Dreamforce 2024: A Quick Recap on the Event Highlights, Lessons, and Key Takeaways

Dreamforce 2024 was a whirlwind of excitement, innovation, and inspiration. The event, which took place from September 17 to 19 in San Francisco, was packed with groundbreaking announcements and new ideas.  

LevelShift was thrilled to attend Dreamforce 2024, a stimulating event showcasing the latest advancements in AI and cloud technology. From the inspiring keynote speeches to the insightful breakout sessions, the event provided a unique opportunity to witness firsthand the future powered by AI, Data Cloud, Agentforce, CRM, and more. 

Also Read: In our ultimate guide, we discuss Agentforce, its key features, and more! It’s a must-read if you are looking to learn the basics of Agentforce.

 

In this recap blog, we’ll delve into the key highlights and takeaways from the conference. 

Day 1 

Salesforce Main Keynote 

The Salesforce main keynote at Dreamforce 2024 highlighted the company’s vision for the future of AI-powered CRM, and a key theme was the introduction of Agentforce. 

LevelShift is a preferred Agentforce implementation partner, and our certified AI experts can help you future-proof your business with industry-tailored Agentforce accelerators. Talk to our experts

In this session, the emphasis was on the importance of AI as an autonomous agent, empowering admins to be more productive and effective. The keynote introduced Agentforce as a transformative force, enabling humans and agents to collaborate seamlessly to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Agentforce is deeply integrated with Customer 360, providing a comprehensive view of customer data and enabling personalized interactions. 

The platform boasts advanced AI capabilities, including the ability to learn, reason, and understand complex information. With Atlas, Agentforce is 33% more accurate in its responses, ensuring more reliable and helpful interactions. 

The powerful Einstein Copilot has been upgraded to Agentforce, expanding its capabilities and enhancing its ability to understand and respond to complex requests. Agentforce can recognize and understand text and images, providing more comprehensive and informative responses. 

California Dreaming with Gavin Newsom  

California Governor Gavin Newsom presented this session, starting with California’s AI industry leadership. 32 of the top 50 AI companies are based in California.  

The SB 1047 bill (Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act) was mentioned in the session. 

The presenter also discussed climate change and how AI technology should be more widely applied in California wildfire risk assessment, predictive analysis, and prevention. 

Data Cloud Keynote 

The Data Cloud Keynote with Desiree Motamedi, MK Krishnaprasad, Rahul Auradkar, Taraneh Whitefield, and Tony Kreager was packed with insights. They covered how the Data Cloud is essential for building AI-powered customer experiences that are personalized, secure, and effective. 

The session highlighted the critical role of data in AI. The accuracy of AI relies heavily on high-quality data. As AI agents become more prevalent, the importance of data will only increase. Additionally, the presenters also touched upon how Data Cloud helps organizations through the following: 

• Personalize customer experiences by providing tailored interactions. 

• Deploy secure AI agents that offer relevant and accurate responses. 

• Unlock new opportunities by unifying customer data across sources. 

• Enhance strategic decision-making with a unified view of data. 

Future of AI  

At the keynote with Marc and Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), the big takeaways included NVIDIA’s focus on augmenting CPUs with accelerated computing, which mirrors Agentforce’s approach of augmenting humans with agents. 

AI will transform human-engineered software into machine-learning software. The future involves agents collaborating with other agents and humans, anticipating tasks before they are conceived. 

Day 2 

Agentforce Keynote 

This keynote was given by Adam Evans, Gary Brandeleer, and Avanthika Ramesh. The presenters discussed how Agentforce is a powerful AI platform that empowers businesses to create and deploy intelligent agents quickly and easily. It brings together Humans, AI (channels), Data (grounded), and actions (flows + apex + mules).   

Atlas Reasoning Engine is the brain behind Agentforce, which understands natural language and helps with analyzing data and making decisions. The Testing Center tool automates agent testing, ensuring quality and reliability before launch. 

Atlas Reasoning Engine has three main capabilities: Reasoning Engine, Advanced Retrieval Mechanics, and Guardrails.   

The Reasoning Engine generates and refines plans based on tasks and business processes. The Advanced Retrieval Mechanics retrieves relevant information from vast datasets and reduces the risk of hallucinations. Guardrails enforce boundaries and ensure human intervention when necessary. 

The session covered in depth the features and possibilities of Agentforce. Some of these exciting things include agent creation through which agents can be created from templates or built from scratch using the intuitive Agent Builder. The agents can leverage Data Cloud, external applications, and data sources to perform a wider range of tasks. 

