Salesforce provides builders instruments to combine with Slack apps
At its TrailblazerDX developer convention, Salesforce unveiled the Salesforce Platform for Slack. It consists of an Apex SDK for app-building and connections to the corporate’s Flow low-code platform to allow easy automations in Slack.
Salesforce
Salesforce at present introduced a brand new toolkit for its builders to construct integrations and customise apps on Slack’s collaboration platform.
Salesforce acquired Slack final 12 months for $27.7 billion and has begun to combine the staff messaging app into its portfolio of Software-as-a-Service instruments — aiming to create what it calls the “digital HQ.” The Salesforce Platform for Slack, introduced on the TrailblazerDX developer convention, is geared toward simplifying processes for Salesforce’s 11 million builders when connecting workflows between Customer360 apps and Slack.
“Salesforce’s primary justification for buying Slack is to leverage Slack as the collaboration layer across Salesforce clouds,” stated Irwin Lazar, president and principal analyst at analysis and advisory agency Metrigy. “That requires tight integrations to ensure data flow in and out of Slack, and the ability to both collaborate on, and carry out tasks within Slack. So it’s critical that Salesforce rapidly enable developers to integrate into Slack.”
Metrigy’s Workplace Collaboration: 2021-22 survey indicated that nearly 60% of finish consumer organizations considered apps like Slack as a hub for work, fairly than purely a messaging app.
With the Apex SDK for Slack, Salesforce builders can use the acquainted Apex programming language to customise Slack apps constructed utilizing the Block Kit UI framework (created 4 years in the past to embed interactive parts equivalent to checkboxes and menus in Slack messages). The Apex SDK permits entry to knowledge in Salesforce, equivalent to buyer information, with out the necessity for middleware.
“Let’s say a developer already has a great application built in Apex — they can now bring that super-easily to Slack,” stated Slack Chief Product Officer Tamar Yehoshua in a pre-announcement briefing.
Salesforce can be connecting its Flow low-code platform to Slack. This ought to allow the automation of easy guide duties, equivalent to creating a brand new Slack channel or sending an account standing replace.
“Let’s say a deal status changes and you want to collaborate on that deal in a deal room in Slack. All you do is connect it through Salesforce Flow to automatically create a channel,” said Yehoshua.
“Slack’s deeper integrations to the Salesforce platform effectively streamlines communications and collaboration by eliminating the need to switch between applications,” stated Wayne Kurtzman, analysis director at IDC. “This brings conversations around work into the work — keeping the context needed to make decisions.”
Flow in Slack is anticipated to be out there as a beta in June and in closing launch in October. The Apex SDK for Slack is about for a pilot in June, with basic availability in February 2023.
At TrailblazerDX Salesforce additionally introduced the general public beta of a number of integrations between Slack and Salesforce’s Sales, Service and Marketing Cloud merchandise that have been introduced final 12 months.