0:05

This week on the Salesforce Admin's

0:07

podcast, we're thrilled to have Jillian

0:09

Bruce back with us. Jillian who

0:12

now leads the Slack ecosystem marketing

0:14

team and is on a mission

0:16

to show why every Salesforce admin

0:19

should be jumping into Slack and

0:21

using it to not only build

0:23

custom agents, but also amazing workflows

0:25

and incredible integrations that Slack can

0:28

do. Jillian explains why learning. and

0:30

Leveraging Slack is simply a must

0:32

for an admin. I mean, it's

0:34

so easy to use. I love

0:36

it. Now, before we jump in,

0:38

I want to make sure that

0:41

you're following the Salesforce Admin's podcast,

0:43

wherever you get your podcast, that

0:45

way you can catch every new

0:47

episode immediately when it comes out

0:49

on Thursdays. So be sure to

0:51

hit the follow button on whatever

0:54

podcast platform you're listening for. So

0:56

now, let's welcome Jillian back and

0:58

talk about Slack and Agent Force.

1:04

So Jillian, welcome back to the

1:07

podcast. Mike, thanks for having me. I

1:09

know. You've been over overly

1:11

communicating with people. It's been

1:14

a while since I've been on the pod

1:16

with you. It feels like I just

1:18

like around the clock quite a while.

1:20

I know back in the wayback machine.

1:22

Don't forget we have the way back.

1:24

I don't have the fancy noise maker

1:26

just got to like put it in

1:28

your head and envision that. What

1:30

have you been up to since

1:33

we've last talked on ye old

1:35

podcast? Oh, just a few

1:37

things, you know, a few changes.

1:39

Okay, still all about

1:41

Admans, obviously. Admans are

1:44

always in my heart, and

1:46

it's actually been quite fun,

1:48

because about, what, eight months

1:51

ago at this point, I

1:53

have transitioned over to Slack

1:55

to lead up their ecosystem

1:58

marketing team, which It

2:00

includes developers, community, and partners.

2:02

And one of the big

2:04

things I'm focused on is,

2:06

as I've gotten to know,

2:08

the Slack community over here, is

2:11

helping all Salesforce Admans understand

2:13

how awesome Slack is and

2:15

how important is that you

2:17

learn how to build and

2:19

use Slack. Yeah, I mean, you

2:21

know me. I use Slack for

2:23

a ton of things. And I

2:26

love building out forms and workflows

2:28

and Slack. It's so admin-friendly. It is

2:30

very admin friendly and the thing

2:32

that I think is so interesting

2:34

to me as I've been getting

2:37

to know the slack community and

2:39

people who are slack developers and

2:41

slack builders is there are so

2:44

many commonalities and opportunities between the

2:46

sales force admin and builder

2:48

audience and the slack builder audience

2:50

you know and when you're building

2:53

something with workflow builder it's

2:55

Very similar to building a flow.

2:57

In fact, building something with workflow

2:59

builder in Slack is, to me,

3:01

honestly, a lot easier than building an

3:03

automation with flow and sales force. Kind of

3:05

is, a little bit. A lot more

3:07

straightforward. And, you know, part of that

3:10

is because the platform is built to

3:12

do a different thing than sales force

3:14

is. But it's... There's so much you

3:16

can do with you know being able

3:18

to point and click and do these

3:20

low code builds and low code solutions

3:22

and slack and it doesn't even mean

3:24

like building a lot of customizations you

3:26

know we've got things like slack canvas

3:28

and now we have slack lists which

3:30

are amazing for your to-do list if

3:32

you haven't tried those out yet and

3:34

just generally using channels and building automation

3:37

between channels to help manage your notifications

3:39

and work processes there's a lot there but

3:41

of course. There's something on the top

3:43

of everyone's mind these days. I mean, I

3:45

would love to talk all of the workflow

3:47

stuff, but we're agent force, Jillian. We have

3:50

to cover agents. Well, and it's, agents are

3:52

a big deal, and I think especially

3:54

agents, so let's put my developer hat

3:56

on for a second. So in

3:58

the slack developer community. People have

4:00

been building agents for quite a while

4:03

and they've been building their own agents

4:05

and deploying them into slack There's also

4:07

agents that are already on the slack

4:09

marketplace built by our third-party vendor. So

4:12

like Adobe Express and writer and cohere

4:14

They already have agents that you can

4:16

interact with in slack, but the amazing

4:18

thing with agent force is that it's

4:21

bringing that saleshorse builder experience to being

4:23

able to enable you to build your

4:25

own custom agents And Mike, I just

4:27

want to take a second here. Admans,

4:30

agents, I know it might feel a

4:32

little like overwhelming, but let's back it

4:34

up. What is an admin's number one

4:37

customer? Our users. Always our users. Our

4:39

users. And so yes, I didn't know

4:41

there was a quiz. You didn't tell

4:43

me there was a quiz. Sorry. I

4:46

can't just come on the pod and

4:48

just be a normal guest. I'm going

4:50

to build an agent and slack for

4:52

the quiz now. That's what it should

4:55

be. There you go. Okay. Okay. Okay.

