Top 10 highlights from Salesforce Dreamforce 2023

Salesforce’s flagship conference, Dreamforce 2023 organized on 12-14 September 2023 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco recently concluded, and it was filled with impressive announcements and highlights around AI, Data, CRM and customer trust. Quoted as the biggest AI + Data event of the year, Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 lived up to its name, packed with 1500+ sessions, 40,000+ attendees and millions of online viewers. As Marc Benioff, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Salesforce said, the event was focussed on three main aspects ‘Innovation with AI, Trust with AI, and Doing Good with AI’. 

Quite honestly, Dreamforce ’23 was a deep dive into what Salesforce plans on doing with its ecosystem, how it plans on incorporating generative AI and related technologies, and improving customer experiences in the age of rapid and aggressive digital transformation. As an attendee to the event, Ranosys was privy to some impressive announcements and updates, all of which we plan to include to our suite of services. 

We’ve rounded up some of the major highlights of the event, including the keynote presentations and sessions to help partners, customers, and trailblazers alike in navigating and structuring the journey ahead. 

Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 Highlights 

#1: Einstein 1 Platform

While talking about the enterprise AI revolution, Marc Benioff said, “There is no question that the AI opportunity is going to change everything.” However, he continued, that while AI is a #1 priority for CEOs, over 52% of customers don’t believe that AI is safe and secure. To change that notion and build a trusted platform around AI, Salesforce unveiled the Einstein AI platform, an integrated, automated, and low-code/no-code platform for safe data connectivity, demonstrating their trust factor in AI and how Salesforce plans on leveraging it. 

Einstein 1 platform brings significant enhancements to the already functioning Einstein platform, all built upon its foundational metadata framework to unify data irrespective of how it is structured or where it is sourced from. Einstein AI platform integrates with all of Salesforce Clouds, Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, Google Workspace, Canvas, Heroku, and Microsoft 365, solving challenges around disparate data across systems and data silos/fragmentation. As Marc stated, “The metadata framework is the key to data integration so that when users write these apps and its resulting metadata, it is all tied together in a smart way.”

The best part, Einstein AI platform comes with an Einstein CoPilot and its built-in side panel of user interface, which we will be discussing in the next sections. 

#2: Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud integrated to the Einstein 1 platform

Another big reveal came for the apps that were acquired by Salesforce, namely Salesforce Commerce Cloud (previously known as Demandware) and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (previously known as ExactTarget). Earlier both these apps were connected to the core platform via connectors, however, now they will be a part of the core platform and leverage its metadata framework, integrated and shared (More Core).

Moreover, Salesforce announced 26 new generative AI capabilities for Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud with an additional 25+ set to arrive by the end of 2024. 

#3: Einstein CoPilot and Einstein CoPilot Studio

As mentioned before, the Einstein AI platform comes with an Einstein CoPilot for every cloud, a generative AI conversational assistant. With Einstein CoPilot,  internal users/customers can ask questions in a natural language to the trustworthy and reliable pre-configured conversational assistant without having to search or navigate through the software for answers.

Einstein CoPilot relies on the treasure trove of information stored in the Salesforce Data Cloud and goes beyond the usual actions, thanks to its seamless integration to the user interface of all Salesforce applications (including Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud). Overall, Einstein CoPilot will help users to enhance their productivity within the workflow.

Einstein CoPilot Studio was another breakthrough announcement by Salesforce during Dreamforce 2023 and comes with three powerful components Prompt Builder, Skills Builder, and Model Builder. Einstein CoPilot Studio empowers admins/Salesforce professionals to implement generative AI capabilities and enhance their productivity while establishing complete control on how and the extent to which AI is used. 

• Prompt Builder allows you to construct, test, and deploy generative AI prompts for your users. For example, with Prompt Builder, you can create automated suggestions or prompts for your sales team when they interact with customers. When a customer calls in, Prompt Builder can suggest questions or actions based on the customer's previous interactions, helping your sales team provide better service and make more informed decisions. Its simplicity in usage comes from how easy it is to create a prompt template and quickly activate it for users. 
• Skills Builder lets you control who can use AI on the Salesforce platform for specific tasks. For example, you can decide that user X has access to AI for task A, but user Y doesn't. It's like an admin adding a special ability to a Salesforce process. This helps you customize AI access for different users based on their needs and responsibilities within your Salesforce processes.
• Model Builder lets you choose the AI models you want to use. You can pick from Salesforce's own well-trained models or those from their trusted partners like Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, Google Cloud's Vertex IX, or OpenAI. Overall, it empowers you with the flexibility to use AI that best suits your specific needs and preferences.

