Salesforce has announced a major update to its Slack platform today, transforming it into a unified conversational interface that brings artificial intelligence agents closer to people's work environments. This update integrates core Salesforce applications directly into Slack through AI, including Tableau Next, Agentforce Sales, and IT and HR services, combining customer relationship management with conversational capabilities. Two significant upgrades to Slack introduce a new Slackbot for personalized support and enterprise search, the latter using natural language to retrieve company knowledge. "By transforming Slack into the conversational interface for Salesforce, we are providing every employee with a trusted, unified home for AI and agents, revolutionizing the way work gets done," said Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack. As part of the newly launched Agentforce 360, AI agents capable of directly accessing CRM data are now embedded within Slack, connecting users to Salesforce. Employees can "converse" with their data and platforms just as they would with other team members, receiving either conversational or structured information, or requesting AI agents to act on their behalf. A new native Agentforce agent called Channel Expert has also been launched within Slack. It provides always-on expertise in any conversation, utilizing real-time search and user-provided content to deliver the latest answers to frequently asked questions. When it cannot answer, it flags team members who can step in to complete the loop.

Slackbot and Enterprise Search Bring Information to Teams

Slackbot has been redesigned as a personalized AI assistant for teams, capable of accessing a broad range of information from Slack conversations, files, and enterprise context to tailor its responses to match the team's rhythm. Over time, Slackbot will learn user preferences and working styles, using this information to provide information and insights aligned with how people work. The company states that this will enable Slackbot to offer customized support for individual needs, summarize threads to extract key information users often seek, and provide more natural assistance in drafting updates and organizing projects. "Slackbot showcases the next era of productivity: AI working alongside as every employee's personal assistant," said Andy White, Senior Vice President of Technology at Salesforce. "For Salesforce, this means our teams can spend less time piecing things together and more time creating value for our customers." Now accessible via the search bar in Slack, enterprise search connects to all company knowledge using natural language questions. Salesforce announced upcoming third-party service connectors, including Google LLC's Gmail, Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook, Dropbox Inc., and Notion Labs Inc.—with custom connectors for internal systems—enabling users to securely access company knowledge with a single search.

Connecting Third-Party Agents to Slack

Since Slack is the place where teams collaborate and converge on the language of work, Salesforce says it provides AI agents with the richest data and context from conversations. To support third parties in building on top of this conversation data, which is owned and controlled by customers, Salesforce has created standardized connectors, including a new real-time search application programming interface and a model context protocol server. "[We] recognize that Slack is the perfect platform for AI agents," said Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel. "Slack's platform gives us the perfect foundation—our agents don't act like tools; they feel more like team members." Many companies are already building on these new features, including Vercel, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic PBC, Perplexity AI Inc., and Cursor. By accessing these APIs and tools, they can securely leverage Slack's conversation data to build smarter agents that connect and understand team collaboration.