4:57

An admin's number one customer is the

4:59

end user, which we also call an

5:01

employee. Let's say that, right? If you're

5:04

part of an organization, you're an employee.

5:06

What is the best operating system to

5:08

enable employees to collaborate with each other

5:11

and with other systems? I feel like

5:13

I have to say slack. Yeah, you

5:15

do. It is the best one. I

5:17

mean, I can debate that, but I

5:20

wasn't going to. It's like being on

5:22

family feud. Okay, so then here's the

5:24

third. The third question is. So if

5:26

an admin's number one customer are the

5:29

employees, and the best way to bring

5:31

employees together, to collaborate, and to interact

5:33

with other systems with Slack, then where

5:36

is the best place to bring those

5:38

custom agents that you're building, an agent

5:40

builder? I mean, you should build them

5:42

in Slack. Ding, ding, Mike, you pass.

5:45

I tried. I was fighting really hard.

5:47

I was going to say chatter. I

5:49

was going to say chatter. I was

5:51

going to say chatter. So real quick

5:54

on the chatter of it all. So.

5:56

I love to chatter. A lot of

5:58

us love chatter. I love, I had

6:00

like, what do I call it, a

6:03

chatter brag? It was a chag. Oh

6:05

yeah, a drag. Yeah, we had templates.

6:07

We sure did. Yeah, formatting. So Parker

6:10

very publicly announced that he, well, he

6:12

helped build chatter. He is now going

6:14

to help kill chatter. And I know

6:16

this might give us some heart popitations,

6:19

but let me just be really clear.

6:21

Chatter is getting a major glow up.

6:23

If you think about it, because we

6:25

have something called Salesforce channels that are

6:28

in Slack. And what this is, is

6:30

one of the best things about chatter

6:32

is what it had to feed on

6:34

every record, right? So we can talk

6:37

about what's going on. Well, we already

6:39

have Salesforce channels live in Slack as

6:41

of Dreamforce. This means that you can

6:44

have a dedicated record channel that automatically

6:46

gets spin up for that record. in

6:48

Slack. So you have a channel there

6:50

where you can collaborate, you can talk

6:53

about it, you can interact with folks,

6:55

you can bring other systems data in

6:57

right there. Coming in February, that same

6:59

UI, that channel experience, is going to

7:02

be visible in Salesforce for those records.

7:04

Well, that's going to be incredibly useful

7:06

because I think that was always the

7:08

disconnect. You know, I'm over here for

7:11

one thing and then I'm over there

7:13

for another thing and... I mean, Slack

7:15

is already such a conversational UI, it

7:18

makes sense that I should think about

7:20

not only building agents in the Salesforce

7:22

UI, but in Slack as well, because

7:24

that's where people are already talking. So

7:27

yeah, and two things on that, Mike,

7:29

right? So one, it's a place where

7:31

people are already talking. It's the place

7:33

where they're being able to interact with

7:36

systems beyond Salesforce as well, right? So

7:38

maybe they have workday workday in there.

7:40

Maybe they're pulling in Dura tickets. there's

7:42

a lot of other systems that integrate

7:45

with slack so that people don't have

7:47

to leave and swivel chair out of

7:49

that interface into something else. So by

7:52

putting your agent in there and bringing

7:54

that sales force experience into slack, you're

7:56

again... making much more efficient for people

7:58

to get their work done. But then

8:01

that second piece of it, Mike, is

8:03

that Slack is gonna be the way

8:05

that you're gonna be able to not

8:07

just bring that systems and all of

8:10

that data together, all those people together.

8:12

But those agents are gonna be able

8:14

to interact there in Slack with you,

8:16

and you're gonna be able to tell

8:19

that agent to do things that are

8:21

pulling from Salesforce, from all of your

8:23

data cloud sources, and take action right

8:26

there in Slack. And you're gonna be

8:28

able to come March. actually have that

8:30

in a threaded conversation so you're going

8:32

to be able to interact multiplayer style

8:35

so you'll have a conversation with an

8:37

agent and other people can join in

8:39

in that conversation and they can converse

8:41

with the agent correct oh boy we

8:44

can keep agents busy do you think

8:46

of agents like interns like interns I

8:48

heard somebody said that the other day

8:51

is like if you're trying to think

8:53

of what to build an agent force

8:55

think of like what if you had

8:57

an intern I mean, yes and no.