#4: Free Tableau and Data Cloud licenses

Salesforce also announced free Tableau and Data Cloud licenses for Enterprise, Unlimited, and Unlimited Plus Edition customers. This free package would include two free Tableau Creator licenses, and Data Cloud licenses for up to 10,000 profiles.

#5: Salesforce Data Cloud embedded to the Einstein AI platform 

The idea behind the unification of AI + Data + CRM is to develop a well-integrated and polymorphic platform where the data created once in any app could flow freely across other other Salesforce applications and third-party systems. With Salesforce Data Cloud embedded to the Einstein AI platform (now called the Einstein 1 Data Cloud) across Salesforce’s metadata framework will result in automation with dynamic data from Data Cloud – real-time data, and data from various different systems to build AI applications, automate data flows, and analyze data at scale.

Formerly known as Salesforce Genie, the Einstein 1 Data Cloud is an underlying metadata management framework that connects data across sources, makes it usable for AI and analysis through its integrations with Einstein 1, Tableau and Salesforce's CRM applications. 

Moreover, Salesforce also announced the integration of Data Cloud with Databricks Lakehouse platform for seamless and efficient data sharing. Earlier, Salesforce also announced integration with Snowflake. 

#6: Data Graphs in Einstein 1 Data Cloud 

When you're setting up prompts or assigning skills using Prompt Builder or Skills Builder, you may need to make sure that Einstein AI platform can access all the necessary data to answer a user's question. This data might come from various integrated sources and involve multiple layers of data that go several objects deep.  

To check if your data is set up correctly and is available for the Salesforce Einstein 1 platform, you can now use Data Graphs in Data Cloud. They help visualize the relationships between data model objects (DMOs), evaluate how different data pieces are connected, even if they go several layers deep. Just like Schema Builder, Data Graphs allow you to trace related fields, rearrange relationships of data points via drag-and-drop functionality, and ensure that correct data is being made available for Einstein AI.

#7: Data Cloud triggered flow

Think of Flows as automated sequences of actions in a system. They kick off when something specific occurs, like when data is updated. With Data Cloud integrated into the Einstein 1 platform, we can make these automated processes even more powerful. 

Now, a Flow can start based on conditions related to Data Cloud, which is a source of real-time data and insights from various systems. For example, let's say you have a Flow that updates customer information when a new order is placed. With Data Cloud, this Flow can start running when conditions related to specific data or insights in Data Cloud are met. This ensures that your automated processes are driven by the most up-to-date and relevant information.

#8: The power of generative AI in Slack

Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 also came bearing some powerful innovations with Slack and the announcement of Slack AI, to help with three use cases - summarize threads, planned channel recap, and to search for answers within messages. 

• As Ali Rayl, Senior Vice President - Product Management at Slack said, “People end up having these super long conversations in threads; hundreds of messages.” While they might not have the time to go through these, Slack AI will now empower them to have artificial intelligence summarize conversations for them. 
• The planned channel “recap” will provide users a quick summary of conversations within a particular team channel. For example, if you have been away for days, weeks or months and don’t want to be bombarded with tons of messages to read, the AI tool will provide you with a summary of it. 
• Slack will also use generative AI to provide better answers when users search for details in the app and provide an exact answer. 

#9: Einstein GPT for developers

Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 also included major announcements for developers, including the launch of open beta for Einstein GPT. Developers can now download the VS Studio extension and explore the potential of this tool to take the next step of development evolution. 

#10: The introduction of another industry cloud, Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud 

Dreamforce 2023 also covered the introduction of Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud to transform patient care for pharmaceutical and medical device companies. This will come with a specific architecture to help get such enterprises up-and-running faster with the Salesforce platform.

Moving forward with insights from Salesforce Dreamforce 2023

Undeniably, Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 was a treasure trove of unbelievable insights and announcements all centered towards AI + Data + CRM + Customer Trust. There is a massive shift of focus and insights into how Salesforce plans on incorporating GenAI to its ecosystem to achieve more predictive, prescriptive and informative outcomes. As a Salesforce Crest (Gold) Partner, we’ve been assisting global enterprises in adopting Salesforce for innovation and making their most out of their investments. With expertise across all Salesforce Clouds, industry solutions, and other integrated systems such as MuleSoft, Slack, Tableau we can help streamline your business operations, refine digital experiences, and enhance intra-organizational collaboration. Connect with our Salesforce consultants to discuss how we can implement or transform your existing Salesforce solutions.