There was an important update on Agentforce’s availability. The Pilot versions are available now, with out-of-the-box agents and Agent Builder expected by October 2024. Advanced search, voice, and image capabilities are planned for February 2025. 

Salesforce Foundations offers a comprehensive suite of Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, and Data Cloud features bundled into a package with a refreshed user interface. By combining these powerful tools, Salesforce aims to showcase the transformative potential of AI in business operations and accelerate the adoption of Agentforce among its customers.  

Agentforce has 100+ industry use cases and prompts that can be used to command agents. This spans across automotive, media, non-profit, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and more. 

The Future of Enterprise AI 

The Future of Enterprise AI with Parker Harris, Daniela Amodei, and Sam Jacobs discussed the future of Enterprise AI, which needs a continuous balance between technological advancement and ethical considerations. 

There was a mention of AI’s imperfections, such as hallucinations. Tools are essential to detect these problems, provide feedback, and refine AI’s capabilities. The role of humans in AI will evolve as technology improves. Humans will continue to oversee AI, provide feedback, and make critical decisions. 

Similar to past technological transformations, AI adoption will face initial skepticism. Addressing concerns and demonstrating the benefits of AI will be crucial. Integrating AI agents into existing workflows and user behaviors will be vital to increasing adoption. 

Service Keynote: Humans with AI Agents Deliver Effortless Service  

The Service Keynote kicked off with a discussion on the future of service, a collaborative effort between human agents and AI-powered tools. Agentforce will be pivotal in automating routine tasks and enhancing customer experiences. 

The discussion expanded to the role of Agentforce. Agentforce will handle tasks like portals, search, voice, and digital channels, while human agents will focus on Service Console, Analytics, and Field Operations. 

There were announcements on the dates. Agentforce will introduce scheduling capabilities in December 2025 and an Employee Service Agent (HR) in February 2025. Knowledge grounding in Data Cloud, a Service Planner, and a CX Intelligence dashboard will be available in October 2024. 

The Dispatcher Gantt and asset service prediction features, also releasing in October 2024, will help optimize field technician assignments and preventive maintenance schedules. 

Architect Keynote

Presenters Srinivas Tallapragada, Zayne Turner, Marc Braga, and Nevea Van Wright discussed using Salesforce Well-Architected principles to revolutionize your AI, data, and CRM strategies. 

Day 3 

Admin Keynote 

Christophe Coenraets hosted the Admin Keynote, and the key takeaway of the session was how Data, automation, and AI tools are essential for effectively managing AI solutions within an enterprise. Some of the highlights include the following: 

• Automation app: This application provides a centralized platform for managing workflows and external connections. 

• Einstein Code Gen: This tool integrates with the formula builder to assist in creating formulas. 

• New Repeater Control in Flows: This feature enhances the flexibility and capabilities of workflows. 

 Marketing and Commerce Keynote 

This session covered how Salesforce brings all the departments together and connects every interaction across the customer lifecycle. The key takeaway from this session was the role of Data Cloud in improving Marketing and Commerce and how Agentforce helps automate personalization and increase revenue. 

True to the core   

This session, presented by Parker Harris and Srinivas Tallapragada, spoke about the Salesforce release of the new Lightning UI and several updates and improvements. The session covered the following: 

• New Lightning UI: The updated UI is now available for users. 

• Integration user limitations: There’s a known issue where the integration user doesn’t work with industry cloud objects. This is being addressed. 

• Accessibility focus: Accessibility is a priority for Salesforce and is included in their executive V2MOM. 

• Agentforce Limitations: Agentforce currently cannot leverage Omniscripts, Integration Procedure, or Data Raptors. 

• Generative Canvas: This new AppExchange tool dynamically generates UIs for users. 

Final Thoughts 

The Dreamforce 2024 event was a blast! It was filled with amazing learning, community building, and networking with our clients and partners. We can’t wait to be part of the event in 2025.  

A sneak peek of our team having a great time at Dreamforce 2024!
 

As you explore these new tools and technologies, consider partnering with LevelShift, a trusted Salesforce Summit partner and service provider. Our team of experts can help you leverage these solutions to drive efficiency, improve customer experiences, and achieve your business goals.  

You’ve likely heard the buzz about Agentforce at Dreamforce. We’re excited to announce that LevelShift is a preferred implementation partner for Agentforce. LevelShift is uniquely positioned to assist customers like you in implementing Agentforce and realizing its full potential. Reach out to our team today to discover how we can support you.  

We’re not done yet! Stay tuned for more Dreamforce 2024 highlights and insights 😀