9:00

I'd like to think that when you

9:02

have an intern, you're spending a lot

9:04

more time like training them and venturing

9:06

them. Not us. We get smart. We

9:09

get smart interns. Giving them unique opportunity.

9:11

More than just getting coffee. Well, yeah,

9:13

can you find me an agent that

9:15

can get you coffee? I guess you

9:18

could probably have an agent that could

9:20

order you coffee and get it delivered.

9:22

That would 100% win every hackathon. An

9:25

agent forced that just all of a

9:27

sudden out of your screen comes a

9:29

cup of coffee. Well, you're like, this

9:31

isn't what I wanted to talk about.

9:34

No, it's good. Actually, you know what,

9:36

but getting having your agent take an

9:38

action. So one of the things I

9:40

did want to highlight is when we're

9:43

talking about agent force and slack, so

9:45

there are kind of three main elements

9:47

when you're talking about agent force and

9:49

slack that are important to think about.

9:52

Number one, deploying your agent and slack.

9:54

take slack actions. So in Agent Builder,

9:56

you're going to be able to tell

9:59

your agent. to do things with slack,

10:01

like search slack data, so that unstructured

10:03

data in slack. These are going to

10:05

be actions available in Agent Builder. You're

10:08

also going to be able to tell

10:10

your agent to create or update a

10:12

slack canvas, which is pretty great. Again,

10:14

like you're a fan of canvas. Oh

10:17

yeah, we use it a lot. Great

10:19

way to aggregate and share information. The

10:21

other slack action that's going to be

10:23

available is be able to send a

10:26

DM, right? So that's that simple kind

10:28

of direct one-on-one agentic experience of being

10:30

able to talk to an agent. So

10:33

those are going to be actions that

10:35

are available natively in agent builder that

10:37

anyone can use. Additionally, the team is

10:39

going to be working on a lot

10:42

more, including, I just heard about this

10:44

the other day, so they're actually going

10:46

to build kind of like some template

10:48

agents, some template employee facing agents, so

10:51

things like... Imagine a product specialist. So

10:53

you're in slack and you have a

10:55

question about how a product works because

10:57

you're in a conversation with a customer

11:00

or you're trying to answer a question.

11:02

Instead of having to go search all

11:04

of the documentation and figure out, oh,

11:07

who's the right product manager to reach

11:09

out about this, you can just ask

11:11

the agent right there in slack, your

11:13

question, and get served up in answer,

11:16

as well as Hey, how do you

11:18

want me to format this? Is this

11:20

for a sales customer? Is this for

11:22

a sales engineer? And that is just

11:25

like one use case that I get

11:27

excited about because I'm always a new

11:29

deep in product and I can never

11:32

keep up on everything. So that's one

11:34

good example. And that's a template that's

11:36

going to be available so that people

11:38

can take that, put that an agent

11:41

builder and then customize it to sorts

11:43

from their own knowledge base. So when

11:45

you're thinking of a sales force, we.

11:47

we can control the agent on the

11:50

profile and, or not profile, permission set

11:52

and perm set group. If you're deploying

11:54

agents in Slack, is it to all

11:56

the users or can you do the

11:59

same thing? Can you like, I really

12:01

want a test group of users to

12:03

have access to this agent? Yeah, so

12:06

the first. I'll say is that no

12:08

agent you deploy to agent builder or

12:10

you deploy to slack will override any

12:12

of your sales force permission structure. So

12:15

all the security settings you have about

12:17

visibility and who's able to edit and

12:19

make updates to different records all of

12:21

those permissions are going to carry over

12:24

in the slack. So there's never going

12:26

to be a situation where you have

12:28

an agent in slack interacting with someone

12:30

who doesn't have access to the data

12:33

that they're requesting, things like that. So

12:35

it will never override. The next thing

12:37

to that is you might have a

12:40

situation where you have part of your

12:42

company, part of your employee base, that

12:44

actually doesn't even work in sales force.

12:46

They don't even need sales force seats.

12:49

But you want to build an agent

12:51

experience for them, an agent builder, that

12:53

extends an agent and functionality to them.

12:55

So you don't actually have to buy

12:58

a sales force seat for them. Maybe

13:00

you have a group of, I don't

13:02

know, marketers who never go into sales

13:04

force, which is probably a bad use

13:07

case case. Well, we'll say warehouse workers.

