Salesforce Admins Podcast

Epizode

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  Solving Sharing Mysteries with Setup with Agentforce 30.07.2026 19min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Nikita Kothari, Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Salesforce.  Join us as we chat about using Setup with Agentforce to understand and manage record access. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nikita Kothari. Setup with Agentforce simplifies sharing Why can't I see this record? It's a simple question but, as any admin knows, finding an answer can get complicated quickly. If you've ever found yourself digging through Setup pages and running SOQL queries to troubleshoot permissions and record access issues, this episode is for you. This week, I'm talking to Nikita Kothari, a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Salesforce. She's here to tell us how Setup with Agentforce can help solve sharing mysteries. Using natural language questions, admins can trace access across org-wide defaults, role hierarchies, sharing rules, groups, and manual shares to figure out what's really going on. Troubleshooting permissions and record access issues As Nikita explains, permissions and record access issues are so complicated because they are affected by many overlapping configuration settings. Small changes can accumulate over time, especially in a reorg. Setup with Agentforce was built to help you detangle these issues with simple natural language prompts. You can put your questions about permissions and record access to an agent, instead of having to wade through 1,300 pages of Setup to figure it out on your own. Once you've got a handle on what the problem is, you can use Setup with Agentforce to help you implement changes and get everything sorted. And it's built with trust in mind: every write action requires your explicit approval, the agent is bounded by your permissions, and every configuration change is captured in the Setup Audit Trail. Plan permissions for your org If you're trying to figure out where to get started, Nikita recommends starting small. "It's very difficult to go back and fix something," she says, "so I would highly recommend trying any changes in a sandbox with the minimum set of users to see if it is working as expected or not."  And because Setup with Agentforce makes looking at permissions and record access so much easier, Nikita recommends taking advantage of it to conduct a monthly permissions review. Again, these issues accumulate over time, so an ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Nikita for more on Setup with Agentforce and how to get sharing straightened out in your org. And don't forget to subscribe for more episodes of the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Mastering Your Org's Sharing Configuration with Setup with Agentforce Salesforce Admins Blog Post: 5 Use Cases To Get Started With Setup with Agentforce Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Setup with Agentforce Makes Salesforce Admin Tasks Easier Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Nikita on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Nikita Kothari, Senior Member of the Technical Staff here at Salesforce, about using Setup with Agentforce to understand and manage record access. Sharing can be one of those invisible parts of the platform until someone can see a record they shouldn't or can't see one they need to. Nikita explains how admins can use natural language questions to trace access across org-wide defaults, role hierarchies, sharing, rules, groups, and manual shares. We also discuss why validation, permissions, testing, and human approval remain essential when AI helps make configuration changes. So give this episode a listen, click that subscribe button, maybe share it with another Salesforce admin who's ever asked, "Why can this user see this record?" Let's get Nikita on the podcast. So Nikita, welcome to the podcast. Nikita Kothari: Thank you, Mike. It is amazing to be here. I'm from the engineering team, so you'll get my lot of perspective on how we are building Setup with Agentforce on sharing. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to talk about. Let's first get a little acquainted with you. What do you do at Salesforce, and what are some of the things that you've worked on? Nikita Kothari: So it's been close to two years I'm working with Salesforce. And currently, I'm working with access control and sharing space. What pulled me in is the realization that sharing is one of those invisible infrastructure layer. When it works, nobody thinks about it, but when it breaks, it actually breaks the customer trust. And you know how customer-centric Salesforce is, its number one priority is trust. So there is lot of critical issues that we are dealing with and we are trying to make the sharing as the best place for the admins. And we love our admins and we are trying to make things better for them. Mike Gerholdt: I love our admins too. I used to be one for a while. I'd like to still think I am, but we'll see. Well, let's get into it. So I read your article and I'll link to that in the show notes. Tell me, I mean, before Setup with Agentforce, what did an admin have to do to answer a question of, why can this user see this opportunity and this user not? Nikita Kothari: Oh, good question. So it's the simplest way of dealing with solving the sharing's toughest problems. So just to enable the Agentforce, you don't have to do anything. It comes along with the Agentforce. So go to the setup page, search for the Agentforce agent and enable your Setup with Agentforce, and then you can start writing those questions. You don't have to know anything beforehand, that's the best part of the Agentforce setup. And sharing is the challenging domain, I won't deny that. It is very, very complex. So answering even the simplest question that you ask, like, "Who this person is having access for this thing," it requires to look into a lot of different domains like OWD, role hierarchy, sharing rules, sharing groups, manual shares, to see which layer actually give that access to that particular user. And looking that information, sometimes it's easier with the UI, but most of the time user has to run lots of SQL queries to get the correct answer. And previously, admin was spending hours of work and sometimes even the afternoons just to deal with that single questions. And with Setup with Agentforce, it just a minute of work. You just give prompt to your chatbots and it'll give you the correct answer within seconds. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, boy, it used to be a lot of archeological digging. I think you called it that in the article. I know I used to have to feel like I was going through a checkbox, but tell me, I mean, walk us through a real investigation where an admin discovers that a user can see a record, they probably shouldn't. How would they use Setup with Agentforce to trace where that access came from? Nikita Kothari: Yeah, great question. So while building these actions, we particularly divide it into two different segments. First segment is the read action and the second segment is the write action. Just to keep it, things untangled, read actions will help you to investigate. When you ask a question like, "Why Nikita has access for these things?" So our agent will go into the background, it will do all kinds of research and it will come up with the best answer. "Okay, Nikita is part of this group, and these groups provide the access to this particular record." And what a write action on the hand will do, it will help you to solve that problem. Now you know Nikita is part of the particular group. You can go ahead and ask your write action, "Can you please remove Nikita from this group?" And your write action will help you to remove that particular user from that group and boom, your problem is solved within a few minutes. It's reliable, it's fast, and I'm sure admin can save a lot of time with these two things. And you don't need to know which action or which thing you need. You just write the plain natural language and our LLM will be able to guess where to navigate and how to solve that problem. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, I hear you. I think you walked us through what a good sharing investigation looks like. But for you, is there a sequence admins should follow so that they don't just jump straight to changing configuration? Nikita Kothari: I would say I would highly recommend admin to start playing with the read action. There is no particular sequence, I would say, but mostly how the sharing is defined is like first we have the OWD, which provides the base access to the records and to the objects. And then comes the role hierarchy, then comes sharing rules, then we have public groups and queue and we have the manual shares. So at each level, sharing opens up the door for more access. So if you're going below the hierarchy, sharing will provide more and more access to the user. And if you want to close that access, it's not easier that one sharing rule will open up the access and then you create another sharing rule to close the access. It's not how it works. So in that case, you need to spend a strategic amount of time thinking how you can revoke that access. And sharing is accumulation of the small, small, small decisions over the time. Sometimes adding someone to the group, for the reorg, you have to do lot of things with the sharing, and every decision gets compound. So I highly recommend our admins to at least spend 30 minutes a month to refresh and reanalyze their sharing configuration to avoid the future problem. So this is basically the flow looks like, but I would say there is any of sequencing which admins should follow. It's pretty much open and admin can ask any question to our agent. Mike Gerholdt: No, I think you're right. I mean, Setup with Agentforce can do a lot in terms of explaining the configuration and then help change it. I think you really touched on that last answer of just slowing down for a second, verifying what the answer is to make sure that you're staying in control. My question to you would be, how should an admin validate what the agent tells them? Nikita Kothari: Oh, that's a good question. So for the read action, the information, we have mostly the links added to our prompts. We call it as a clickable link. So if investigation is saying that Nikita is part of this group, actually, there is a link of that group. So you can go to that group by clicking on that link, and you can actually see I'm a part of that group if you want to re-verify the stuff. So, that will give you more confidence that you know how admin is investigating the information or if admin is saying, "Nikita is part of the sharing rule and you'll have the link for the sharing rule." So you can actually go and verify whether that sharing rule contains the group or the users where it is providing that access. And with the write action, I think more critical is the right action. I mean, you don't want somebody, AI is coming to your system and randomly making changes to your system. So to do that, we have the validation layers. The first validation we generally come up with is for every write action, we explicitly ask for the approval, approval from the person who is making the changes. And we also have the permission boundaries, and if particular user doesn't have the permission to edit OWD, the agent won't be able to edit OWD for that person. And then the last part is the accountability. Every change we are logging into the setup audit trail saying that whether the AI agent did it or actual person did it. And then admin can verify it, whatever changes is made by the AI agent are trustable or not. So we will always advise admin to go and do as much as possible testing on the sandbox before making changes into the production. And another backup system is the Einstein Trust layer. We always say trust is our number one priority. So, Salesforce has built trust everywhere to make sure that we are not blindly making any changes, and as this is a very, very critical domain to our customers. Mike Gerholdt: No, that's great. You talked a lot about sharing, and I always feel like making a change with sharing, you want to make sure that you're doing it right. In your opinion, what is the most important thing an admin should review before making a sharing change? Nikita Kothari: So I would say, as I said before, we have some of the steps that I also wrote in my blog, that we have OWD sharing rule, rule hierarchy, and everything opens up the more access. So to close that access, it's very difficult to go back and fix something. So, I would highly recommend whenever our admins are making the changes, try it out first thing on the sandbox if it is working as expected or not. Or have some verification system or another set of eyes whenever you create some rule hierarchy or you're providing some access to the rule, rather than giving access to all of the user, first try with the minimal set of the user. Try with the one user and see if that user are getting right access to the right record. Because even if you fail to provide a single user a wrong access, that means that you're leaking your data. So having those, another, just starting with a small and then going into the bigger and bigger data, that would really help admin to build the reliable system. