Agentforce brings AI-powered digital teammates directly into Slack – CRN

Imagine an AI assistant that understands the full context of your work, customer needs, and business priorities — all within Slack. With the new employee-facing experience of Agentforce, this vision is now a reality. These AI agents can carry out a variety of tasks — from delivering real-time, contextual answers based on conversations and connected data to progressing tasks and sharing expertise in the flow of work.

From today, organisations can create specialised, task-specific digital teammates that operate directly within Slack — where teams are already collaborating. To simplify onboarding, Slack Employee Agent Templates will be available from 12 June.

Powered by role-based permissions and integrated access to Salesforce Data Cloud, Slack conversation history, and the entire Salesforce 360 ecosystem, Agentforce generates intelligent, secure responses in real time. These agents are always available, fully contextualised, and ready to support employees across their workflows.

Slack: The Natural Home for Agentforce

While Agentforce can be deployed across various Salesforce applications — including Lightning and Mobile — its true potential is unlocked within Slack. Here, agents and employees work side by side in real-time collaboration.

Slack’s conversational interface makes it the ideal platform for Agentforce. Operating in the same channels used by teams, the agents leverage full context — messages, files, workflows, and shared knowledge — to deliver faster, more accurate assistance.

A simple @ mention is all it takes to bring Agentforce into the conversation. Employees can ask questions or initiate tasks, allowing Agentforce to help accelerate work, maintain focus, and support better decision-making.

Build Faster with Slack Agent Templates

To help teams hit the ground running, Slack Employee Agent Templates will be available to all Agentforce customers from 12 June. Preloaded within Agent Builder, these templates come with pre-configured topics, actions, and workflows — enabling organisations to launch employee-facing agents more efficiently.

Available templates include:

• Slack customer insights: This template allows teams to create agents that access Salesforce data directly within Slack. Agents can summarise opportunities, update CRM records, extract insights, and answer questions using data from the Salesforce Data Library. Information can also be compiled into shareable canvases that blend Slack and Salesforce data in one organised, actionable view.
• Slack onboarding: Designed to transform onboarding into a seamless, interactive Slack experience, this template enables agents to help new hires navigate company policies, identify subject matter experts, and make meaningful connections. Drawing on the company knowledge base and public Slack history, these agents ensure new employees begin with the context, contacts, and confidence needed to succeed.
• Slack employee help: This flexible template enables teams to build agents that support HR, IT, legal, sales operations, and more. Connected to internal knowledge sources, these agents respond to routine queries by referencing Slack history, documents, and linked systems, packaging responses into easy-to-share Slack canvases. Subject-matter experts are freed up to focus on strategic tasks while employees get reliable, timely answers.

Each template offers a flexible foundation that can be customised to match team-specific needs and integrated data sources.

Giving Agents the Context to Operate as True Teammates

To function effectively, digital agents need the same contextual awareness as their human counterparts. That’s why Salesforce is introducing two powerful new capabilities: Slack Enterprise Search and the General Slack Topic.

Whether building from scratch or using a template, assigning the General Slack Topic and enabling the new Slack Enterprise Search Action ensures agents have the access and insights they need.

Enterprise Search: With Agentforce in Slack, agents can now perform real-time searches across third-party tools — including Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Asana, and more — in addition to Slack messages and files. This enables broader context and more complete, accurate responses. For instance, agents can respond to prompts such as:

• “Search Slack and Google Drive for information on Project Capricorn and organise it into a canvas”
• “Where is the OKR presentation?”
• “What’s the status of my Asana task?”

Slack context based on user permissions: By assigning the General Slack Topic, agents inherit the access level and context of each user, allowing them to respond appropriately and securely. This ensures sensitive actions and data remain compliant with the organisation’s access controls.

Example interactions include:

• “Find messages from @LaurenBailey about pricing from last week”
• “Create a deal handoff canvas and include a summary of the Acme account”
• “Send a DM to the Acme account owner”

With permissioned access to Salesforce data, Slack conversations, and connected third-party apps, Agentforce delivers relevant insights securely — all without employees needing to switch tools. Slack becomes the central hub where Agentforce fully understands how the team works and contributes as a true digital teammate.

Scale adoption with shareable prompts

Once agents are deployed, organisations can accelerate adoption with shareable prompts. These reusable queries offer guided ways to interact with agents and can be embedded in canvases or shared via DM to direct colleagues to the right digital assistant for their task.

These prompts simplify knowledge sharing, boost adoption, and demonstrate the tangible value of Agentforce across the enterprise.

Agentforce in Slack brings the intelligence, efficiency, and context-awareness of AI to the heart of everyday work — helping employees move faster, stay informed, and work smarter together.