13:09

Warehouse workers, right? Yeah, who don't have

13:11

to log in. They're driving forklifts all

13:14

day. They don't have time for the

13:16

sales force. Exactly. But what you could

13:18

do is build an agent and agent

13:20

builder that enables those warehouse workers to

13:23

be able to be in slack, maybe

13:25

ask questions about inventory when certain products

13:27

are going to be available. And all

13:29

of that information that they're going to

13:32

be able to see is again. permissions

13:34

that you control in the sales force

13:36

side of what's publicly available, what are

13:38

people able to see, what level of

13:41

permissions are accessed. But that's a way

13:43

you can extend all that information that's

13:45

otherwise just held within sales force beyond

13:48

sales force into Slack in that identical

13:50

experience. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about

13:52

before and Jillian, this was even back

13:54

before you joined Slack, but I do

13:57

think like you look at the way

13:59

that conversational AI and even, you know,

14:01

you know, some of like the like

14:03

the like the... Voiceover apps are going

14:06

like slack could be the front door

14:08

for everything sales force within your organization

14:10

And then you button up data cloud

14:12

on top of that. Now they basically

14:15

could via Slack have access to the

14:17

right data anywhere in the organization, conversationally.

14:19

And not just Salesforce data, but data

14:22

in workday or Asana, or any of

14:24

the other of the 2,700 integration apps

14:26

that we have out there in the

14:28

marketplace that connect all of your systems

14:31

in one place and that is Slack.

14:33

Yeah, that's crazy. I'm not going to

14:35

lie, I'm pretty happy to be over

14:37

here. I do feel like Slack is

14:40

the future. And this is why I

14:42

am extremely passionate about helping every Salesforce

14:44

admin understand that they should be using

14:47

Slack, they should be learning how to

14:49

build in Slack, because it is going

14:51

to be something that opens up the

14:53

world beyond just salesforce for folks and

14:56

a builder capacity. And it just, I

14:58

mean, imagine the value you can deliver

15:00

your organization by saying, hey. You know,

15:02

just by using Slack as our workos,

15:05

we can bring in these six different

15:07

systems that people have to log into

15:09

at some point every week, and I

15:11

can deploy these agents there that reduce

15:14

their time of work by hours every

15:16

week or hours every day. I mean,

15:18

that level of efficiency and productivity you

15:21

can deliver, I mean, that is one

15:23

of the number one goals of every

15:25

sales force admin. Yeah, well, you know,

15:27

and I don't know what slack battles

15:30

with in the marketplace, but you know,

15:32

I have to believe like the nice

15:34

thing I like about slack is even

15:36

if you spin up a channel and

15:39

then you archive it, you can still

15:41

go back and search it. And you

15:43

can still, it's like you never lose

15:45

that information. And I know there's like,

15:48

we used to have like, I don't

15:50

know, Google had like that instant messenger

15:52

and stuff. The second you closed your

15:55

window, it was gone. And like that

15:57

information was like, it was like Snapchat,

15:59

it was just gone. But at least

16:01

with Slack, it's maintained for a little

16:04

bit that you can actually make it

16:06

actionable and be like, oh, I did.

16:08

to pull this thing back up as

16:10

opposed to scrolling through a huge chatter

16:13

thread or something. Oh yeah I use

16:15

command K like at least 20 times

16:17

a day. Oh is that what it

16:19

is that's a shortcut? A shortcut and

16:22

it's coming it's like it's command K

16:24

is not just search it's like search

16:26

it's like recent history search so oh

16:29

yeah oh I didn't know this I

16:31

just go command K all day. Like

16:33

old screwable I'm still you know I

16:35

still use a mouse I'm very mouse

16:38

centric for a reason. Mosie your fingers

16:40

on over from the mouse to do

16:42

command K and you'll be able to

16:44

find recent things so so much more

16:47

quickly. I suppose it's I don't know.

16:49

Tell me a little bit more about

16:51

these channels if I'm so one of

16:53

the things that I think I struggled

16:56

with as an admin was advising users

16:58

on how much and what they should

17:00

follow and when. Because you know with

17:03

slack. It's tempting you just like I

17:05

got to pay attention to everything because

17:07

there's FOMO and there's this is going

17:09

on and like it can be that

17:12

way with your with your data and

17:14

records to how do you think about

17:16

channels and following those and having that

17:18

information So one of the hardest things

17:21

that I have experienced in transitioning from

17:23

like the Salesforce core side to the

17:25

slack side is the proliferation of slack

17:28

channels I mean you don't email at

17:30

all. I can't know. What was the

17:32

last time you sent an email like

17:34

two years ago probably? Yeah, I check

17:37

it like maybe once or twice a

17:39

week, which is really bad because sometimes

17:41

I miss stuff. But don't learn. But

17:43

for the channel organization, and I think

17:46

this really relates to kind of as

17:48

we were talking about the evolution of

17:50

chatter to Salesforce channels, you might just

17:52

hear like, the last thing I want

17:55

as another channel. But here's the thing.