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, absolutely. I think it can do a lot and I've seen it do a lot, but what is something that Setup with Agentforce can help with today that maybe admins may not realize? Nikita Kothari: I feel like still adoption, it's tricky because people are quite a lot thinking that Setup with Agentforce will replace their job. But I would say rather than replacing, it will provide you a lot of capabilities and it will remove a lot of overhead from your day-to-day work life, rather than going and looking into the SQLs or doing everything by yourself, just give it a try. And then you can see how much opportunity it is opening up for you to save time. And that time you can actually use for building a more structural, and because structure mattered a lot when it comes for sharing. How your roles are getting access or how your groups are getting access. And if you're just blindly following the steps and not thinking much, then you are in a trouble. So you can spend more time and thinking about, how can you better make a structure for your organization? And you can get more time to think about your business. And I feel like most of the troubleshooting cases we have covered into the Setup with Agentforce flow. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. You mentioned a lot, admins should get out and use it and try it, and I'm a big proponent of that. So I'll end on this question. What for you is one kind of low risk question that an admin could ask Setup with Agentforce today to better understand their sharing configuration? Nikita Kothari: I think my one of the favorite action among all of it is record access, to ask why this person is having access to this record. And you see how much it can do, it will give you the whole list of the OWD configuration for that particular record, or it will look for the sharing role, it will look for the group membership, it will look for the manual shares. And it will do all kind of investigation for you just when you type a one single natural language to your agent. So you can always think about someone which is having more knowledge about the setup. It's sitting with you and helping you to deal with all of the setup configuration. Because setup, again, we have like 1,300 setup pages, which is lot. And going through all and learning the capabilities of each setup action, it's difficult. So, that's why we built the Setup with Agentforce, which will give you the capability that you don't have to learn everything on the go. And you can start asking question to our bot. If it won't be able to answer, it will guide you in the right direction to help and analyze your queries or your concerns. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I am so glad that we have Setup with Agentforce. I feel like I could have used it 20 years ago. I know I had a lot of questions and would have to dig through my notes on org-wide and sharing and group sharing and all kinds of that stuff. So, I appreciate it. And I appreciate the article and you taking time out of your day to talk to admins and share your knowledge about sharing and setup and how we can do things better. Nikita Kothari: Yeah. I think admins are always on the top of our list. I would love to hear from our admins how they like this Setup with Agentforce, specifically with the sharing, how it is helping them or what they are looking forward to, because I feel like most of our critical projects and best solution came up with the admin feedback. And we really want to make admin life easier. We always have meetings internally, our engineering team, our product is always so much focused about thinking about our admins, thinking about the newer way to introduce some more features to make their lives easier so that they can focus on building a reliable solution. So, it was great talking to you. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, I'm glad you could share your knowledge with us today. Thanks so much. Nikita Kothari: Yeah, thank you so much. And one more thing, we will be at Dreamforce. Larry Sherrill is our Product Manager. They're having a lot to share at Dreamforce. So, feel free to stop at user access booth. I'll be there too, so come and say hi and share your feedback. We would love to hear back from you. And we keep making a lot of progress on Setup with Agentforce, so stay tuned, follow our blogs, and it will be something will be really helpful in future for you guys. Thank you so much. Mike Gerholdt: Thanks again to Nikita for helping us understand how Setup with Agentforce can make sharing investigations faster without taking judgment out of the Salesforce admin's hand. And the takeaway is just really simple, use AI to uncover the source of access, validate what it tells you, and test changes carefully before they reach production. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, and I bet you did, I hope you did, you should subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Share this episode maybe with your team, fellow team, user group. Oh, I like that, if you'd share it with the user group, that would be awesome. And then, how about this? Start with one low risk question about your own org sharing configuration and ask that to Setup with Agentforce. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  Salesforce Superbadge Cohorts Build Skills Through Community 23.07.2026 26min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jean Velonis, Senior Technical Program Manager at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the new Superbadge Cohort Learning pilot program and how you can get involved. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jean Velonis. Improvements to Superbadges I have to confess, I've always found Superbadges to be a little intimidating. They're locked behind requirements, without clear step-by-step instructions for how to work towards them. That's why I sat down with Jean Velonis, a Senior Technical Program Manager working to improve the Superbadge experience. The first thing Jean wants you to know is that they've overhauled the Superbadge UI. Instead of being locked behind a list of requirements, Superbadges now have a Recommended Learning section. These Trailhead modules and badges are organized into units, giving you a much clearer path to work towards your goal. What is the Superbadge Cohort Learning pilot program? In addition to the UI changes, Jean and her team are launching a new pilot program called Superbadge Cohort Learning. These sessions let you connect with other learners and subject matter experts to work towards a Superbadge together, guided by a facilitator. For now, the pilot program is focused on two of the most popular Superbadges. For admins, the Data Quality and Validation Superbadge gives you the knowledge you need to prep your org for AI. And if you're a dev or looking to improve your coding skills, there will also be groups for the Apex Callouts Superbadge. They're running both in-person and virtual versions of these sessions, so look out for them at a Dreamin' event or community group near you. Volunteer as a subject matter expert or facilitator If you already have these Superbadges, Jean highly recommends volunteering as a subject matter expert or a facilitator. When you're working with new learners, you'll run into questions and situations that deepen your understanding of the topic more than you ever thought possible. The other thing about students is that they keep learning. Teaching is an incredible opportunity to make strong connections that will last throughout your career. As Jean explains, two of her former students are now her go-to people when she has code or Flow questions. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Jean about the Superbadge Cohort Learning pilot program. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Sign up to be a subject matter expert or facilitator: Superbadge Cohort Learning Pilot Session Salesforce 360 Blog Post: How to Stand Out in the AI Era with Superbadges Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jean on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full Transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I'm joined by Jean Velonis to talk about the Superbadge Cohort Learning Pilot and what happens when admins stop learning alone and start solving problems together. We're going to dig into these cohorts and how they bring experts, beginners, and everyone together in the same room to work through real challenges, build confidence, and get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because for Salesforce admins, knowing how to troubleshoot, test, fail safely, and ask better questions matters just as much as knowing where to click. And as AI and agents become part of everyday platform work, well, those fundamental skills help admins validate what is correct, keep data reliable, and make sure that the platform reflects what the business actually needs. So listen in, subscribe and share this episode with an admin who learns best by rolling up their sleeves and figuring it out. Let's get Jean on the podcast. So Jean, welcome to the podcast. Jean Velonis: Thank you so much for having me. I think this is the second time I've been here, but it's been a while. Mike: I know. Well, when you do the podcast for almost 14 years now, I try not to have guests back, only if they're important like yourself. Jean Velonis: Ooh, thank you. Mike: We were Salesforce MVPs together a hundred years ago when the internet was still tubes and wires, and now we're both at Salesforce. And you're on, I would call, what, the curriculum side, the learning side? Jean Velonis: Yeah, I would categorize that. It's more Trailhead, right? So long story short, certification was my jam for so long, and superbadges were part of that. But over the last couple of years, we've decoupled from certification. We're still with Trailhead and we're still considered an assessment, but we don't have all the guardrails of certification on us anymore, which is really exciting. Mike: Gotcha. And just for reference, if anybody thinks they might have met Jean at a Dreaming event or a Salesforce event, you tend to usually have purple hair and a bedazzled Ranger hat. Is that an accurate description? Jean Velonis: These are facts. These are facts. I've had purple hair probably since six months of coming into Salesforce. And if anybody knows the famous Chris Duarte out there, she taught me everything I know about bedazzling. So I made a Ranger hat. Mike: Yeah. A lot of people bedazzle now because of her. Jean Velonis: Yes. Mike: Well, let's talk about this new Superbadge cohort learning pilot that you've kicked off because I think you're trying to bring the best of both worlds together. Jean Velonis: Absolutely. This isn't a new concept either. I'll just throw that out there. We had some amazing trailblazers before the pandemic and even through the pandemic doing Salesforce Saturdays or Salesforce Sundays and they would get together in person or virtually and work on Trailhead. So this is kind of piggybacking off that concept and really bringing some of the community magic to superbadges because I think we can all look at a superbadge and be like, oh, that's kind of intimidating. There's no step-by-step instructions. This looks really hard. There's multiple steps to it, and that just looks hard and I don't want to do it. But the cohort learning brings a facilitator, like a community group leader or a Dreamin event person to come in and help bring people together virtually or in person and work on a Superbadge together. And we've been running a couple of pilots of these. We did one at TDX and WITness Success in Indi. And it's been really successful in person just because you can pair experts and newbies together at a table and make people really uncomfortable, and then they start talking to each other and learning from each other. And I think that's what gets really excited about doing this cohort learning. And then we've done a couple of virtual events as well where we've brought community group leaders, kind of like train the trainer of like, here's how you should run this virtually to be successful, because that virtual is a little bit different beast. It's really easy to hide and stay on mute and turn your camera off where we really try and get people excited to share their skillset with each other. Mike: Yeah. No hiding in the dark corners. So I really like the idea of this. I've always really enjoyed Trailhead because I'm the type of learner that likes to do it at my own pace. Sometimes I even crazily go back and redo a badge just because I feel like if I've rushed through it, did I really learn it or was I just trying to get it done? And when I'm really trying to learn it, I really take my time. I will agree with you, I've written superbadges. I also enjoy the freedom. They're kind of like, "Here, go, do. " And you're like, "Oh yes." It's almost like the days of driver's ed when you get out from behind the desk and you finally get to drive the car in the real world. It's a little more of trying things out. So are these cohorts that you're doing now, are they open to any superbadge or are they just specific ones? Jean Velonis: That's a really good question. We looked at our whole library of Superbadges and we wanted to pick one for admins and one for developers. And that doesn't mean it's just if you have that skill set. It's more of like, here's two of the main roles we see in the community. So we have data quality and validation, which is really for anybody prepping