Slack integrates AI agents and new workflows

Slack has integrated AI agents and new workflows to improve productivity by as much as 47%.

Parent company, Salesforce, announced (Sep. 16) a flurry of new Slack innovations to give the workplace instant messaging platform an AI boost. AI-powered agents can now work alongside human employees, with data analysis integrated into the features of a new UI.

These AI assistants are tied to partners of Slack like Adobe, Anthropic, Cohere, Perplexity, and more to foster easier working with third-party services. There’s also a new type of channel that connects Salesforce CRM records to channel-based conversations in Slack, offering teams a space to collaborate on customer accounts or group tasks.

Salesforce claims that teams are improving their productivity by as much as 47% by anchoring their work in Slack’s agent-powered work operating system.

New @SlackHQ innovations enable organizations to bring their company knowledge, data, agents, apps, and automation into one agent-powered work operating system.

Learn how customers like Slalom, RTL, and Anaplan are transforming work with Slack: https://t.co/e9PaG7N1Ip

— Salesforce News (@SalesforceNews) September 16, 2024

AI functionality is also in place across search and automation, including new features like huddle (Slack’s in-app calls within channels) notes, simplified automation, Slack templates, and improved search. Automated transcripts, meeting notes, and action items will be generated from huddles, while search will now also pull data from files rather than just from conversations.

The AI Workflow Builder can be used through prompts like ‘send a welcome message to teammates that join a channel,’ where Slack AI will then automatically generate a workflow without further input from the user. Another example is the ‘summarize channel’ step, where users can create a workflow that publishes recurring summaries of their workplace channels.

Last but not least, Slack’s templates feature a range of ready-to-use templated channels, canvases, lists, and automated workflows geared towards streamlined workflows. They can also be edited and refined to suit individual workplace needs.

According to Salesforce, desk workers report spending 41% of their day on tasks they consider low-value, while nearly half aren’t able to find the information they need to do their jobs. Slack’s AI features aim to reduce the amount of time spent on those tasks, either through automation or by offloading them onto AI-powered agents.

It does seem as though many of these AI processes rely on Slack reading a lot of messages and files, which might be of concern to some users. The company has already faced backlash for using customer data to power machine-learning features, although Slack maintained that its models do not memorize or reproduce customer data.

Featured image: Unsplash

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