Salesforce – Digital IT News

Salesforce Data Cloud Grows with Rising Adoption and Innovations, Delivering Trusted Data to Agentforce

Taylor Graham — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:00:44 +0000

Salesforce is gaining significant traction with Data Cloud, the core of the Salesforce Platform and the backbone of Agentforce. This growth is driven by strong business demand for integrated data, enabling more personalized, timely, and contextually relevant customer experiences across Customer 360 applications, Flow, analytics, and Agentforce—Salesforce’s innovative suite of autonomous AI agents.

Building on that momentum, Salesforce introduced several new Data Cloud innovations that advance an organization’s ability to transform the customer experience using data and AI. They include: additions to unstructured data support including native processing of audio and video content — such as webinars and calls — to unlock deeper customer insights; a standardized semantic data model that enables Agentforce Agents and humans to interpret and use data consistently; improved search capabilities that factor in customer context and allow for quicker information discovery; real-time data activations to respond instantly to changing customer needs; and additional data security and governance features to safeguard operations and prevent unnecessary data exposure.

As the fastest-growing organic product in Salesforce’s history with 130% YoY growth in paid customers, Data Cloud has shown impressive scale, processing 2.3 quadrillion records (+147% YoY) in the second quarter alone. Companies like The Adecco Group, Air India, Aston Martin, FedEx, Kawasaki Motors Corp., and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts rely on Data Cloud daily to help strengthen customer relationships, boost productivity, and improve their bottom lines. Air India, in particular, is unifying its data across loyalty, reservations, and flight systems. Now, the airline has a single source of truth to handle more than 550,000 service cases each month.

“In this new era of AI and Agents, customer data and metadata are the new gold for the enterprise,” said Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM for Data Cloud at Salesforce. “Every day, more companies are using Data Cloud to unify all their data—from customer interactions and product usage to IoT and social media data—to gain deeper customer insights across all touchpoints and channels. Because Data Cloud is the foundation of Salesforce, companies can act on data to create the most personalized and meaningful customer experiences.”

Data Cloud + Customer 360 + Agentforce: Data Cloud surfaces trusted customer data in all Salesforce Customer 360 applications, Agentforce, Flow, and analytics — creating a foundation for personalized customer experiences and real-time analytics, triggering data-driven actions and workflows, and safely driving AI across all Salesforce apps. With its zero-copy technology and MuleSoft connectors, Data Cloud can ingest data from hundreds of diverse data sources, including data lakes and warehouses. Its built-in vector database converts various data formats — PDFs, texts, calls, voicemails, often trapped in 90% of customer data — into readily usable data and harmonizes it with structured data to create comprehensive customer profiles that are stored as metadata in a unified data foundation. Because it’s fully integrated in the Salesforce Platform, this metadata can flow seamlessly into any Salesforce application based on set governance policies. This gives every team a 360-degree view of the customer to power trusted AI and drive automation and analytics across every touchpoint — without compromising data security.

Data Cloud provides the vital customer data that grounds Agentforce, making agents more contextually aware, knowledgeable, and adaptable to customer needs. For example, when a frustrated customer contacts Agentforce Service Agents, Data Cloud’s built-in Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities add real-time insights and context from past emails, support tickets, product photos, voicemails, and any sources as defined by governance policies to help Agentforce better understand the customer perspective. Data Cloud’s hybrid search then identifies the right knowledge article based on customer context to help Agentforce resolve the issue accurately. As customer requests evolve, Data Cloud guides Agentforce with next-best steps, like automating follow-up emails or passing detailed chat summaries to support human representatives. Finally, Tableau Semantics facilitates a seamless transition between AI and employees by ensuring they speak, understand, and operate using the same definitions of data.

New innovations and additions: Data Cloud customers now have access to new capabilities and enhancements that make data accessible and actionable across every Salesforce activation, including:

Support for unstructured audio and video content: With 90% of customer data trapped in unstructured formats, businesses and AI can now analyze and extract customer data from previously inaccessible audio and video sources like customer calls, training sessions, product demos, feedback surveys, voicemails, and webinars. This content, now searchable, enriches customer profiles, reveals deeper intent behind customer preferences and behaviors, and improves Agentforce’s accuracy.
- For example, by analyzing recorded sales calls, a sales team can pinpoint common objections and refine their pitch to address them more effectively, leading to higher conversion rates.

