Discover Salesforce Channels
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe Salesforce channels.
- Explain the value of Salesforce channels across clouds.
Say Hello to Salesforce Channels
Picture this: A sales rep is about to close a high-stakes deal, but it’s blocked by a billing nightmare. The customer won’t sign the deal until there’s a resolution. Getting the right Sales and Service teams aligned to share context and important customer details is hard enough, but there’s one more problem: the Finance team doesn’t work in Salesforce. Data is siloed, teams are disconnected, and conversations are scattered. The entire team—Sales, Service, and Finance—needs to come together quickly, with a single, shared view of the customer, so they can take action. Enter Salesforce channels.
A Salesforce channel is a dedicated space for teams to collaborate in real time about their customers. It connects Salesforce records, like accounts, opportunities, and cases, directly to team conversations in Slack, unifying everyone and grounding their collaboration around a single source of truth. Salesforce channels are accessible in the Salesforce user interface (UI) and in the Slack app so teams can efficiently work together with all the necessary customer data, discussions, and context while keeping everyone focused in the place they work best.
With Salesforce channels, anyone who has access to a record can see and participate in the conversation in the channel, ensuring that everyone is kept in the loop. You can configure whether a channel is set as public or private. Access to both public and private Salesforce channels is controlled by user permissions in Salesforce.
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Public Salesforce channels allow anyone at your company to search and join the conversation and access data, within the permissions assigned in Salesforce.
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Private Salesforce channels allow only users who have access to the record in Salesforce, and anyone explicitly invited to the conversation, to see and engage with the channel. Private channels are otherwise not visible to additional users and don’t appear in search results, unlike traditional private Slack channels.
Salesforce channels automatically map metadata and inherit permissions from Salesforce, so you can access data and collaborate freely without sacrificing security. No more tab toggling, no more missed context—just real-time partnership and shared visibility right where you’re already working.
So how do you tackle the billing problem from earlier? By harnessing the power of Salesforce channels, of course! The entire team—Sales, Service, and Finance—joins forces in a dedicated Salesforce account channel, whether they’re working in Salesforce or in Slack, to discuss the full scope of the blocked deal. In this channel, everyone can easily access related records, get instant guidance from a billing support AI agent, and respond to the issue together in real time. With Finance’s system connected to Slack, the team can quickly investigate the billing issue, communicate directly, and post a correction in the channel, unblocking the deal in minutes, rather than days.
With Salesforce channels, you can:
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Serve customers faster with a single and secure view of the customer’s complete history with your company, improving internal collaboration by breaking down the silos between data and dialogue.
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Keep everyone aligned by connecting teammates, both human and agentic, across Salesforce and Slack, desktop and mobile.
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Unlock actionable AI insights by unifying structured CRM data and unstructured internal conversational data to build deeper context for Agentforce.
Salesforce channels are built to enable immediate action, creating a modern and dynamic place for people, apps, automation, and AI agents to efficiently work together, wherever they work best.
Explore Salesforce Channels Features
There are several available features to explore in Salesforce channels across the Salesforce UI and the Slack App. From both Salesforce and Slack experiences, users can create and join channels, add people to conversations, tag teammates and channels, start a thread to reply directly, and react to discussions using emoji.
In the Slack app, any user with access to a Salesforce channel can access and update CRM information or contribute to the conversation. There are enhanced features that are unique to Salesforce channels and are organized into tabs. Check out the different tabs available and what they can help your users do.
Feature in Slack App |
Description |
|---|---|
Messages tab |
All Salesforce channels have a messages tab where teams can chat in real time, just as they would in a traditional Slack channel. |
Record Details tab |
Users can view the CRM record connected to a channel, launch quick actions (such as log an activity), or review members of the record team as designated in Salesforce to add them to the conversation. |
Summary tab |
Users can get a bird’s-eye view of every conversation happening across the varying channels that are related to a given record. For example, in an account channel, you see a summary of all related opportunity channels. Note: Users only see this tab and AI-generated summaries if they have access to Slack AI. |
Related lists |
Based on the user permissions set in Salesforce, users can review the related records they have access to for a given Salesforce channel, edit them, or navigate directly to a dedicated channel for a particular record. Admins can choose which related lists show up in tabs. |
Salesforce Channels Across Clouds
Delivering customer success is a team effort. With Salesforce channels, teams across every line of business can improve the way they work. Take a look at some use cases across sales, service, marketing, and commerce, to learn how Salesforce channels can benefit different clouds and users.
Are you ready to bring this deep collaboration and cross-functional productivity to your own teams? We thought so! In the next unit, learn how to set up and configure Salesforce channels for your organization.