you for this agentic ecosystem that we're in, cleaning up your org. Mike: I mean, to be honest with you, that's what we've needed to do this whole time. Even before AI, it's sweeping the floors, you know? Jean Velonis: Yeah. I mean, it's been that way for a long time. I think I made my whole Salesforce admin career of going in and cleaning up orgs, to be honest. So that was a great place for us to start. And then now we've started looking at the developer side of it and we picked Apex Callouts superbadge for all of our developers. And I was very intimidated by trying to put together a superbadge in a box for that cohort because I'm not a developer. But going through this process, I'm like, "You know what? I think I can actually do this," And that's because of all the great learning badges on Trailhead and being able to go at your own pace. Because that's a whole nother skill set for an admin to try and figure out, right? Mike: Right. I've often thought of, this is just how Mike's brain works. If I had children, I would for sure name one of them Apex because then you just gave them a shout-out. Jean Velonis: That's hilarious. I would've never thought- Mike: That's how I work. My brain today is like, "Oh yeah. Hey, did you hear you were mentioned on a Salesforce podcast?" "Of course I was. I'm an Apex Callout." Jean Velonis: I'll tell you a weird secret. I do put my children's names in superbadge content. All of us over here under the superbadge team put little- Mike: Easter eggs? Jean Velonis: Easter eggs, yeah- Mike: Yeah, I love it. Jean Velonis: ... out there. It's either in the org or it's in the content. We're all moms over here, so we would like to give our kids a shout-out. Mike: Well, I will see your Easter egg and I will call your Easter egg. In almost every admin keynote demo, we have put our pets' names. Jean Velonis: I love that. Mike: So you can go back and figure out whose pets were whom. The only time, the only exception was we had Einstein Voice rollout and my dog's name was yet to be used and we couldn't use it because it wouldn't recognize it. It was too hard to say. And so we had to go with something easy and punchy with hard consonants in it. So anyway, yes. I think there should be, I'm sure there is somewhere, a whole forum of Easter eggs found in Trailhead material. Jean Velonis: 100%. And I think that's what Trailhead is, where it's the weird, it's the hanging out, it's the learning something new, it's the being uncomfortable. Because it really is, learning can be really uncomfortable. Mike: I mean, it exposes a weakness and people don't like feeling weak. It's also the thing I always think about whenever I was doing training because you're changing something. And the person that told me how to do training gave me a very well-rounded, concise piece of advice, which is people don't like to go to work and feel stupid. And when you change something, even in a CRM, that's what that comes from. And people don't like to feel stupid. And I feel that way. You change something, you're like, "Oh, this was here yesterday. Why isn't it here?" And you blame yourself and that's not the point. You do a lot of training. So let's go through just some scenarios of I'm a new Salesforce admin. I stumbled across this podcast. Also, hello. You have a lot of episodes to catch up on. That's okay. You have a lot of time. What should they do to prepare to come to one of these learning cohorts? Jean Velonis: I mean, the easy answer is get on Trailhead and start earning badges, that's number one. Step two is take a look at the new look and feel for superbadges and that will bring you to our recommended learning. It used to be required to unlock the superbadge, but we've just now come onto what I would say the Trailhead UI. Superbadges are put into these units now where the first unit is like, let's get ready. Let's get your developer org. Let's do the recommended learning. Let's connect it to your superbadge now. That's all a little bit different than what we used to do with superbadges. You had to unlock it and then you had to go down all the way to the bottom of the page to hook up your org. Now it looks like a regular module or badge, which is nice because as somebody who struggles with reading and keeping my place on Trailhead, this new guy is really going to help with that. But also doing the recommended learning I think is key even though it's unlocked now and you don't have to do it. I will tell you I am the first person to start doing something and being like, "Oh, I have no idea what I'm doing with this. Maybe I should have done-" Mike: I should have done those recommended modules. Jean Velonis: Yes. And then I will have to go back and learn and figure things out. I did that with the prompt template superbadge. I thought I knew what I was doing. Mike: No. Jean Velonis: I did not. And that's falling, that's failing forward. That's realizing I don't know what I'm doing. Let me go figure this out and then come back to it. So I think that's step number two. Go and read through the superbadges, look at them, look at the recommended learning. And then if you see that there is a Dreamin event or a community group doing one of these superbadges, join them. Even if you've done the superbadge, that's okay. You can go help the other people that are there. Mike: Oh, I almost think that would be the next best thing after doing a superbadge is going and volunteering to help train. Because never will you ever learn more about something than when you have to train somebody about something or walk around the room and answer questions. You're like, "Hey, I didn't run into that when I was doing mine, but let's figure it out." And it's super fun because then you're like, "This wasn't a problem for me, but now it's a problem that I get to work through." Jean Velonis: Yeah. I mean, bringing you all the way back to SABWA. Mike: Oh, sure. Jean Velonis: Call out, Mike. I mean, geez. Yeah, that is my favorite thing to walk around, especially I live in these superbadges every day. Our team builds them. We maintain them. We have to deal with all the product changes that are very quickly changing and trying to keep up with everything. So being able to walk around the room and see how trailblazers are doing things, that not only helps me figure out, okay, here's some of the common pitfalls or where people are getting stuck and I can write some hints to help, but also maybe we don't do that in the next superbadge or maybe we call it out in a different way or let's go update the help article and call this piece out if somebody's getting stuck somewhere. So it's super helpful. But also you get to meet a ton of different people, which we do virtually every day, but it's easy to hide behind the keyboard again. And to be able to connect with somebody and see their aha moment of where they're like, "Yes, I figured this out," that's super gratifying. Mike: Oh, that's almost the time that you make a friend. Jean Velonis: A best friend. Mike: Yeah. I mean, because you're always going to be like, "Well, let's continue chatting while you work through this." And then the next thing you know, they're building Apex Callouts, and you're like, "Oh, I didn't get that far." And then they're teaching you stuff. I promise you it'll happen. Jean Velonis: It will happen. I can say 100% certainty it will happen. I have two people that I call on all the time or that I met through a conference or doing something, and I'm like, "Okay, I know this person knows code and I know this person knows flow. I'm not good at those things, but I can text or call or Slack and be like, I'm stuck." Mike: Right. So I mean, I have a thousand questions, but let's go to the opposite end of that where if you're a community member, maybe you're a user group leader or a Dreamin event person and you're like, "This sounds like a super fun thing for me to include in my agenda," What would their steps be for possibly including, I know it's in a pilot, but for including this or what's your vision for it moving forward? Jean Velonis: Yeah. We have a facilitator signup forum- Mike: Sweet. Jean Velonis: ... which I'm sure you would be happy to put that in the bio or the show notes. Mike: It is in the show notes as we speak. Jean Velonis: Perfect. But yeah, just signing up to raise your hand to be a facilitator is huge. Because I'm going to have this superbadge in a box ready very quickly for people to take to a pilot. I have two Dreamin events that are already wanting to do this in August and a community group that also wants to bring it to their local people. So signing up to be a facilitator and doing this on your own, love that. And I wish I could go to every one of them, to be honest. I looked at a couple of them and I'm like, "I might be able to make this work and just show up." But there's also a piece in that form too to sign up to be a subject matter expert and help if there's somebody locally that wants to do this. And selfishly, I put that in there that if you want to help us build superbadges, that would be awesome too. Mike: Right. And this sounds rhetorical, but it is honest. They should have probably already completed that superbadge that they want to facilitate or host. Jean Velonis: I mean, I'd advise it. And with the new UI, you can redo a superbadge. You can retake it now. So you can do the superbadge over. Mike: To refresher, because maybe you haven't done it in a while and want to see what's new. Jean Velonis: I mean, the facilitator that did WITness Success told me she still had her notes when she originally did the Apex Callouts in 2017. Mike: Wow. Jean Velonis: Right? Mike: I probably have notes from somewhere of 2017 I have nowhere. That's awesome. Jean Velonis: No, that notebook's gone. Mike: Yeah. I always think of admins listening to this and I don't want it to be a pitch session for your cohort, but this is really a neat way to get involved with the community. From all of your work, and this is just stepping out of your role and what you're doing in this superbadge cohort. Out of all of the work that you've done at Salesforce and what you create for Trailhead, what are some of the biggest themes that you run into that really, when that light bulb turns on for an admin, they suddenly just become, I don't want to say instantly become successful, but they really start to click and feel confidence and have that aha moment? Jean Velonis: I think being a Salesforce admin for such a long time, being able to fail and problem solve is probably the best skill you can have. You can learn any technical skill. I can go into a dev org and break things and figure out how products work. But if you don't know how to problem solve through something, getting to that aha moment is going to take you a long time if you're too afraid to break something. And I have broken things. And I think I've told you, I've deleted records from an org before and went, "Uh-oh, how do I get those back?" So that is one of my favorite things is to go into a playground or dev org and just break it, pull things apart, see how it works and be like, "Okay, I know where I want to go, but how do I get there? And I don't know how to get there, but if I go in and break everything, I'm going to learn a lot more than if I follow step-by-step instructions of how to do something." Mike: Right. If it works out perfect the first time. Jean Velonis: Yeah. What did you learn? Oh, I know how to do that. Okay. Well, what's next then? Mike: Do you find that you have to remind people that it's okay to fail when building and it's okay for things to not work the way you want them to the first time? Jean Velonis: Yeah. And I mean, that's how we build superbadges. I mean, we have all these SMEs and we look through different use cases and we go into an org and build it out and we're like, "Well, that's not going to work for this unit," or, "That's not going to work for this use case," or how do we find those different tasks to lead the witness basically in the challenge to get to where we want them to go, but without telling them? And you can do it 97 different ways. There's not necessarily always a right way to get there. Mike: Right. I know I've sat down. We used to have, it was Dreamforce long, long time ago. And I was paired up with Josh Birk and we were helping a customer through a situation. And it was interesting because both he and I came up with a solution. Both he and I came up with a very different path to the solution. Mine was using, at the time, Flows, and his was using some code and some triggers. And the customer's like, "But which one's right?" And we're like, "Both of them." I mean, never could you ever run into a situation where both solutions are equally correct. It's based on what you want to maintain and your knowledge. Jean Velonis: 100%. And now you also have this agentic thing that will try and tell you the right path to go and you can be like, "Well, I don't want to do it that way." And it's like, "Oh yeah, you're right. Let's try it this way." So I think even having that fundamental base of an admin or a dev is really going to serve you well in this ecosystem. So problem solving, having a foundational skill set, and then also knowing where you want to go and problem solving your way to get there. Mike: Right. So let me ask you, you've brought up agents and AI sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, but I mean, it's definitely something that it's our every day now. From your perspective as building a lot of content and in the