Data Cloud connectivity ecosystem expansion: Building on Data Cloud’s promise to be open and extensible, organizations can bring their own data using additional pre-built Data Cloud connectors for apps like Square, Stripe, Meta, Splunk and more, adding to the rapidly growing connector ecosystem that already supports various data lakes, warehouses, and third-party systems. They can also tap into unstructured data from Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, Confluence, and Sitemap in Data Cloud using pre-built integrations provided with MuleSoft Direct for Data Cloud. This means data can be pulled in and unified from wherever customers interact, then used to power agentic experiences.

Sub-second real-time layer: With 62% of IT leaders noting the need for real-time data to stay competitive, organizations can now ingest, unify, analyze, and act upon data in real-time across Salesforce. This powers Einstein Personalization, now built on Data Cloud, along with real-time AI recommendations, analytics, and automations to enable faster decision-making and instant personalization across customer touchpoints.
- For example, a support agent assisting a customer with equipment issues can access real-time sensor data, recent maintenance records, and past support tickets directly in Service Cloud. If the equipment’s sensor stops sending data, a triggered alert notifies the agent, allowing them to quickly diagnose the issue and recommend targeted solutions to minimize downtime.

Governance and security for trusted data and AI: To safeguard operations, manage governance at scale, and prevent exposure to unauthorized parties while using AI, these new features improve how structured and unstructured data are managed, protected, and securely shared with AI applications and across the platform.
- AI tagging and classification automate the labeling and organization of unstructured data per business policies. Data becomes consistent, governance is easier to apply, and both AI and users can easily search and analyze the data.
- Policy-based governance helps achieve access governance at scale by creating granular security policies that grant appropriate access to user groups based on tags, metadata, and user attributes. This simple experience ensures that users, including AI, can only access the data it’s permitted to see across the platform.
- Customer-managed keys allow organizations to manage their own encryption keys, ensuring data stays encrypted and secure regardless of how it’s used.
- Private Connect for Data Cloud enables organizations to safely share and integrate their data between Data Cloud and public cloud environments by establishing secure, direct network connections between them. This means data can be safely shared across network boundaries without compromising its integrity.

Tableau Semantics: Organizations can organize data based on its meaning and relationships, creating a standardized semantic model that allows anyone to understand, use, and act upon data consistently, regardless of origin.
- For example, a hospital can standardize data across departments, ensuring that a patient’s test results, X-rays, and doctor’s notes are all linked and understood in the same context regardless of how they are written (abbreviations, typos, synonyms, etc).

Hybrid search: Organizations can find the most relevant information in the company’s knowledge base by combining semantic capabilities of vector search with the exact match capabilities of keyword search, which are critical to deal with specific domain terms like product names or acronyms. This makes it faster and easier to find information across any medium, such as PDFs, pictures, audios, and videos.
- For example, Agentforce can use part numbers found in customer-sent photos to pull up relevant knowledge articles for that product category and help support representatives resolve customer issues faster.

Data Cloud One: Organizations can now connect multiple Salesforce orgs that may be siloed across different departments, regions or business units and extend all of Data Cloud’s functionalities across all Salesforce instances using a no-code, point-and-click setup. This allows them to create a single Data Cloud instance as the source of truth, enabling data sharing and actions, like automation, calculated insights, and more across all Salesforce orgs, without creating new Data Clouds for each org.
- For example, a sales leader looking to enrich sales leads with a 360-degree view of customers no longer needs to have their team write custom code to integrate Data Cloud data across multiple Salesforce orgs. Instead, a single central Data Cloud can now power each org with its features, seamlessly enriching sales profiles across all Salesforce orgs.

A new data community: Salesforce also announced its new Datablazer community, an online platform to connect IT and business leaders, developers, and Data Cloud enthusiasts. It provides space to learn, share insights, and stay informed on the latest best practices, trends, and tools to maximize the value of data.

The customer perspective:

“Salesforce allows us to fuse together our trusted data from across our business to deliver tailored quality experiences to every current and future Aston Martin customer while creating the personalized, VIP experience they expect, as we look to grow and succeed in the AI era,” said Matthew Randall, Head of Software and Integration, Aston Martin.

