Another exciting edition of Dreamforce, the flagship annual Salesforce event, has ended on a cheerful note. Hosted at San Franciso, the three memorable days of inspiration, innovation, fun, and learning, saw about 45,000 attendees from over 140 countries and millions participating through Salesforce+. The event was marked by the unveiling of Agentforce, a comprehensive cluster of autonomous, custom-made AI agents. “This is the third wave of AI – agents,” Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, remarked in the opening keynote, advocating Agentforce as another great leap in technology.
In this digital era where customer satisfaction and efficiency are of supreme importance, Agentforce will serve as a game-changer, encouraging organizations to improve their workforce competence with a few clicks. This revolutionary platform vouches to simplify operations across sales, service, commerce, and marketing, and elevate customer engagement to the next level.
Here is a quick recap of the key highlights of Dreamforce 2024:
1. Agentforce
The CRM giant unveiled Agentforce, a futuristic solution that equips enterprises to build and manage autonomous AI agents across several departments such as marketing, sales, and customer service. Further, this platform enables quick deployment of AI agents that can handle complex tasks.
Key Features:
- Agent Builder: A custom-made tool that utilizes APIs, code, and automation, for creating agents.
- Atlas Reasoning Engine: The master brain behind Agentforce that ensures intelligent task execution.
- Agentforce Launch Zone: Using this feature, 1,000 chosen Salesforce customers can prototype their individual agents with expert guidance.
- Agentforce Partner Network: This enables strategic alliances with the software vendors to improve agent-building expertise.
2. Atlas
Atlas, a reconstructed AI copilot that empowers Agentforce, stands at the core of the CRM giant’s AI journey. Unlike the conventional assistive systems, Atlas creates, analyzes, and upgrades plans according to the user objectives, leveraging Data Cloud for decision-making.
Key Features:
- Offers real-time insights for quicker and smarter business decisions.
- Enables autonomous engagement with clients, based on select communication channels.
3. Data Cloud Enrichments
Salesforce’s Data Cloud has evolved as the backbone of its AI evolution. Here are the three major updates from Dreamforce:
- Managing Unstructured Data: Implies native support for audio and video analysis, generating practical insights from voicemails and calls.
- 50 Brand New Connectors: Intended to expand integration with more than 200 pre-built connectors for seamless data access.
- Sub-second Real-time Capabilities: Handles data from consumption to activation in less than a second, thus enabling quicker decision-making.
4. Slack Innovations Facilitated by Agentforce
Agentforce is set out to improve Slack with a bunch of new features including:
- Salesforce-linked Channels: These channels unite Slack conversations and Salesforce CRM records, thus optimizing teamwork on important accounts.
- Natural Language Communications: The users can interact with agents via natural language, and receive responses based upon structured data.
- AI-powered Slack Capabilities: New features including huddle notes, improved search capabilities, and enhanced automation, are aimed to streamline the workflow.
- Third-party AI Agents: Facilitates assimilation of AI assistants from partners including Anthropic and Adobe within Slack.
5. $1 Billion AI Investment and Development
Salesforce announced a trailblazing $1 billion investment intended to enhance its workforce and AI capabilities:
- AI Centers: AI centers have been launched in cities like London, and there are expansion plans for Sydney, Chicago, and Tokyo to facilitate collaboration and offer one-on-one AI courses.
- Salesforce Ventures: A $50 million commitment towards AI workforce upskilling was announced with tactical investments in enterprises such as Hugging Face, Cohere, and Together.ai, aimed at ethical AI development.
6. AI Certifications and Training for Free
Salesforce is dedicated to make AI available for all, as is evident from their message “AI for all”. Announcements were made towards providing premium instructor-led courses as well as AI certifications for free via Trailhead, till the end of 2025. Some of the courses on offer include Salesforce Certified AI Associate, Salesforce AI Specialist Certification, etc. which are intended to sharpen the AI skills of Salesforce professionals.
7. Partnerships with Google and IBM
Salesforce declared exciting partnerships with Google and IBM, aimed to promote Agentforce:
- Integration of Google Workspace: This comprises automation of tasks across Google Workspace, which includes handling Gmail and Google Calendar activities and creating Google Docs.
- Industry-specific Agents from IBM: Customized agents were devised for sectors such as banking to optimize processes like tax compliance and loan approvals.
8. Improvements in Customer 360 Apps
The CRM giant’s Customer 360 apps serve as a unified platform for customized, AI-driven interactions at each customer touchpoint, covering service, sales, commerce, and marketing, enhanced by the capabilities of Slack and Tableau. Created on the powerful Salesforce platform, these apps leverage shared data to provide a unified customer experience.
Tableau Einstein, the new entrant in this segment, improves business intelligence by implanting insights and analytics seamlessly into the day-to-day workflows. When combined with Agentforce, Slack, Customer 360 apps, and Pulse, Tableau Einstein powers teams to manage data efficiently for faster, strategic decision-making.
9. Introducing the Next-Gen Commerce Cloud
The next-gen Commerce Cloud incorporates the entire commerce capabilities such as DTC, B2C, B2B, payments, order management, and more, into a unique platform empowered by AI and enterprise data. This update highlights the introduction of three new agents in Agentforce such as Buyer, Merchant, and Personal Shopper, that handle tasks including order inquiries and product recommendations autonomously, thereby optimizing operations without direct human supervision.
10. Advancements in Marketing Cloud
Salesforce announced new features in Marketing Cloud, intended to improve customer engagement and data integration through automation and Agentforce. The upcoming Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition will feature AI functionalities and advanced automation, seamlessly connecting marketing journeys with service, commerce, and sales processes, to adapt to each customer interaction. In addition, Einstein Marketing Intelligence will be at the core to manage and streamline cross-channel campaigns, automating data organization, visualization, and enhancement, and offering practical insights to improve ROI and performance in campaigns.
11. Launching Industries AI
Salesforce has introduced Industries AI, announcing around 100 custom-made AI prompts, functionalities, and data models designed specifically for about 15 industry clouds, supported by Einstein Trust Layer and Data Cloud. Industries AI focuses on addressing the prevailing challenges across different sectors. For instance, optimizing consumer goods inventory, improving student recruitment, and many more.
Final Thoughts
This year, Dreamforce was nothing short of transformative, showcasing the advancements and insights pertaining to the tech industry. The main highlight of the event was the unveiling of Agentforce. The groundbreaking event witnessed many other announcements including free AI certifications, advancements in Commerce Cloud, and more. Concisely, Dreamforce 2024 offered a collective vision for the future of technology and business. Regardless of whether you are a beginner waiting to start your Salesforce journey or a seasoned professional, the insights gained from the Salesforce conference will serve as a valuable resource to navigate through the challenges ahead and emerge successful.
As a Salesforce implementation partner, Milestone offers its customers several cutting-edge solutions to stay at the competitive edge. If you have any questions regarding our services, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at itsolutions@milestone.tech.
