Last month, technical leaders from Cloud for Good’s Architect and Developer teams attended TrailblazerDX, Salesforce’s developer conference. There, we learned more about the new, upcoming technical innovations on the platform and how those new tools and features could help organizations work smarter. Einstein, Salesforce’s collection of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, was all over the conference with many new tools and features to incorporate predictive and generative AI into Salesforce solutions.
Artificial Intelligence + Einstein Copilot to Increase User Adoption
Generative AI has been on everyone’s minds for the past year, and the features leveraging it are showing up with a major impact on the Salesforce platform. Most featured presentations at the conference incorporated AI features in some way, with particular emphasis on the new tool Einstein Copilot. Einstein Copilot is a generative AI assistant tool that guides users through completing tasks in Salesforce with conversational, supportive chat interactions. This can have a huge impact for improving the user experience of Salesforce end users. A major pain point for large organizations doing enterprise implementations of Salesforce is the training and onboarding of users, which can be daunting. However, by building out actions in Einstein Copilot alongside a robust internal knowledge base, each end-user has their own concierge support help desk bot to help them with any tasks or questions they have within Salesforce. With Einstein Copilot, adopting new technology doesn’t seem as daunting.
Beyond guiding user task completion, Einstein Copilot helps reduce the number of clicks needed to perform a task. This gives users more time to focus on the strategic and creative parts of their roles while letting the system execute the more repetitive, administrative activities of their work. Einstein Copilot can also be used as a user-friendly front-end application to trigger integrations, automations, and return results summarized in an easy-to-read format through prompts. Furthermore, Einstein Copilot can support admins and developers by creating initial drafts of flows or Apex that can then be modified, accelerating the pace of development to delivery.
Getting the Complete Picture of Your Data with Data Cloud
Another key tool featured at TrailblazerDX with exciting advancements was Data Cloud ingests and connects all the data collected by your organization – no matter where it comes from or resides – to create a harmonized, unified set of enriched customer profiles that can then be segmented and activated for engagement in Marketing Cloud, CRM Analytics, or other external systems. A new update will allow Data Cloud objects to be visualized as related lists in the CRM instance running Data Cloud, providing end users a full 360-degree view of their constituents. Additionally, Einstein Copilot can access Data Cloud data to create an enriched experience for Salesforce users, including the ability for users to ask Einstein Copilot to summarize cloud data profile information or conduct further analysis. If your organization already has a data lake, you can still take advantage of all the features of Data Cloud without having to move a single row. This ‘zero ETL’ access to data means that your data is not replicated from your warehouse, but is available for resolution, segmentation, and activation via Data Cloud. Snowflake, a data warehouse platform that Cloud for Good implements, is currently supported for zero-ETL data sharing, while other platforms like Databricks and AWS Redshift are on the roadmap for future zero-ETL data share support.
Platform Enhancements for User Experience and Adaptability
Beyond the excitement about featured products like Einstein Copilot and Data Cloud, TrailblazerDX had excellent content about core platform development and automation features that will allow your organization to run more efficiently and provide better experiences for your users. Roadmap sessions for Apex and Lightning Web Components (LWC) previewed features available in future releases, like LWC Live Coding and enhanced CSS features. Declarative automation options in Flow also got a boost, with a new setup application for automations that provides a more streamlined way for admins to track and orchestrate flows and see utilization stats related to run time and performance. Other upcoming Flow highlights included expanded support for External Services interacting with outside systems, particularly MuleSoft Composer. This, combined with additional data transformation and dynamic flow screen features, positions Flow as the go-to choice for low-code automation and user experience development on Salesforce.
The AppExchange Network Helping You to Manage and Enhance Your Data
In addition to learning at a variety of presentations, keynotes, and hands-on workshops, Cloud for Good staff also presented a session at TrailblazerDX that focused on AppExchange tools for managing and enhancing data on Salesforce. Cloud for Good Managing Director Kestryl Lowrey gave highlights of some of his favorite data-related apps, including OwnBackup, FormAssembly, DemandTools, and Apsona, and shared how each of these apps offer excellent features for securing, updating, cleaning, and/or analyzing the data in a CRM.
Coming Together as a Community
Coming Together as a CommunityCommunity was another big aspect of TrailblazerDX. Developers, architects, and technically-inclined admins had opportunities to connect and support each other in learning and building innovative Salesforce solutions. There were some sessions that discussed pathways for junior technical professionals to grow their careers and highlighted young developer empowerment and collaborative development practices. TrailblazerDX also had a fun meetup event in which the Guinness World Record for the largest number of people gathered dressed like Albert Einstein was set!
Although Nonprofit Cloud and Education Cloud were not a focus at TrailblazerDX, these core solutions can be used alongside all the platform tools related to AI, Data Cloud, and more that were highlighted at the event. TrailblazerDX was a great opportunity to see all the ways that Salesforce’s platform is growing and adding new features to allow organizations to stay on the cutting edge of technology through AI, data harmonization, and low-code to pro-code solutions. If you’re curious about how your organization could leverage the new features and products announced at TrailblazerDX, please contact us to talk about your goals.