learning space, what is the most important thing you think admins should learn about AI and agents? I Jean Velonis: I think the most important... Well, there's two. Learning when to trust that the AI is telling you the right thing and knowing how to ask the prompts and the questions. Because you may not know where you want to go, but if you have your fundamental base of the system, you can ask it the right questions to get you where you're going. And as somebody who struggles with writing content, I know where I want to go, I know what the tasks are for the superbadge. And I can say, "Okay, now help me write an error message," or, "Help me write a hint for a help article that's going to help them get unstuck." And you can ask AI that too. You're like, "Hey, I'm using this Flow element. I'm trying to go here and make this system do this. It's not working. Help me untangle this." Mike: Right. Help me. Teach me, don't tell me. Jean Velonis: That's key. Teach me, don't tell me. I don't need step by step. Mike: I do that all the time with Wordle. Don't tell me the answer, just help me figure out what this word is. I'm stuck. Jean, last question because I know you have to go. It's 2030 and the Superbadge Cohort Learning program is out of pilot. What does it look like? Jean Velonis: It looks like all of our trailblazers getting together, helping each other learn something new, experts and newbies and everybody in the middle taking something away from that hour or that day that they spent with each other and everybody having their own aha moment. Whether it's I helped somebody get unstuck or I got a new superbadge or I made a new contact or I'm out of a job and I made this whole partner and I handed them my resume, those are the things that make the community go round. Those are the things that makes learning so important. And it's okay to break things. Mike: Right. Very well. Very well said. Thank you, Jean, for being on the podcast. Jean Velonis: Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here. Mike: Big thank you to Jean Velonis for joining us and reminding us admins that getting stuck is not the end of learning, it is usually where the useful part begins. Now, whether you join a cohort, you facilitate one, or you know what, you simply just help another Salesforce admin work through a challenge, teaching and problem solving are powerful ways to strengthen your platform judgment. Be sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins podcast. Share this episode with somebody who is ready to learn and really earn that next aha moment. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  How Can Admins Reduce MFA Friction in Salesforce? 16.07.2026 32min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jay Hurst, Senior Vice President of Product Management, and James Ferguson, Senior Director of Product Management, at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about MFA step-up authentication and what it means for Salesforce Admins. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jay Hurst and James Ferguson. Step-up authentication protects sensitive actions Starting next week, Salesforce is requiring all users to use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). If you're a privileged user like, for example, an admin, you'll need to use a phishing-resistant MFA. That's why I sat down with Jay Hurst, VP of Product Management, and James Ferguson, Senior Director of Product Management, to talk about why these changes are vital to protect your org's data. The first thing to know is that AI is making it easier than ever to launch targeted phishing attacks at scale. So while the MFA requirements provide a good first layer of protection, we want to make extra sure you are who you say you are before you're allowed to perform certain actions, like downloading a large number of records or running a big report. Phishing-resistant MFA uses a passkey, like a fingerprint or facial recognition biometric, to verify that it's actually you and not just someone with access to your email account. Balancing security with user friction As Jay and James acknowledge, these changes will add some friction to your users' experience. However, with the pace at which these kinds of attacks are evolving, it's more important than ever to get serious about your security posture. "We're trying to introduce a little more friction right now so that people start to think," Jay explains, "and start to build those habits of understanding when they're doing something that potentially could be considered a malicious attack, such as downloading that All Opportunities report." They're also building out compensating controls that should make things easier in the future, allowing you to trust users from a certain IP range, for example. Security is a journey, not a destination The most important thing to realize is that these requirements are about more than just jumping through some extra hoops. Phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks are growing more and more sophisticated, and you need better protections than "Well, that hasn't happened yet." Instead, James and Jay recommend viewing this as an opportunity to partner with other stakeholders in your org to develop a comprehensive security plan. As Jay says, "Security is a journey, not a destination. What is 100% secure today is not as secure tomorrow." The trick is to develop a security-focused mindset throughout your business that will protect you now and in the future. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Jay and James for more on step-up authentication and how admins can reduce friction for users. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Are Security Essentials for Salesforce Admins? Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Securing Your Org: From Reactive to Proactive Salesforce Help Article: Prepare for the upcoming Step-up Authentication requirements on Report Actions Salesforce Help Article: Prepare for MFA Enforcement for All Employee Users Salesforce Help Article: Prepare for Phishing-Resistant MFA Enforcement for Privileged Users including Admins Salesforce Help Article: Security-Related Product Updates to the Salesforce Platform: User Identity, Data Protection, and Access Controls Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jay on LinkedIn James on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Jay Hurst and James Ferguson from Salesforce Product Management about MFA step-up authentication and what it means for Salesforce admins. As you know, security isn't just a front-door login decision anymore. It's about protecting sensitive actions, understanding risk, and designing systems users can trust. So Jay and James are going to help us unpack phishing-resistant MFA, compensating controls, IP ranges, SSO, and why these changes matter in a world where data, automation and AI are all working together. For us Salesforce admins, this is a chance to think beyond features and really look at how we steward the entire system. So listen in, click that Subscribe button, and of course I would love if you could share it with fellow Salesforce admins or, hey, you know what? Let's make some friends in that security team. So with that, let's get Jay and James on the podcast. So Jay and James, welcome to the podcast. Jay Hurst: Thanks for having us, Mike. James Ferguson: Great to be here. Mike: Absolutely. Jay, let's start off with you. We kind of want to get to know a little bit about you, and James, we'll call on you second, but before we get into our topic today, can you just tell me a little bit about how you got to Salesforce and what you do? Jay Hurst: Sure, yeah. So I have been with Salesforce for almost 22 years now. I started in our customer support department, one of the first 12 phone support reps here at Salesforce. Did that for a couple years and helped found our Tier 3 organization in support. Eventually moved over to our customer-centric engineering department, stayed in there for a while. And then in 2012, had an opportunity to join the product management group for platform, and I moved over and ran a team called Force.com Canvas. And for the last, I guess, 12-ish years now, I've been kind of weaving my way upwards through platform. Currently, I lead our platform services subcloud, so all of the core foundational pieces of platform that you might think of are schema and metadata, APIs, eventing systems, connectivity systems, and also our identity area, which is what brings us here today to talk about MFA. Mike: Yeah. Boy, flashback. You called it the Force.com platform. Jay Hurst: Well, that's what it was called back then. Mike: I know. I know. Jay Hurst: And I can't remember all of the names we've had for it. Mike: Oh, that's okay. I'm sure there's a website that tracks all of them. Jay Hurst: I'm sure there is. Mike: James, fill us in. How'd you get to Salesforce, and what do you do here? James Ferguson: Well, I am, I guess compared to Jay, one of the newer members of the team. I've only been at Salesforce for about 16 and a half years, almost 17 years. Pretty much entirely on the platform product management side, working on various things people know and love like sharing and big objects and event monitoring and those things. And most recently I've taken over responsibility for the identity product team, responsible for all the login and auth and SSO and all of the wonderful things we'll talk about today. Mike: Oh, wow. Okay. So then just to be clear, I'm actually the newest person on this call. I've only been at Salesforce for a little over 12 years now, so I guess I still have my rookie stripes. Jay Hurst: Combined we're almost at 40, or just over 40. Mike: Yeah, combined. We almost get our AARP discount, right? Jay Hurst: Yeah, exactly. Mike: Jay, let's kick off. I know I did a podcast ... and I'll link back to it ... not that long ago with Laura Pelke talking about some of the new things that were coming out, and of course security is always big on admins' mind. She did a wonderful job of explaining step-up authentication to me, which was basically the airport analogy of you have to show your ID to get in and then you have to show your boarding pass to get onto the plane. I thought that really made sense to me, but let's talk about the new authentication that's coming out, if you call it that, and the new step-up concerns that Salesforce admins have. Jay Hurst: Sure. So I think as we move into the continued proliferation of agents and AI across the industry, security is obviously top of mind for a lot of our customers and for Salesforce as well, specifically because we have to help protect our customers. And so when we're thinking of that and how we ensure our customers' data is protected, with step-up authentication, it's really focused around in that same analogy, making sure you're providing your boarding pass at the right times when you're doing things. So just like you need to show your boarding pass when you go through the TSA gate and when you're on the plane and probably to the gate agent after you're on the plane, when you're doing certain things within Salesforce, we want to make sure you are who you actually are and your session hasn't been compromised. So when you're doing certain higher sensitivity-type actions such as I want to download 10,000 records out of my system, maybe run a report, putting that end user through another verification of, "Hey, is this actually you? Prove it with your step-up," so that we have that confidence that we can release the records. And so this kind of helps prevent some of those man-in-the-middle phishing attacks where somebody gets you to log in and then steals your credentials or steals your session in the background. So it's kind of that second or third or fourth level of protection in the runtime. Mike: Wow. James Ferguson: I think that's an important shift that's worth calling out, because it's no longer about just putting a stronger lock on the front door and making sure somebody has better passwords, or even the later stuff, the more recent stuff with verification. But it's when sensitive things happen, we need to do a little extra even once you're inside the airport, if we want to continue that analogy. And so it's a shift from that front door to moving forward. Mike: Yeah. James, help me understand that a little bit more, because I think one of the things that admins always fight is user friction. How hard is it to do something? And now we're introducing something when it could disrupt their flow of work, but it's for a good reason. James Ferguson: Exactly. I would say that we are constantly balancing that. We're constantly balancing the need for security with the friction it does. And so we aren't expecting to do every click, for example, but just when you're exporting data from a report, which is potentially pulling a large amount of data out, we want to make extra sure. We're looking at some other things in the future around maybe when you're an admin changing some security configurations, we want to make sure you are who you are. And frankly, you see this more and more even in consumer websites where sometimes you're asked. If you're going to change a phone number, change a thing, you need to go back and sort of double-proof who you are. But it is a trade-off. It is a trade-off. Mike: Yeah. It's like once you're logged in, it's, "Oh, if you're going to change." I was trying to order tacos the other day through an app and I needed to update my credit card. And then right after