“As a professional recruiting, staffing and consulting business, we match talent to the most exciting companies and opportunities around the world. On any given day, we connect 700,000 people with fulfilling opportunities to match their skills. We are redefining the future of work by enabling augmented recruiter experiences thanks to AI, connecting employees to the right data at the right time. Today, Data Cloud gives 27,000 employee users seamless access to key information to match skills to specific roles,” said Caroline Basyn, Chief Digital and IT Officer, The Adecco Group.

“Each and every one of Wyndham’s hundreds of millions of guests wants to be seen and heard on an individual level. Salesforce gives our reservation agents a comprehensive view of the specific guest they’re serving so they can receive a personalized experience based on context about their stay history, loyalty service, and notes from past requests. This is made possible by the suite of products with Salesforce, including Data Cloud, which harmonizes data and unifies guest profiles from our reservation platform. With this data aggregated, agents can now access guests’ booking histories at any franchise property, such as accessible room requests, loyalty status or milestones, personalizing every interaction,” said Scott Strickland, Chief Commercial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.

Expected availability: New innovations will be available in pilot, beta or general availability within the below time frames.

Now:
- Customer-managed keys is generally available.
- Sub-second real-time layer is generally available and can be enabled through sub-second real-time profiles add-on consumption SKU.
- MuleSoft Direct for Data Cloud will be in beta in late Sept ‘24 and require a MuleSoft Anypoint Platform license to use.
- A comprehensive list of pre-built connectors generally available and in beta can be found in Data Cloud Connectors Directory.
In October ‘24:
- Support to process unstructured audio and video content, currently in pilot, will be generally available.
- Data Cloud One will be generally available.
In November ‘24:
- Hybrid search, currently in pilot, will be generally available.
- AI tagging and classification will be in beta.
- Policy-based governance will be in beta.
- Private Connect for Data Cloud will be generally available.
In February ‘25:
- Tableau Semantics, currently in pilot, will be generally available.

To learn more about Salesforce Data Cloud, Customer 360 applications, Flow, analytics, and Agentforce, visit the website here.

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Four Reasons You Need to Protect Your Salesforce Environment

Nick Martino — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 21:50:07 +0000

It’s no surprise that Salesforce is the leading cloud-based software provider in the world. It currently delivers service to more than 150,000 businesses globally, employs over 56,000 employees, generated $21.25 billion during the 2021 fiscal year, and has captured 19.8% share of the CRM market, which is more than its four leading competitors combined.

The Salesforce environment has an array of tools to benefit its users, but those tools can only do so much. Certain precautions must be taken by companies to better protect themselves, one of which is data protection. Safeguarding Salesforce data is not Salesforces’ responsibility; that lies with the company. In all honesty, there’s a shared responsibility — Salesforce is responsible for protecting the infrastructure, application, and service availability; protecting your company’s Salesforce data must be done by you.

Why is protecting your Salesforce data so important? Let’s consider four areas:

Ransomware Risk – Ransomware attacks are a major concern and becoming more sophisticated. They usually begin with a phishing email from an outsider. Training company employees on what to look for to avoid phishing scams or malware attacks is a necessity. Companies exposed to ransomware can face a number of risks, including data loss, financial loss and repetitional damage. In some cases, companies have even been forced to shut down completely due to lack of training.
Insider Threats – Internal threats can also be an issue to any company and should be taken seriously. There are numerous ways internal actions by internal employees could produce serious threats to a company’s protected data —phishing and social engineering, data sharing outside the company, using unauthorized devices, and physical theft of a company’s device, to name a few.
Human Error – A company’s employees are among the biggest threats to data security, so employees should be trained on best practices to prevent data loss. Humans are considered the weakest link in data security since they’re bound to make mistakes. It’s no surprise that accidental deletion is one of the leading causes of data loss in SaaS applications. Unfortunately, human error has been a major contributing factor behind many data breaches as well. In fact, 82% of data breaches involve the human element.
Data Corruption – In today’s interconnected economy, more and more companies rely on third-party companies. It’s becoming increasingly common for companies to outsource large parts of their business to dedicated vendors who specialize in a specific function. While this can save on time and money, most data loss and data corruption result from third-party integrations and add-ons, so choosing the right third-parties to rely on is crucial for data protection.