17:57

So there are two things that I

17:59

think are really helpful for this. Number

18:02

one, Slack AI is awesome. So Slack

18:04

AI enables you to do recaps and

18:06

summaries. that you can check when you

18:08

are ready for it and it will

18:11

automatically update depending on how long ago

18:13

it was you checked it. So let's

18:15

say the last time you checked, I

18:17

don't know, the marketing updates channel was

18:20

a week ago. It'll say it'll recap

18:22

the last seven days in one paragraph

18:24

for you versus every day there's a

18:26

recap that you have to go through.

18:29

That is very helpful. The other thing

18:31

that's very helpful is just asking Slack,

18:33

Slack search to summarize for you. So

18:36

you're going to tell me what's going

18:38

on with XYZ project and it will

18:40

give you the highlights as well as

18:42

links to all the source information there.

18:45

That is really useful. I love CELAC

18:47

AI for that. It helps a really

18:49

kind of sift and sort and prioritize

18:51

the information for me. The other thing

18:54

that we now have, and you may

18:56

have seen it, this is brand new,

18:58

is we have what's called VIP. So

19:00

you've seen this. Yeah. So you can

19:03

identify specific users as VIPs. And what

19:05

that does is it gives this little

19:07

teeny tiny little VIP like emoji right

19:10

next to their name. It'll automatically prioritize

19:12

any DM or channel message that that

19:14

person has that you are involved with

19:16

to the top of your sidebar there.

19:19

So it'll be the first thing that

19:21

you see. So like I put for

19:23

my VIPs, it's like my management chain,

19:25

you know, my... My agent force group

19:28

that I'm really working with every single

19:30

day and That is helpful for me

19:32

because then I don't have to you

19:34

know manually update which Channel should be

19:37

my priority bucket every day It's just

19:39

these are the people I have to

19:41

pay attention to and I know that

19:44

I'm working on something hot with them

19:46

So I need to prioritize them and

19:48

how I look at my slack feed

19:50

Yep, I did VIPs for like a

19:53

day And then I need to come

19:55

back to it because the only thing

19:57

I needed is I need to be

19:59

able to move that list. Just where.

20:02

on the sidebar. I wanted to move

20:04

the list. That would be it. Yeah,

20:06

because it sticks it like right at

20:08

the top. It's like here's where it's

20:11

going to be and it's like chiseled

20:13

in stone. I was like, yeah, no,

20:15

can I have it farther down? I'd

20:18

also like, oh, you know, it'd be

20:20

really cool. Besides VIPs, it's just like

20:22

my team members in one. one area

20:24

so that when they DM me I

20:27

only have to look in one thing.

20:29

Yep, yep. I mean these are all

20:31

things so there's a lot of it's

20:33

so easy to use right like it's

20:36

so easy to do that that I

20:38

was like okay I'll come back to

20:40

the IP. Well and there's actually coming

20:43

out and for the next few months

20:45

pay attention because there's a lot of

20:47

features that we're putting in this bucket

20:49

calling quiet the noise first lack. And

20:52

these are basically all, honestly, a lot

20:54

of them are based off of feedback

20:56

we've gotten internally at Salesforce for people

20:58

who are, you know, overwhelmed by the

21:01

amount of channels or the amount of

21:03

dams and trying to really figure out

21:05

how to streamline the experience to make

21:07

it more pleasant and easier to get

21:10

the information that you care most about

21:12

without having to sort through a whole

21:14

bunch of different updates. Right. summarize

21:17

things. Help me summarize things. Prioritize

21:19

them. Be smart, you know, in

21:21

terms of how you're displaying things

21:23

and enabling like some of the

21:25

things that you've talked about my

21:27

control terms of like here is

21:29

a group for my team, like

21:32

more features along those lines. So

21:34

stay tuned over the next few

21:36

months. There's going to be a

21:38

few more of those coming out

21:40

and I think people are going

21:42

to really like them. I agree.

21:44

And also, you know, if you're

21:46

an admin sitting there thinking, I

21:49

think a lot of it, you

21:51

know, we're working on redoing the

21:53

core responsibilities. We've had a fifth

21:55

core responsibility, which is product management

21:57

fits well into this because agents

21:59

need. need to be product

22:01

managed. There's no good way to say

22:04

that. Agency managers. Agents need, yeah, whatever.

22:06

But the thing that I'm thinking of

22:08

is like, so you know, how do

22:11

I get this conversation going with slack,

22:13

assuming the admin doesn't have slack in

22:15

their organization and sitting down with the

22:18

user saying, what do you search on?