I did that, they're like, "And you need to put your password back in." I'm assuming that was kind of the same situation. James Ferguson: Kind of the same situation. Jay Hurst: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And the other thing I'll add to this too is on the friction point. We always have to balance that. Like James said, we don't want people to become overly frustrated and not want to use Salesforce because it has too much friction. But the reality is over the last 20 years, we've edged so far on the line of not causing any friction that we've led admins down the path of not having that understanding of what their users are doing, and really not getting into that proper security-conscious mode. So we're trying to rubber band a little bit back on the other side, introduce a little more friction right now, so that people start to think and start to build those habits of understanding when they're doing something that potentially could be considered a malicious attack, such as downloading that all-opportunities report. So starting to get customers to think through that while we are continuing to build out what we call compensating control. So the end goal here is not to provide friction and it's not to force you to do these one-time passwords for everything you need to do in the system. It's to give admins that layered capability of saying, "Well, if I have these five or six different controls I can put into place, then they can kind of compensate for one another." So where the most friction might be having to open up your email to get that one-time password to do the step-up, maybe we can compensate that through things like having a trusted IP range or already having a phishing-resistant authentication put in, or other controls that we will layer in. So we ultimately get to a posture where the admin can both reduce friction while choosing the proper set of controls for their needs. Mike: Yeah. No, that makes sense. You mentioned phishing-resistant MFA. Can you help me explain that if somebody's never heard that before? Jay Hurst: Yeah. So maybe I'm going to try and wiggle this airport analogy in. If we think way back in the day when you had your IDs, before REAL IDs and all of this, you didn't actually have good authentication on them. You might have a really bad picture, or in some cases IDs didn't have any pictures on them. They just had your name and your information, but they were accepted. Now, the problem with that is anybody could steal it if it doesn't have your picture, and they can pretend to be you. So phishing-resistant MFA is kind of that same thing. Where a normal MFA might be a one-time password on your phone where you get that push notification that says, "Hey, your code is 123456, enter that code in," that's great because it means you have to have your phone in order to get that one-time password, but it's not as secure because it's sent over SMS. It doesn't really verify that you are who you say you are. It's only that you have access to that phone. Phishing-resistant adds another layer on top of that, so it's not just over SMS or in an app. It would be through what are called passkeys or other more cryptographically secure passes. So think of your face ID, your touch ID, some of those passkey-type implementations that you might see, where it's not just getting a code, but you have to unlock a vault that has your information in it and then you provide that information out. So it's taking it from that ID that anybody can use if they just happen to steal your wallet into more of a REAL ID that also has some biometrics attached to it. So you can actually guarantee it's not just that you have the thing, but you have the thing and you are the person that should have the thing that identifies you. And so that's what we're implementing today that's starting to roll out tomorrow in production. We've already started pushing it into sandbox for admins where we want all of our administrative users across the system to enroll and use these phishing-resistant MFA capabilities, so that they're more secure. Mike: Yeah. I never even thought of that. All the time there's apps I log into and they send me a one-time passcode and I'm like, "Well, of course I have access to it." Never did I think that, "Oh, what if somebody already has access to my email, requests that code, and now they're essentially spoofing me?" And it never dawned on me until you think of, well, they're not really verifying that it's you, Mike. They're just verifying that whoever requested that code also has access to your inbox. And you're like, "Oh." Jay Hurst: Exactly. And that may not be a nice person. Mike: Right. So James, what are some questions that admins are asking online that we can kind of help answer for them, or equip them for when they get this rolled out to them? James Ferguson: They're certainly asking questions about phishing-resistant MFA versus regular MFA and the different sort of authenticators that are out there. I'll shift this around a bit. One of the things they aren't asking about, it's actually something that Jay mentioned in passing, which is the alternate controls. And for things like step-up, if you have login IP ranges on the org or on the user profile, or there's some session settings which force you to always be coming from the same IP address in your session, which is the case for most of us who are at a laptop at work or whatever it is. Those avoid step-up entirely because we have more certainty about who you are and where you're coming from. If your session's bouncing between Eastern Europe and Middle East and North Carolina and keeps hopping around, we start worrying more. So you can do some things around IP ranges, which takes that friction away from the user altogether, and so those are some of the things that I would encourage admins to look into. Now, sometimes it doesn't work because of mobile providers or other network infrastructure, but it's also potentially a low-calorie way of really sort of avoiding at least the step-up part. They'll still have the MFA requirements. Jay Hurst: And one thing I'll add to that. When we add these types of controls to ... admins are human like the rest of us and we always want to make it as frictionless and easy as possible, but we don't want to trade off the security for it. So IP ranges specifically have been a little bit of our bane for the last six months, because we have a lot of customers who have said, "Well, I will just put in the entire internet range of IPs and go 000 to 255, 255, 255, 255. And then no matter where I'm coming from, I'm not going to get challenged and it's going to be great." And that works, or worked, but it's not secure. And so we don't want to trade off security for just checking the boxes. There are reasons for us doing this. Now, with that one specifically, we have put in changes in place where we won't let you use such a broad internet range to get around it in that respect, where you actually have to put though into like, "Well, what is the internet range that I'm actually coming from and using?" And we have some friction still with that, I would say, with admins using very global deployments or salespeople that travel around a lot and using different VPNs. So we're working through that as one of those compensating controls rather than the primary control. But again, it is up to all of our admins to really think through. We don't want you to just do the check the boxes that we're telling you to check because we want you to check a box. We really want you to think about these changes and what it means to your organization, why we're actually trying to implement these, and ultimately determine what makes the most sense for you and your company. And include your security officers and your CISOs to really validate what meets the requirements that your company has, so that everybody is protected both from a security perspective and ultimately a legal perspective as well. Mike: Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, we did a security day at TDX, our team did, and we had a CISO in there and a Salesforce admin as one of the kind of breakout topics, and they were in lockstep with each other, and I've always said that. I remember the instance I was managing, once it grew beyond 10 users, I was like, "I really need to figure out what our security posture is and who's in charge of this, who sets password complexities," at the time and stuff like that, and it's not adversarial. It's you want to be in alignment with what the rest of the company's doing and also fall in line if there's a SSO requirement. Boy, I was quick to jump on that, because it also made logging in simpler for my users. Jay Hurst: 100%, and that's the other side of this. All of these things do play with SSO. If you have implemented SSO that has phishing-resistant capabilities already built into it, great. We will take advantage of that from the Salesforce side. We'll trust your provider. We'll trust that your security team has already set up what is needed for your company and we'll let you log in. So we don't want to add these additional duplicative type of controls for you, but we also recognize that a lot of our customers, maybe they're smaller customers, maybe they're not the enterprise size of Salesforce and don't have as structured of a security posture. So in those cases, we want to partner with our customers and really help them define what this should look like when they're thinking about internet security and their data in the cloud. Mike: Jay, I'm going to continue with you because James brought up a really good point. I was thinking of, "I'm going to ask him the common questions that admins are asking online." And James, you flipped the script, and it's, "Well, here are the questions that worry us that they're not asking." Jay, I'd ask kind of the same question to you, is you've seen a lot of the questions that our community's asking online. What are the questions they aren't asking that you really hoped they would ask, or you're there to provide an answer for? Jay Hurst: Yeah, I think the biggest ones, James talked about the compensating controls. That's a good one. I think a lot of our customers, as they're approaching it from the first standpoint is really they're looking at this as a Salesforce tax. They're really looking at it as like, "Oh, gosh, this is another thing Salesforce is putting me through. I don't know why. Why don't you just let me get my job done?" That type of attitude, which is completely understandable, but I do think one of the things our admins aren't seeing at that first cut is really the threat landscape that exists out there. I think if you haven't been attacked, if your org hasn't been compromised, it's very easy to fall into complacency and just think, "Everything's perfect, I'm secure, nothing's going to happen." And like everything, security and protection is a spectrum and it's a journey. You are never 100% perfectly ready for every outcome, and you also can't assume that what worked yesterday will continue to work tomorrow. So what I would love to see more of our admins and customers look through is how do I build the security and the continuing advancement of my security posture into my day-to-day, into my development scenarios, into my admin scenarios, where the first thing we should always be thinking about is, "Is this change I'm doing helping or degrading my security posture? And if it's degrading, how do I increase it? What do I do to make it better?" So I would love to get to a point where our very wonderful and vocal admins out there are also pushing us to do even more things to help protect them. What are the other controls that they're seeing across other enterprise systems that they want to take advantage of? How can Salesforce make it easier for you without lowering that security posture? How can we make it so that the friction can be lowered faster because you acknowledge the acceptance of the controls, or something like that around really getting back to a true partnership with more of our customers that I wouldn't say we've lost, but it's easy to forget about when you're focused on the headless 360s of the world or how can I get more agents into my system. And we also still have to think about, "And how do I keep it protected and managed?" Mike: Right. Yeah. I mean, it's more people in your house, but also making sure that everybody shuts the door and locks it. Jay Hurst: And wipes their feet. Mike: Right. Takes shoes off. James Ferguson: I think Jay also touches on what maybe I would consider the elephant in the room, because I think, when going back to the original question you asked in terms of what are admins asking, most of them aren't asking the why. Most of them acknowledge the value of these things and the need to do it, but they do push back on the why immediately and why under these compressed timelines and why, and sort of those kind of questions. And I will acknowledge that the rollout of some of these controls has not been as smooth as we all would've hoped, and so there's been some schedule things bouncing around from a timing perspective, and so we're definitely working on all of that. But it does play to that level of risk, and these are the things we really felt we needed to roll out sooner rather than later, and so that's why some of these timelines are compressed. I will add another, the flip side of that, to your point about what should admins be doing. We do find when we give notice, of like advanced