Salesforce is taking advantage of the hype from Dreamforce 2024 to launch some new AI features for a platform it acquired three years ago: Slack.
Slack was acquired by Salesforce in 2021, with lofty plans to turn the team messaging platform into a hub for employee engagement. Unfortunately, few major changes have been launched to integrate the two popular business software solutions.
At Dreamforce 2024, that appears to be changing, with Salesforce announcing a bevy of new features that will empower Slack users to do a lot more than before.
New AI Slack Features Announced
Salesforce isn’t the only company announcing new features at Dreamforce 2024.
During the massive tech conference in San Francisco, Slack also took the stage to reveal a wide range of new AI features that will hopefully turn the team communication platform into a full-on work operating system with accessible data and seamless integrations with other systems.
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“We’ve moved beyond collaboration; every day, millions of teams are leveraging purpose-built AI, with customer data, automation, and now agents seamlessly integrated into the flow of work. In today’s increasingly complex work environment, true productivity requires a work operating system built for the future of work — and that is Slack.” – Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack
The goal of these new AI features in Slack is to make work a little bit easier for employees that are frustrated with the systems currently in place. Some studies have found that 25 billion hours are lost to poor collaboration every year, and this new functionality could bridge the gap a bit more effectively for your team, particularly considering the same study showed that AI is saving 12% of that time.
New AI Slack Features Explained
So, what are these new AI features that will be available in Slack after Dreamforce 2024? Here’s a breakdown of all the updates that were announced.
Agentforce in Slack
The new AI tool from Salesforce that allows you to create and customize autonomous chatbots will be available in Slack, allowing you to ask questions of your CRM directly in the platform, with answers informed by your customer data.
AgentForce from Salesforce will now integrate directly with Slack. Source: Slack
Other AI Agents in Slack
While Salesforce obviously wants you to use Slack, they aren’t closing the ecosystem off to other services. In fact, Slack is now compatible with a wide range of other third-party AI agents from companies like Adobe Express, Cohere, and Writer, with access to Anthropic coming soon.
Workflow Builder
Slack has also decided to inject a little AI into its Workflow Builder functionality, making it easier to automate basic operations at your business. With a more conversational approach, you’ll be able to make simple requests directly in the platform to generate workflows to streamline productivity at your business.
The Workflow Builder will streamline your automation efforts into simple requests that work across the platform. Source: Slack
Slack huddle notes
With this new feature from Slack, you’ll be able to get key takeaway notes powered by AI from all of your audio and video call meetings. Once Slack AI is introduced into a huddle, the system will create a Slack canvas, providing all attendees of the huddle with action items, shared files, and a full transcript of the entire meeting.
Automate your notetaking in meetings with Slack AI in huddles. Source: Slack
AI at Dreamforce
It’s no secret that AI has been the real belle of the ball at Dreamforce 2024. In fact, the conference has been dubbed the “largest AI event in the world,” even if only by Salesforce itself.
The push for more AI from Salesforce is big, particularly considering the company has a wealth of data to train and utilize this kind of technology with.
“In this new era of AI and Agents, customer data and metadata are the new gold for the enterprise.” – Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM for Data Cloud at Salesforce.
Suffice to say, Salesforce and the providers it has acquired in recent years, like Slack, are going to continue getting the AI treatment, as has become the standard across the industry.