22:20

Because that to me sounds like like

22:22

90% of the benefit of slack besides

22:24

the conversation is just being able to

22:27

search for stuff and then you throw

22:29

an agent on top of that and

22:31

it's like good I'll be back in

22:34

three months when you have some real

22:36

problems. Well and it's it's what are

22:38

you searching for what applications are you

22:41

working in all the time like what

22:43

are you trying between and then yeah

22:45

what what are you trying to get

22:48

done and like if you have those

22:50

three answers then you could easily whip

22:52

up up. a solution in slack. And

22:54

I will tell you for people who

22:57

want to get hands-on with socks who

22:59

don't have it at the organizations, first

23:01

of all, anyone can get access to

23:04

a free slack workspace. It doesn't have

23:06

all the bills and whistles, but you

23:08

can, there's plenty. It's good enough you

23:11

can build a demo out of, right?

23:13

You built demos before. Totally and actually

23:15

we and one other thing we have

23:18

is we have a actual slack developer

23:20

program and admins don't get scared that

23:22

it's called a developer program it's basically

23:25

just a way that you can go

23:27

tinker around and build things with slack

23:29

you can spin up a slack sandbox

23:31

and it's totally free you can go

23:34

to slack. Dev I'm sorry to say

23:36

it. It's my new favorite website because

23:38

I just okay. Eventually while you're over

23:41

there, Jillian, you'll have slack admins. You

23:43

know, we are already talking about slack

23:45

admins quite a bit. We should. We

23:48

are. We got a we got a

23:50

lot of work to do over here,

23:52

Mike. So we're starting. It's okay. I'm

23:55

going to be busy challenging people to

23:57

say slack sandbox five times fast, not

23:59

mess that up. But so you can

24:01

get access to a slack sandbox. And

24:04

this is. forward-looking statement, soon you will

24:06

be able to build an employee-facing agent

24:08

with agent-builder that is connected and deployed

24:11

to Slack in Trailhead. Oh, that'd be

24:13

awesome! Yeah, so the team has done

24:15

it right now. We're hoping we might

24:18

be able to get something up by

24:20

TDX, so really working towards that, but

24:22

already, and this was kind of released

24:25

a little silently, but... on Halloween, so

24:27

trick-or-treat. We now have hands-on content for

24:29

Slack in Trailhead. So if you want

24:31

to learn how to build a Slack

24:34

app using our Bolt Framework, or if

24:36

you want to learn how to use

24:38

BlockKitBuilder, you now have hands-on content in

24:41

Trailhead for those two modules that will

24:43

actually have you spin up a Slack

24:45

developer environment, do the work in there,

24:48

follow the instructions, and Trailhead will check

24:50

it, and verify it, and verify it.

24:52

As even as someone, I don't think

24:55

of myself as much of a developer

24:57

first. I always think myself as admin

24:59

first. Believe me, admins, you can all

25:01

do these modules. They are not hard.

25:04

Oh, Block Kit, Builder is the coolest

25:06

thing. Yeah. I've been using Block Kit.

25:08

We use Block Kit Builder before even

25:11

less the team. Block Kit Builder is

25:13

the closest I can come to understanding

25:15

code. It's probably the only thing that

25:18

would ever teach me how to code

25:20

if I had to. I also remember

25:22

the first time you started using it

25:25

to post our podcast updates and everyone

25:27

was like, oh my gosh, how do

25:29

I do that? It's so cool formatting.

25:32

I'm like, yep, block kit builder. Wow.

25:34

And then, and there's templates. So it's

25:36

literally just copy and paste and steal

25:38

from other people's templates. It's all developers

25:41

do is copy and paste code too.

25:43

You know, I'm learning that a lot.

25:45

Yeah. You tweak it, you test it,

25:48

you break some stuff, and then you...

25:50

I was, so I, let's see, this

25:52

is gonna be very interesting. see how

25:55

much new slack there is for TDX

25:57

because I was silently making a list

25:59

in my head of the number of

26:02

new stuff that you were talking about

26:04

that that's coming out and you're like

26:06

well hopefully March or something like that's

26:08

TDX time like TDX gonna be bigger

26:11

than Dream Force for you is what

26:13

I'm hearing. It is and I mean

26:15

which is crazy to say because we

26:18

actually did five launches at Dream Force

26:20

this year. Oh just a few. Just

26:22

a few. Between Dream Force and DDX,

26:25

we will be launching Agent Force and

26:27

Slack, Quiet the Noise, Salesforce channels, and

26:29

I think there's like two other ones

26:32

that I haven't even, it's the product

26:34

team that's burdened the midnight oil. I

26:36

have to imagine, and they also, like,

26:38

I know we have a unique instance,

26:41

but it's really cool, the relationship that

26:43

we have that your product team has

26:45

with all of Salesforce, because they're super

26:48

responsive, like any time you submit something.

26:50

they really, I submitted something on VIP

26:52

and one of the PMs was like,

26:55

help me understand this. And I don't

26:57

think anybody giving them feedback. I'm like,

26:59

I am always a wealth of feedback.