Components of a Good Data Protection Strategy

Now that you know why protecting your Salesforce data is so vital, how do you know you’re applying best practices to ensure data is safe and secure? Consider the following elements every good protection strategy should include:

Automated backup-to-backup and the entire platform, including your Sandbox, without any human intervention
Fast recovery with granular search and full-fidelity restore options
Assured compliance with unlimited storage and retention
Full application content preservation to ensure relationships, metadata, files, and custom objects are never lost
Hardened security controls that reduce risk with hardened security controls, air-gapped backups, and zero-trust user access
Built-in sandbox to accelerate development and test and enable a number of development and testing workflows that will greatly enhance agility of development teams

The lifeblood of any organization is the data it captures and uses to accomplish its mission or purpose for existing. When an organization uses a platform like Salesforce, that data is particularly crucial and should be protected at all costs.

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Veristor and Network Data Systems Partner to Deliver Services for Managed Secure Networking

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Low-Code Platforms Experience Production Issues Due to Inadequate Testing

Taylor Graham — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 04:17:21 +0000

Copado released the findings from its “2022 State of Salesforce Testing” report. The first of its kind survey of nearly 300 executives, developers and quality assurance professionals collected hundreds of data points to provide insight into the software testing practices of sophisticated companies using Salesforce. Copado is a leading DevOps platform powering some of the world’s largest digital transformations.

Testing in Salesforce becomes more critical as the ecosystem of custom applications, managed packages from AppExchange and integrations are involved. Not only do organizations have to adapt to changes when it comes to their Salesforce deployments, but they also have to track integrations with other systems that have their own release cycles. With this innovation comes the need for scalable end-to-end testing. A recent Forrester report confirms organizations using low-code platforms like Salesforce can’t afford to ignore automated testing.

The Copado State of Salesforce Testing report underscores the challenges organizations are facing as they incorporate testing into their release cycle. Key takeaways include:

Quality is more than a full-time job
Organizations employ a significant amount of resources toward software testing.

49% of organizations employ a full-time testing team; 26% outsource this function to a consulting company; 23% rely on developers to handle code testing.
51% of organizations have more than 26 resources dedicated to quality assurance full time; 20% employ more than 100 professionals tasked with this responsibility.

Manual testing isn’t scalable — and is expensive
Testing remains the bottleneck to digital transformation. Although technology continues to advance, companies are still engaged in traditional testing methods such as manual testing or script-based solutions. The consequence is the quality of releases suffers since there isn’t enough time to test changes before deployments. Defects found later in the release cycle are exponentially more expensive to fix. Therefore, production defects can have a massive financial impact on companies.

41% of organizations don’t have enough time to fully test all changes before a release due to time constraints that force teams to reduce the scope of testing.
92% experience production issues (defects uncovered) each year due to inadequate testing.
84% of respondents still rely at least partially on manual testing. 30% of companies use home-grown testing scripts, typically based on Selenium, while 35% employ commercial testing tools.
Manual testing has a 95% higher total cost of ownership than using commercial test automation tools.

Automated testing can dramatically improve outcomes
The cost of not adopting automated testing is a much higher incidence of production failures despite greater investment in the testing team.

Teams using automated testing experienced less than half as many production failures per year as a result of releases (a median of 3 per year instead of 7).
Teams using automated testing release 50% more frequently than those relying on manual testing (34 times per year on average, compared to 22 times per year).
Teams using automated testing were 50% more likely to complete all of their test plans for each release (67% of teams using automated testing reported completing all their tests for each release vs. only 45% of teams relying on manual testing).

“Companies are clearly finding that automated testing is the best way to move fast and not break things,” said Pat McQueen, Senior Vice President of Growth at Copado. “Teams that prioritize their testing strategy outperform those who don’t. The investment in automated testing enables business agility which leads to long-term commercial success in a competitive market.”

The full report can be found at: https://www.copado.com/salesforce-testing

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DevOps Report Finds Quality Trumps Speed When Releasing Software

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