4 key features in Salesforce’s Agentforce 2.0

“The only thing we’re going to do in Salesforce is Agentforce.” That’s what Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in September when he introducing AI agents. This week, the company showed what that means by unveiling the significantly upgraded Agentforce 2.0.

Among its new features, four stand out:

• A library of pre-built skills and workflow integration for quick customization.
• Ability to implement Agentforce in Slack.
• Improvements to the Atlas Reasoning Engine.
• Agentforce Testing Center.

Here’s a look at them and how they can be used.

Skills library and integration

This library includes key business applications such as CRM, Slack, and Tableau, as well as integrations from AppExchange partners. These ready-to-use skills simplify the process of building custom AI agents. Eliminates complex and time-consuming integration problems. The library has pre-built Slack actions like Create Canvas and Message Channel, which allow teams to create agents for their Slack workflows.

Here are some examples:

• CRM skills allow you to create agents to automate and improve customer experience. These agents can do things like lead nurturing, sales training, and scheduling service engagements among other functions. For example, a sales development skill can create agents that nurture leads based on predefined rules. The Sales Coaching skill enables agents to actively participate in sales calls, providing real-time feedback to reps and improving their performance.
• MuleSoft integrations enable companies to use Agentforce across their entire business ecosystem. For example, it can connect Agentforce to its ERP system to automate the order fulfillment process. It can also be integrated with marketing automation platforms to launch personalized email campaigns based on customer interactions.
• The AppExchange augments Agentforce’s capabilities by allowing users to access specialized skills created by partners.

Agentforce in Slack

This makes Slack the central point for employee interaction with Agentforce. They can access information, launch workflows, and manage tasks right within Slack. This means they don’t have to jump from one app to another.

Agentforce can also automate tasks within Slack. For example, Accenture uses it to give employees quick updates on important accounts. It helps automate document retrieval and provides recommendations for solving business problems. It also streamlines proposal creation and visualization and improves employee collaboration, including providing real-time updates, retrieving documents, offering proactive recommendations and creating proposals.

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Agentforce also uses Slack Enterprise Search. Learn from conversations in Slack channels and direct messages. This allows agents to provide more relevant responses and actions based on the context of the conversation.

Improved Atlas Reasoning Engine

The Atlas Reasoning Engine is enhanced with advanced reasoning and augmented retrieval generation (RAG) so that agents can process more complex questions in multiple steps and provide more accurate and precise answers.

For example, RBC uses Atlas and Data Cloud with Agentforce to help its financial advisors. Data Cloud integrates all client data into a unified system, giving advisors a comprehensive view of their clients. Atlas can answer complex questions from clients. It does this by using multilevel thinking. It also relies on RBC’s data and business logic. This helps in providing a reliable answer.

An old Russian proverb says “Trust, but verify”. RAG’s enhanced capabilities allow users to do this by providing inline quotes with agent responses. Citation of the exact sources used builds confidence in AI results. It also helps users to verify accuracy.

Agentforce Testing Center

The test center allows companies to test their AI agents before use. This ensures that agents will follow instructions, be factual and work quickly. This helps reduce risk and ensures consistent and reliable agent performance. It also provides tools that make it easy to test, audit, and scale agents.

Practicing and preaching

Salesforce uses the technology internally. It says agents on help.salesforce.com now handle 83% of customer support inquiries independently, with human escalations down 50% since implementation two weeks ago.

“Suddenly, as a CEO, I’m not just managing human beings, I’m also managing agents,” Benioff said. “Today there is an authentic agent layer around the platform. It’s not some fantasy vision of the future, it’s what’s happening right now.”