Salesforce: Slack to become "AI control center"

It was already indicated at Salesforce's house fair Dreamforce that Slack is to be expanded into a central interface for a new generation of AI agents. The heart of this is Slackbot, which is now generally available. According to Salesforce, the new bot can not only provide information but, above all, actively support many work processes.

Unlike the many new copilots that are added as additional applications alongside existing tools, the Slackbot is intended to work wherever a large part of communication takes place and where employees have the greatest need for support. "Slackbot is not a classic team bot, but a personal work assistant," says Ryan Gavin, Chief Marketing Officer for Slack, about the new system.

In dialogue with AI agents

To this end, the bot accesses conversations, files, calendar information, and connected company data for which the respective user has access rights. This contextual knowledge can then be used for specific tasks. This ranges from finding old decisions to creating texts and summarizing document content, to preparing presentations and meetings.

Strategically, Salesforce places the product within its "Agentforce" platform. Slack functions as a "conversational interface" for all AI agents that work in various company systems. Instead of opening dashboards, forms, and separate applications, users will in the future only access data, processes, and actions through dialogues with the new assistant. Salesforce CTO Rob Harris describes Slack in this context as an "Agentic Work Operating System," meaning a kind of operating system for the collaboration of humans and AI agents.

Salesforce also relies on Slackbot internally

Customer number one for Slackbot is Salesforce itself. According to the company, the assistant is used for prioritization, summaries of longer discussion threads, or for internal reviews, among other things. The company speaks of significant time savings, which are said to range from five to 20 hours per employee per week.

In a press conference, it was shown how Slackbot can bring together information from various sources. For example, discussions from Slack channels can be combined with key figures from connected systems such as Salesforce CRM to derive decision-making bases or recommendations for action.

The broad rollout of Slackbot, which is now beginning, marks a strategic restructuring of Slack: away from a pure communication tool, towards a new strategic control center. However, all of this is still in its early stages. Further automation functions, such as the independent creation of meetings, are not yet part of the current version but are expected to be launched with later updates, according to Salesforce.

(mki)