27:02

You know, it's one of the, one

27:04

of the things I've noticed since coming

27:06

over to Slack is, you know, Slack,

27:08

even though we're part of Salesforce, is

27:11

still kind of a small company. And

27:13

it's very human and people first, because

27:15

that was the like foundation of why

27:18

Slack was created was to connect people,

27:20

right. And that is very much in

27:22

the culture and inherent to how Slack

27:25

thinks about building everything, is thinking about

27:27

that user first and how do we

27:29

make it more pleasant, how do we

27:32

make it more fun, how do we

27:34

give you more custom emogies? But it's

27:36

a really great place to be. And

27:39

again, like I'll just not even shameless,

27:41

just full on. If you were listening

27:43

to this and you have not built

27:45

anything with Slack, please take a beat.

27:48

Do a favor for yourself. Go to

27:50

slack. There's a super simple workshop right

27:52

there. It's called Build an Automation with

27:55

Slack. It walks you through building your

27:57

first workflow automation. That's a great place

27:59

to get started. There's also great content

28:02

on Trailhead. There are so many ways

28:04

to get your hands on Slack and

28:06

start building things beyond just responding in

28:09

channel. And I really hope that you

28:11

do that because it's going to set

28:13

not only yourself up to be super

28:15

valuable to your organization in this era

28:18

of agents. But it also is going

28:20

to open up so much more possibility

28:22

for you career wise, because so many

28:25

organizations are going to be using Slack

28:27

as their employee agent delivery mechanism and

28:29

an operating interface that it's just, you

28:32

got to get on. This is the

28:34

time, I'm telling you right now, everybody

28:36

can be nervous. Black. I'm thinking of,

28:39

you know, the number of community, the

28:41

dream and events, almost all of the

28:43

dreaming events I go to have a

28:45

Slack channel, is that right term. Yeah.

28:48

workspace. The Slack workspace. Yeah. And the

28:50

Trailblazer community, I know there's Ohana Slack,

28:52

we have almost 100,000 people just in

28:55

the Slack workspace alone who are our

28:57

Slack community members. And you mentioned dreaming

28:59

events. One of the big goals I

29:02

have this year for us as a

29:04

Slack marketing team is to be present

29:06

and to deliver really valuable slack content

29:09

at most of those dreaming events. So

29:11

we want to be there. We're going

29:13

to work on a way to get

29:15

there. Well, I'm also thinking of all

29:18

the cool hands-on trailhead module stuff that's

29:20

coming out. Like if you build something,

29:22

this is worth going to one of

29:25

those community dream-in events, presenting it, A,

29:27

but B, also getting in touch with

29:29

the coordinator and saying, like, how do

29:32

you put this in your workspace? Exactly,

29:34

yes. Especially for the agent force stuff.

29:36

That could be, can you imagine that?

29:39

You could maybe, like, even be... in

29:41

a workspace and just register for a

29:43

dream event using an agent. Look at

29:46

that. Mike, you're thinking next level. I

29:48

like it. Just thinking ahead. I mean,

29:50

I'm. I'm always thinking what I can

29:52

ask my agent to do next. I

29:55

also like saying that, you know, like

29:57

that's what admin should think of, like,

29:59

I'm so cool, I have my own

30:02

agent. Well, once you start understanding what

30:04

an agent can do, there's like a

30:06

zillion different agents you want to build.

30:09

Like I was just thinking this morning

30:11

that how great would it be if

30:13

we had an agent in Slack, new

30:16

sales force documentation and developer stuff and

30:18

you could literally ask it say hey

30:20

I want to build an agent and

30:22

agent force that does X Y and

30:25

Z and Give me the recipe for

30:27

how to build it and it would

30:29

give you like you need this flow

30:32

and you need this channel and you

30:34

need to do enable this in your

30:36

workspace and you need to have you

30:39

know like it would basically tell you

30:41

all the things you need to do

30:43

to then have that employee agent deployed

30:46

and ready to go I am thinking

30:48

of a Jarvis that for slack. That's

30:50

what I want. Basically, I sit down,

30:52

when you sit down at your desk,

30:55

it would be like, the whole screen,

30:57

the whole slack screen, would just turn

30:59

white and say good morning, Mike, and

31:02

it would say it in the Jarvis

31:04

voice, not my voice, because I'm like,

31:06

George Castanza, if it was in my

31:09

voice, it would be very weird. but

31:11

it would be like good morning like

31:13

here's what you missed overnight because you

31:16

know we're like global companies we work

31:18

on different time zones and it would

31:20

just give you like your morning recap

31:22

that you could have over coffee until

31:25

the agent can build you coffee that's

31:27

what I'm thinking that would be the

31:29

agent I want to build I don't

31:32

know if I'll get there but I

31:34

will try it's pretty good I mean

31:36

basically what you basically what you need

31:39

is a an agent with a driver's

31:41

voice to read your slack recaps in

31:43

the morning. I mean, I have to

31:46

believe like leaning on some of the

31:48

accessibility stuff that you're probably in that

31:50

territory. We just really haven't. affected that

31:53

voiceover because there's other stuff too that

31:55

can do, like text to speech, right?

