentforce capabilities.
- Data 360 enabled: Data 360 must be provisioned and enabled for all Agentforce use. Agentforce features such as the Agentforce Data Library and Einstein Trust Layer don’t work without Data 360.
- Data 360 implemented: When you implement Data 360, you gain benefits such as diverse customer 360 data, powerful data cleansing and transformation capabilities, and fully customizable RAG. To build a robust agent workforce and support complex requirements, you need to implement Data 360.
In this module, you learn how enabling and implementing Data 360 impacts your agents. Data 360 and Agentforce work together to give you effective, trusted agents grounded in your enterprise data. To understand why you need Data 360, you explore how Agentforce capabilities are powered by Data 360. You learn if you need Data 360 enabled or implemented for each capability. You also learn how to implement Data 360 for Agentforce by following a use case.
You begin by exploring how Data 360 provides a foundation for effective, personalized agents.
Data 360 Implemented: Agents Built on Customer 360 Data
When Data 360 is fully implemented, it offers a robust, secure data foundation that gives agents access to unified customer 360, transformed, real-time, and zero-copy data. In the table, explore some key aspects of a Data 360 foundation and how they impact agents.
In the NTO Example column, follow an example with Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO), a fictional apparel company. NTO built a service agent that handles customer inquiries, including recommending products, refunding orders, and offering promotions.
Data 360 Foundation | Description | Agentforce Impact | NTO Example |
|---|---|---|---|
Unified Customer 360 | Bring together data from across Salesforce and beyond, run identity resolution rulesets, and build a unified profile of each customer with full historical context across data sources. | Agents built on Data 360 data know your customers inside and out, from their purchases in Sales Cloud to their engagements in Marketing Cloud. Instead of generic or disjointed responses, agents can give personalized responses that consider the customer’s actions across the company. |
|
Data Transforms | Cleanse and transform data. Resolve data quality issues, such as inconsistent naming and formats. | Clean data improves agent accuracy, consistency, and reliability. Without clean data, the agent is more likely to give incorrect or ambiguous responses, or no response at all. | NTO just ingested order records from Commerce Cloud into Data 360. NTO hasn’t had time to clean the data yet.
NTO runs a data transform to convert all dates to MM/DD/YY format. Now agents can successfully process refunds! |
Real-Time Data | Ingest, unify, analyze, and act on data in real time. | Create agents that know current customer actions and react in seconds. |
|
Zero Copy | Connect data stored outside Salesforce using Zero Copy. Zero Copy lets you create bidirectional communications between Data 360 and external systems, so you can access data freely without duplicating it. | Expand the reach of your agents beyond Salesforce. | NTO stores loyalty program data in Databricks. They use a zero-copy connection to bring the data into Data 360 and enrich unified profiles.
|
While there are other options for ingesting data for Agentforce use, Data 360 is the only one that supports a holistic 360 strategy with unified data.
- CRM Data via Fileforce: Only ingests unstructured CRM data, doesn’t unify data.
- Agentforce via Agentforce Data Library (uses Data 360 storage): Only ingests unstructured data, doesn’t unify data.
Next Up
In this unit, you discovered how agents built on Data 360 benefit from access to unified, transformed, real-time, and zero-copy data. After connecting sources and transforming data in Data 360, you’re ready to set up Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).
Resources
- Salesforce Help: Better Together: Data and AI
- Salesforce Blog: The Force Behind Agentforce: How Data Cloud Fuels Agent-First Enterprises
- Salesforce Help: Set Up and Maintain
- Trailhead: Data and Identity in Data 360
- Salesforce Help: Unify Source Profiles
- Trailhead: Batch Data Transforms in Data 360: Quick Look
- Trailhead: Streaming Data Transforms in Data 360: Quick Look
- Salesforce Help: Data Cleansing and Preparation
- Trailhead: Real-Time Use Cases in Data 360
- Salesforce Help: Real-Time Capabilities in Data 360
- Trailhead: Data 360 with Zero Copy
- Salesforce Help: Zero Copy Data Federation