31:57

Well, and one of the things that

31:59

we rolled out earlier this year was

32:02

Slack AI for Huddles. So Huddle is

32:04

basically a Google Meet with Slack. And

32:06

a way more pleasant ring tone. Oh,

32:09

yeah, and you could choose your own

32:11

hold music, it's great. But what we

32:13

have now is AI, well, can capture.

32:16

the conversation, not only transcribe it, but

32:18

then summarize it and then continue to

32:20

alter that summary based on the feedback

32:23

you give them. Smart. That's the best

32:25

thing. That's the literally the best thing.

32:27

Yeah. About some of the AI stuff

32:29

is like meeting summaries. Especially when you

32:32

can't join them. You can just read

32:34

through. We did that as a team.

32:36

A couple weeks ago when most the

32:39

team was. out and we sent the

32:41

meeting summary and like Josh was like

32:43

it was amazing I read it and

32:46

I was like yep that was 100%

32:48

I could envision what the meeting was

32:50

like but I didn't have to sit

32:53

through the hour and a half recording.

32:55

Yeah and then it gives you suggested

32:57

like here the next step so and

32:59

so should do this and so should

33:02

do that. It's great. Jillian you have

33:04

a bunch of links that you're gonna

33:06

send me so I can include those

33:09

in the show notes and it was

33:11

great to have you on. Thanks for

33:13

coming back to the platform. Hey, I

33:16

am so happy to be back and

33:18

I am very happy to be at

33:20

Slack, but I want all of you

33:23

to know that salesforce admins are still

33:25

in the center of my heart. So

33:27

as I'm thinking about everything we're building

33:29

over here, I am always thinking about

33:32

how do we enable salesforce admins to

33:34

do all this cool stuff too. So

33:36

thank you so much for having me,

33:39

Mike, and it's so nice to be

33:41

back. So

33:46

that was a fun episode. It

33:48

was great to chat with Jillian.

33:50

They are doing a lot of

33:52

things over in Slack. I mean,

33:54

I am all about Agent Force

33:56

and they are on the Agent

33:58

Force train. Is it Agent Force?

34:00

train, I'm going to say it's

34:02

an agent force train. And the

34:04

amount of cool things that Slack

34:06

has going on and just thinking

34:08

of the possibilities not only of

34:10

what you can integrate for applications

34:13

in Slack, but also then once

34:15

you have data cloud hooked up

34:17

into Salesforce, the integrations across your

34:19

entire organization, you can basically make

34:21

your conversation. or your data conversational,

34:23

which to me sounds really cool.

34:25

I can't wait to see all

34:27

of the stuff that they've got

34:29

rolling out in the next few

34:31

months. Anyway, that was fun. I

34:33

hope you enjoyed listening to the

34:35

podcast. If you do, can you

34:37

do me a favor? There should

34:39

be like three dots in the

34:41

app that you're listening on. Usually

34:43

you can hit those and then

34:45

you can share the episode. You

34:47

can share it via social. There's

34:49

a lot of different social channels

34:51

out there shared on your favorite

34:53

social channel. Text it to your

34:55

friends. Or hey, you know what?

34:57

Post it in Slack. That seems

34:59

very appropriate to post a Slack

35:01

podcast in Slack. Of course, if

35:03

you're looking for more resources and

35:05

all of the links that Jillian

35:07

mentioned, you're one stop. Your one

35:10

place to go. admin. salesforce.com is

35:12

where you can find that, including

35:14

a transcript of the show. That

35:16

ought to be fun to read.

35:18

You know what? We didn't talk

35:20

about. We didn't get a recipe

35:22

this time. There's always been a

35:24

recipe with Jillian. I'm going to

35:26

have to maybe go back and

35:28

see. You know what? We'll have

35:30

to have her back on again.

35:32

just to get a recipe for

35:34

some holiday thing, because I feel

35:36

like that's what we used to

35:38

do when she was on the

35:40

podcast. So anyway, remember, also join

35:42

the conversation. The Admin Trailblazer group,

35:44

that's over in the Trailblazer community.

35:46

Don't worry. Like I said, links

35:48

are in the show notes. So

35:50

that, until next week, we'll see

35:52

you in the cloud. I'm

36:09

back. Oh boy. I don't even, I don't

36:11

even I don't even

36:13

know how to begin

36:15

this podcast with like

36:17

this is like old

36:20

like, know is like old pair of

36:22

shoes, like weird.