notice of asking people to change things, they tend not to do it until the week before the enforcement date. Mike: Imagine that. Procrastination? Come on, now. James Ferguson: And so that's sort of, when our executives are looking at adoption rates or whatnot, it's sort of blunted. The desire to extend those out is blunted because, well, people are just going to wait anyways. But that said, I don't want to sort of ... We are pushing fast. We acknowledge that. We are making people a bit even uncomfortable, I would say. And we acknowledge that, but this is something, again, in the balance of the security posture we feel is important for the overall trust in the Salesforce platform and product. Mike: I mean, the one thing that I've always learned through all of the work that I've done with various teams at Salesforce is for every time you roll something out, another lock, there's always 10 people there trying to pick it, if they haven't already picked it. And so you both have mentioned that unfortunately it's compressed timelines, but it's timelines because we need to make sure that you're building locks and putting that stuff in place before people just have it to where they can blow through it, you know? Jay Hurst: Absolutely. The best defense is a good offense, I think is a very adequate app saying in this instance. We want to continue to make sure everybody is at a baseline security level, which is the phase we're in right now. It's this horizon zero of how do we get everybody to the minimum baseline, where we feel very comfortable that your data is going to be protected on the Salesforce platform? And it is painful, and it will be painful for the next couple months as these changes really roll out. Once we get there, we start thinking about what's our horizon one and our horizon two look like where we can start to add in the extra controls, give customers more levers to pull for their specific use cases, really focus on the experience around this, because I will also fully admit and not try and gloss over the fact that sometimes the wordings of things in the UX that we provide you to turn them on and turn them off is confusing and it's not as easy as it should be, and we're sacrificing some of that ease of use right now for speed of deployment. But the efforts that we have with the Salesforce Trust platform, which is an expanded group that we now have here that is purely focused on how do we not just get everybody secure, but continue to add more and more security features to make sure that Salesforce is the premier example of how an enterprise SaaS company secures their customers' data. So that is the journey we're on, and we're taking our customers with us. And as painful as it is, James and myself and the whole team here, we are looking for active feedback. We're engaging with the community on a day-to-day basis just to try and sand down these rough edges as much as we can until we can get the front door built, locked, and then we can really talk about how do we decorate our house now. Mike: Yeah. But also you mentioned, well, we're doing it and it's going to be painful. I guess I'm on the flip side of that, thinking, "Boy, if I had other applications and they're not going through this as well, that actually is more of a red flag to me," because then now I'm thinking like, "Well, do they not care as much about making sure all of my data on their platform is as secure as possible?" Jay Hurst: Absolutely. Like I said, it's a journey, not a destination. What is 100% secure today is not as secure tomorrow. With all of the new attack vectors that come out and these capabilities like Mythos and Fable and all of these really, really smart and frankly scary AI capabilities, we have to double and triple down even harder to make sure that we stay as far ahead of that as we can. Mike: Right. And as I've been reminded, security isn't always about being scary. Security is about being informed and making the right choices so that you have that protection and that understanding, which is really good. James Ferguson: It's risk management. It's risk management. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. James and Jay, I want to thank you guys for coming on and walking us through some of this. I know anytime that we offer anybody in our community, whether it's developers or architects or admins, a change, it's always extra work. But I feel like you're right there in answering the questions and helping through some of the hard parts, because I'll be honest, there's not a day that goes by that I don't learn something in security, at my current job and even when I was a Salesforce admin. Jay Hurst: Absolutely. And thank you, Mike, for helping amplify the message. One of the challenges I think we have at the product side is making sure our customers understand and get the information. We have our blog posts and our help documentation and we send out emails, but any extra we can do to megaphone this and get people aware is definitely valuable, so thank you for this opportunity. Mike: You bet. James Ferguson: And thank to all the admins who are out there who are also helping amplify this and helping support the rest of the community. It's one of the great things about Salesforce from the very beginning. It's the huge community support that exists. We couldn't do it if it was just the six PMs on my team. We need everybody involved. Mike: Yeah. And I think the part of that you take away is while I'm glad there's so many questions online that we had the idea to do this podcast, because that means there's so many people that are engaged and caring, as opposed to rolling something out and, "Hey, did anybody have any questions," and it's crickets. The reverse of that would also be kind of scary too, is there's questions because people care and because they want to understand. And also I think the one thing that I always had to do as an admin was I had to translate all of that from whatever the document said, or the podcast like this or the blog posts, to my users and to my executives, and it's a lot different once you have to take something in and digest it and then be ready for a Q&A. So there's always more to learn, but thank you guys for coming on. We'll definitely have to have you back on. Jay Hurst: Sounds great. Mike: Talk more security. James Ferguson: Appreciate it. Looking forward to it. Mike: Big thanks to Jay and James for helping us understand MFA step-up, phishing-resistant authentication, and the role admins play in protecting business systems. Now, of course, we know security is a shared responsibility, and admins are right in the middle of making it real for users, executives and, well, everybody in the organization. So be sure to listen, subscribe and share this episode out, and work through those security changes. You got this. Don't worry. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  
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  How MuleSoft Helps Salesforce Admins Build Better Agents 09.07.2026 28min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mofeyi Oluwalana, Director of Product Management at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about MuleSoft, Flow, Agentforce, and what happens when agents need to take action beyond Salesforce. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mofeyi Oluwalana. MuleSoft creates agent-friendly business processes Agentforce can be truly transformative for our business processes, but sometimes it's easier said than done—especially when multiple platforms are involved. That's why I sat down with Mofeyi Oluwalana, Director of Product Management for MuleSoft. As Mofeyi explains, a problem many businesses run into when they're trying to implement AI is how to enable an agent to engage with something like a process that starts on a payment platform, goes through an OMS, and then ends up with a request to a warehouse for shipping. You can't just hand them the APIs and expect them to figure out the rest. That's where MuleSoft comes in. It gives you the building blocks you need to codify your workflows into something an agent can understand. Data mapping for real-time app integration Building an agent-friendly business process begins with data mapping. What do you need and where is it located? You also need to understand the triggers that kick off each part of the process. Does it start with a Slack message, or when an order is created? Often, these types of business processes don't start in the Salesforce ecosystem. MuleSoft allows you to translate these business requirements into APIs that an agent can use to take action. How to present to stakeholders As a product manager, Mofeyi frequently gives presentations to stakeholders, so I wanted to know if she had any advice for admins. "The most important thing when I walk into any room, regardless of the stakeholder, is who are they and what do they care about? Your ability to persuade and influence is largely due to your understanding of the three things that the people that you're talking to care about and how you align what you're talking about with those three things," she says. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Mofeyi for more about MuleSoft and mapping your business processes. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast for a new episode every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: How MuleSoft Helps Admins Get the Most out of Agentforce Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Mofeyi on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're joined by Mofeyi Oluwalana, product management director at Salesforce to talk about MuleSoft, Flow, Agentforce, and what happens when agents need to take action beyond Salesforce. Now, for Salesforce admins, this conversation matters because agents are only as useful as the data, the actions, the permissions, and the business logic they can safely reach. So Mofeyi's going to explain to us why integrations are not just about moving data from one system to another. They're about helping Salesforce connect to the real processes your business depends on. We'll talk about the questions that admins should ask when working with other platform owners, how to think about triggers and data mapping and why business context is so important when you're designing actions for humans and agents. So give this episode a listen, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, share it with another Salesforce admin who's maybe thinking about how Salesforce could connect to the rest of their business. And with that, let's get Mofeyi on the podcast. So Mofeyi, welcome to the podcast. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Thank you so much. Mike: I'm excited. We don't do a whole lot of episodes outside a core platform. And I know my Salesforce admins ... My ... The Salesforce admins of the world work everywhere and especially now with Agentforce and agents and really just the whole bringing people together and giving a complete view of data, integrating data and working with MuleSoft and tools like that are super important. So I'm glad to have you on. I'm glad we got connected, but let's start off and learn a little bit about you. What was your path to Salesforce and becoming a product management director? Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yes. So I started at Salesforce a little over four years ago. I actually came through the APM program, also known as the Associate Product Manager Program. It's a two-year rotational program for folks coming out of university, getting their start in product. So I was able to come in through that program. I did three rotations all across Salesforce. I spent some time in Commerce Cloud working on how to run promotions on Black Friday. Mike: Oh, holy cow. Mofeyi Oluwalana: And I spent a lot of time in experience services, thinking about how we can make it easier for marketers to build nice looking emails. And I ultimately landed in MuleSoft, which is where I continued working with the MuleSoft team on how to make it easier for our customers to connect the systems that they need to, both for traditional use cases, but also for the agentic ones as well. Mike: Yeah. It's funny, for the longest time in my career, I worked retail and the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday was always the busiest day. And then I got into tech and I was like, "I don't have to work Black Friday." Mofeyi Oluwalana: Guess what? [inaudible 00:03:17]. Mike: And then realized that like, "Oh man, I was a retail associate. There's still computers that have to be had." So I have a soft spot in my heart for all of the people that on Black Friday have to sweat it out and make sure that servers don't go down so that checks and barcodes and everything can happen on the other end. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. I never realized how complex it could mean to calculate hundreds of thousands of carts when there were promotions running on Black Friday, but certainly it's more complicated than one may think. Mike: Right. And then there's people like me that add stuff to a cart and I'll come back to it a little bit later like, no, there's somebody ... You're using up the last bit of ... I don't know. He probably doesn't know that. And then I'm also old school retail when you used to have to verify checks and put them through little check readers and now everything's a credit card or a tap or thumbprint. Mofeyi Oluwalana: All of the above. Mike: All of the above. But it's all of the above because we're integrating data and we're doing stuff with MuleSoft. So I threw together some questions, but let's start off with where should admin start when thinking about products like Flow and MuleSoft and Agentforce together? Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. The journey with MuleSoft starts the moment that your agent wants to do anything outside of Salesforce. I think MuleSoft is the connector, so to speak. If you have data that your agents need to reach in your ERP, if you have actions your agents need to be able to take with your payment provider, how exactly will they be able to do that? Now when agents and agentic technology became a thing, a lot of people were of this opinion that, well, agents are smart enough to just understand platform APIs or where agents can read the specifications, figure out the commands that they need to execute and do all the things that they need to do to be successful. We very quickly realized that agents are really smart, but at the end of the day, they're limited by the information that they know and the tools that they have access to. So it's not sufficient to just give your agents a platform API spec. That's not going to cut it. Your agents need integrations and APIs that they can directly invoke that map to your business logic. They need this because not every organization operates the same. For one retail provider, creating an order is very different from other retail providers. And understanding that business vocabulary is really important when building agents that actually bring value. And that's really where MuleSoft and Flow come into the picture. You have actions that your agency to be able to take in order to execute a certain business process. Well, that action is really just an API and we serve those APIs so your agents are able to do those things. Mike: Yeah. I've always thought of Josh who's on my team keeps us in check with helping us understand stuff. And what you just described would be like as if you brought somebody new on and said, "Well, here's a phone and a phone book. And if you have problems, the phone number's in the phone book." And the agent's the same way. If you're just saying, "Here's all the specs and the APIs you can call, go figure it out." It's almost like handing them this giant phone book and just saying, "Well, you're smart. You'll figure it out." Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. Exactly. And the thing is that for a retailer, creating an order may not just be creating that order record. Creating an order may be, oh, I create the order record and then I send a notification out via email that says, "Hey, this is your order." And then after that, I create an invoice. There are a number of steps that happen. And how do you codify those steps? Well, it's not enough to just give an agent, again, the phone book and the numbers. It's much better and much more reliable to give them the actual workflow or the API they can use to execute that entire process. Mike: Yeah. Now, one thing that I've run into, so back when I was doing some integrations as an admin, we had different third party tools that were being used. One thing that I didn't know to ask ... And I'm hoping you can help Salesforce admins like, here's the questions you need to ask. We had an instance and we need to connect it to our financial backend, which ran not on Salesforce. I had to find the owner of that, which I didn't know existed. The other thing I didn't know to ask was I didn't know what to ask. And so as we work through different scenarios, you brought up like, well, they want to take the cart and order the stuff. The orders could be fulfilled in a different system. There could be a warehouse system. What are some of the questions that when the admin's sitting down with a business owner and they're saying, "Here's what I want in Salesforce and I'd really like to be able to pull up the orders." And the admin's like, "Okay, now I need MuleSoft because I need to integrate another system and I got to go talk to that systems' owner." What are some of the questions they should ask and what is some of the information they need to provide so that they can start setting up that relationship? Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. I think it first starts with defining what data are you actually looking for? A large part of building integrations between these two systems is I have some data in the financial system. I have my CRM data in Salesforce. How do those two things map together? So I think the first step is what data are you looking for? And what is the mapping between what you're trying to do from a CRM perspective with whatever may be happening in that financial system? So to me, it starts with the data. I think the next question to ask is what is the trigger? It starts off this process. Is it someone sending a message in a Slack channel? Is it this order being created within your ERP? What is it that triggers this process to happen? You build the trigger, then you identify what the data mapping is between the source being that financial system and the target. And that's really how you get towards that working integration. Mike: Now, when I sit down with another platform owner and I talk about using MuleSoft, we can bring ... And so this is where you're going to quickly hear Mike's knowledge run out of gas because here's where Mike's knowledge hits the wall. But we can bring that data in and it can be like a pane of glass. We can just view that data or we could actually copy that data over so that we can use it in reports. And then we could also extend that conversation with the platform owner and say, "Well, if somebody wants to change something, they could change that in Salesforce and then Salesforce with MuleSoft can push that data change back to that platform." How'd I do? Mofeyi Oluwalana: I think you're almost there. Mike: Okay. Fill me in because what I don't know is what I don't know and I feel like there's other admins that may not know this as well. Mofeyi Oluwalana: I think the best way to think about MuleSoft is that real time app integration layer. So not necessarily the data that you want to live in Salesforce. Getting that unified customer view is really important. And so you'll need the data connectors in place to get data from external systems into Salesforce. That is one use case and one that Data Cloud solves really well. The problem that MuleSoft solves really well in tandem with Agentforce is the agent needs to take real time action. Again, so let's say we're going back to the retail example where I create an order. If order management doesn't happen in Salesforce, creating an order doesn't necessarily mean starting that process within the Salesforce ecosystem. I just want to be able to kick off that process with my OMS, my warehouse, my shipping provider. Then in that case, it's real time app integration. It's using the APIs that MuleSoft has to be able to kick off that workflow and that process using your agents. So it's a little bit different than moving data just from one place to another. Mike: No. I think that's also very important because companies have spent money on those systems. And I remember when I was sitting down with our finance team, they're like, "Well, if this data lives here and in Salesforce, what's the source of truth?" And we set it up so that we were just viewing the data because we really wanted sources of truth within the organization. But sometimes the user lives and dies within one interface and where that data comes from, we don't need that exposed to them. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Exactly. And I think it's the use case for consolidating data into one place is a little bit different from the use case of making sure that your agents can take action. And so I think as part of that rationalization that admins and IT teams have to do is what data do I need to drive what? And what actions do my agents need in order to be successful? And this part of that then can separate it into those two camps and then move forward with the tools that help them do so. Mike: Cool. Now, when you connect MuleSoft with other systems, does the admin need to ask for, can you provide a certain API? That's how it's set up, right? Or walk me through it because I've never set it up and I feel like I'm completely happy being the host of the podcast that asks the questions that admins are like, "Oh, I'm so glad he asked that because I didn't know to ask that question and I didn't want to look stupid in front of my IT people." Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. So I think from the business side, we set the requirements about, okay, this is what I need. This is the process that I need done. These are the steps that should happen. This is what should trigger that. You do that definition. Then you can work with the IT team or the API developer to actually make that happen. Now the API developer has access to a number of connectors within MuleSoft that enable them to build these APIs and integrations without relying on what is the API specification for my OMS system or what is the API specification for my [inaudible 00:15:07] system? There are connectors that have a ton of different actions that you can orchestrate within a MuleSoft integration to get a certain job done. So one example that I like to use is the Salesforce connector. The Salesforce connector has a ton of different triggers. Let's say when a new object is created or on when a record is modified that can trigger the integration. The Salesforce connector also has a bunch of actions or operations. So I can create a record in Salesforce. I can delete a record in Salesforce. I can create a topic in Salesforce. All of the different actions that you can execute through Salesforce APIs extrapolate it into a connector so that it's easier to build and then manage these integrations. So the API developer is in charge of translating those business requirements into the integration composed of those connectors that allow you to achieve exactly that. Mike: Gotcha. Boy, there's a lot. It feels like there's a lot to it and we make it look so simple in demos. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. I will say it's much easier looking at a screen and hearing an audio podcast of what this really is. But I like to think of them as MuleSoft gives the tools, those building blocks. You can compose those building blocks in a certain order to create a workflow. Those are the integrations that you can use and your agents can also use to take action. Mike: Yeah. I always think of it as admins are managing users and agents and agents are just like users. They have to have instructions and guardrails and guidelines for how to operate and what they can and can't do same way that people have as well. I'd love to know, so as a product manager, you got into the program. How has being a product manager helped you understand the product, but also given you a different perspective of working through explaining different customer stories or use cases? Mofeyi Oluwalana: I would say the best, and I'm obviously biased, but the best part about being a product manager is just the sheer amount of data points that you see. One of the things that I think is really important as part of being a product manager is meeting with as many customers as you possibly can because it's through those customer conversations that they're very clear themes that you can draw, not only of how people use the product, but what the product doesn't quite solve for yet. And so going through those conversations has helped me not only understand those customer pain points better, but then understand the things that we need to do in the product to make it even easier for our customers to use. Mike: Yeah. No. I often feel when I was exposed for a brief six months as a consultant that a lot of the pain points customers have always felt the same. I was like, "Man, they have the same problem that XYZ has." And at the end of the day, you'd look at all the customers you manage and you're like, "They have these five problems." And then brand new somebody would come in and you're like, "And you have completely different use case and requirements and they don't fall into those same five problems that I've been solving all day, which is nice." So I'd be curious, as admins are looking more and more at building ... They build agents and apps on the platform and they extend the platform and they use MuleSoft. What are things that you're thinking about as a product manager for, wow, I have to be a year out or two years out. How should admins be thinking about their building and management of the Salesforce platform as a product? Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. I think the most important thing is not just building for where we are today, but building for what's coming. I think one thing that agents in AI technology has taught us is that the technology market is changing so fast. It's going to be a new model. It's going to be some new capability that you want to be able to leverage. And in order to do so, the foundation and the platform that you're building on has to be interoperable. It has to be able to withstand some of those changes that you want to make. The example I always like to give is if having to change a model is going to disrupt your operations, that is an issue. And we know that is an issue because LLM models, a new one comes up every day, another one is deprecated every other week. So I think the most important thing thinking about the platform is how do I make the platform resilient and flexible so that as these new capabilities come into play, I'm actually able to use them and really take advantage of them within my organizations. Mike: That's very good advice. I'm just going to guess and maybe I'm wrong and we can move on. As a product manager, you probably do a lot of presenting both to customers and probably internally. I know admins have to do that as well. What would be some advice you would have for admins that are presenting either a new solution or proposing something to their stakeholders? Mofeyi Oluwalana: The most important thing when I walk into any room, small or large, regardless of the stakeholder is who are they and what do they care about? It's easy to get lost as a product manager. It's very easy to get lost in, I actually think this is an amazing idea and I talked to 10 customers and I know it's going to be valuable for them. But your ability to persuade and influence largely due to your understanding of the three things that the people that you're talking to care about and helping them align what you're talking about to those three things. A great example is that when you talk to your COO, I will guess that it will come down to how much does it cost the organization and how much money is it going to make me? So talking to your COO is not the same conversation that you'll have with support. Who cares about, okay, is this going to make it easier for me to support my customers? Does this make us more reliable? So you need to change the delivery to really match the things that you're being evaluated on when you're presenting to an audience, when you're presenting to internal stakeholders and external ones as well. Mike: That's really good advice because I can tell you right now I'm guilty as charged of walking into a room thinking I have the answer and this is the most important thing that they're ever going to want to hear and forgetting that they probably had their own goals and I just blew right past them and kept talking about something else entirely. Bad. So one thing that I find talking with people that work in tech is we always have hobbies or things that we like to do on the side that are very tactile. I know I've interviewed a product manager that smelted pewter. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Wow. Mike: That's the extreme case. I always bring it up because it sounds interesting and who hasn't walked past some sort of pewter chessboard with its little figurines and thought that would be cool except I'm not going to pay a few hundred dollars for it. I'm wondering if there's anything interesting that you have as a hobby that you would love to share with people. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Unfortunately, I'm not nearly as interesting as the guest that you just mentioned. Mike: It's not a contest. It's not a contest. Mofeyi Oluwalana: It feels like one. Just kidding. I won't say I'm tactile as I'd like to just stay mobile. As a lot of the folks who work in tech, we sit on our butts all day looking at computer screens. So wherever possible, I like to just go outside, get some fresh air, do some movement, whether that be running, yoga or similar. That's my anchor. Again, not as interesting, but it helps me. It regulates me nevertheless. Mike: It's still super valuable. I was just talking with a coworker the other day about our grandparents and so-and-so's grandparents lived to be 89 and they were outside in the sun all day and they had bacon and eggs for breakfast. And I thought to myself, "Well, yeah. And then they probably worked it off all day because everybody was thin back then. And the worst thing they could do is sit down at a desk like I do." And so who would've thought that there was ever a need for a treadmill desk? I think that back to the future quote, "You run for fun." Mofeyi Oluwalana: Exactly. Mike: So no, that's really good. And what's great, I've had a few colleagues as well take calls while they're walking. I think the benefit of being in tech is that you can do calls like that and work through. As long as you're not working through maybe architecture diagrams for Microsoft integration, that would probably be pretty bad. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Or if it's windy outside and you don't have a great mic. I'm also a big proponent of just walking outside and taking as many meetings as I can moving. Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. No. Well, I would just say windy at all because I have yet to find a mic that doesn't make it sound like you're walking through a NASA wind tunnel. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Wait, that's the next startup. Mike: I'm telling you. The fuzzies that come on mics, there's got to be something better. There's got to be something better. Mofeyi Oluwalana: I agree. I agree. Mike: I don't need to have a big mustache just to talk into the microphone. Well, it was great chatting with you. I learned a lot. I feel like I tried to ask some of the silly questions that I know admins would want to ask. There's probably plenty of admins out there that have done some MuleSoft integrations, but I know when I had to sit down with other platform owners and be like, "I need your thing to plug into Salesforce and I don't know how to make you do that, but you figure it out." I always wanted to ask the silly questions so that when they sit down, they know what to say and can have a better relationship because in every aspect of the sense, there's other platform owners within organizations and they're all trying to do right by each other. So that being said, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing that with us and we'll have to come back and talk more MuleSoft maybe after Dreamforce for sure. Mofeyi Oluwalana: Yeah. Thank you so, so much for having me. And again, I'm biased obviously, but always love talking the world of MuleSoft and integrations because it truly feels even more relevant than ever with agents and the technology. Mike: Absolutely. Big thanks to Mofeyi for joining us and really helping make MuleSoft flow and Agentforce feel more approachable. I wasn't afraid to ask the questions that you shouldn't be afraid to ask. The big takeaway for admins when agents need to act outside of Salesforce, your understanding of the business process, the data, the triggers, and the right system of truth matters now more than ever. That's how you keep Salesforce accurate, current, trusted, and useful for the business. Now be sure to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins podcast. If you haven't already, share this episode. Hey, share it with your team. And then keep asking those questions that help your org connect the right systems in the right way. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  How Can Salesforce Admins Find Simple Agentforce Use Cases? 02.07.2026 30min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kacie Molina, Salesforce Consultant at Kawaii Cloud. Join us as we chat about how admins can start small with Agentforce and still make a big impact. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kacie Molina. Why you should start small with Agentforce With all the capabilities Agentforce brings to Salesforce, it's easy to dream big. Big projects, however, require major organizational investments in time, planning, and execution. My guest this week, Kacie Molina, has some simple advice for her clients who want to get started with Agentforce: start small. Go back to the basics of listening for pain points and building solutions. Once you start piling up small wins and meaningful changes, it'll be easier to get organizational buy-in for something big and bold. Admins should listen for problems users already have Agentforce solutions don't always have to be some sort of major business process overhaul. Those types of changes require layers of approvals, budgeting, and business analysis. You end up spending as much time rethinking the business process as you do worrying about executing everything in Salesforce. Instead, look for simple use cases. For example, implementing an agent summary field to help users easily see what's going on with an account without having to scroll through a bunch of records. "All of those little use cases that maybe are too specific for a flow," Kacie says, "we can solve them with Agentforce and natural language." And over time, the simple solutions add up. Keeping AI work inside Salesforce supports better security Even if you're not already using Agentforce, people in your organization are already using AI. The problem is that they're often exporting data over to their LLM of choice, which creates all sorts of security vulnerabilities. That's why Kacie recommends enabling an agent to assist your users. You can use your model of choice, and it'll be grounded in your Salesforce data and protected by your security configuration. "It shows users that there's a safe place to get the answers they want without having to worry about breaking company policies," Kacie says.  Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Kacie about how to start small with Agentforce. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce 360 Blog Post: From the Farm to Flows: How One Trailblazer Built a Tech Career from Scratch Kacie's post on LinkedIn Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Kacie on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Kacie Molina about how admins can start small with Agentforce and still make a big impact. Kacie shares why the best AI ideas often come from listening closely to everyday user friction. The scattered preferences, repeated questions, messy exports, and those tiny gaps that slow teams down. We'll talk about building agents that are grounded in Salesforce powered by Flow and designed with trust and security in mind. Because the next generation of admins isn't just adding features, they're orchestrating safer, smarter systems where humans and agents work together. So give it a listen, click that subscribe button, share this episode with an admin who is ready to make AI even more practical for their users. And let's get Kacie on the podcast. So Kacie, welcome to the podcast. Kacie Molina: Thanks, Mike. I am super excited to be here today. Mike: Well, I'm excited to get you on. I was a rare occasion scrolling through LinkedIn and I came across a post that you had put up and it mentioned the AgentforceNow workshop that I think you were in one of mine or you'd been to one. Kacie Molina: I was in one of yours and it was done extremely well, might I say. Mike: You were. Oh, good. Well, I try hard. And you're talking about coming up with ideas and you'd had some ideas for agents and I thought, "Man, I just think we need some sort of agent brainstorm podcast." And so that's why I wanted to get you on. But we're going to talk about that. But before we get started, tell me a little bit about yourself, like how you got into Salesforce, what you do, all of the fun stuff. Kacie Molina: Absolutely. So I grew up in more rural USA, an Amish type community, so horse and buggy. Think maybe Little House on the Prairie, early 1800s. So did a lot of horse training and cheese making with my sister, tended gardens and animals. So my skills when I became an adult were fairly traditional. So as I was trying to translate, "What do I use my skills for?" I started nannying, childcare, and then I started my own sewing business. And during that phase, I was actually so bad at running a business, so I knew how to sew, but I didn't really know the business part. So keeping track of contacts and invoicing people on time was such a disaster for me. It was all little handwritten notes. So I was listening to podcasts and I heard about Salesforce. I logged into Trailhead and fell in love with the gamified learning. So it was kind of no turning back for me. I got my admin certification in about three months, landed a junior admin role shortly after. And it's been about five years and 10 certifications since then of working on all kinds of projects from in-house to consulting. And I just think like Flows, all think Salesforce. It's so much fun. And in the day and age of Agentforce, even more fun nowadays. So that's kind of how I stumbled onto the Salesforce path and it has been way too much fun. Mike: Oh man, I bet we could do a whole podcast on the skills of sewing and how they carry over to Salesforce. Kacie Molina: We probably could, although I do think Salesforce might be a little more fun. One, because you don't get poked by needles. That's a huge thing for me. I don't even like going to the doctor and getting poked by a needle and I did that for a profession. So I got poked all the time and it's much less frustrating than trying to deal with broken sewing machines. Salesforce kind of works pretty well. And when you're dealing with old-fashioned sewing machines, not so much. Mike: I could imagine. Yeah. Needleforce, that's what we'll call it. Kacie Molina: Needleforce. Mike: I bet that exists. I think that would be so cool if there was quilting or sewing at Dreamforce. Because I see people on the plane all the time with those knitting needles and stuff. I would love to have the patience to do it. Kacie Molina: It definitely takes a lot of patience. So actually, interestingly enough, when I was just getting into Salesforce, Mallory Donahue, she's such an amazing person I look up to. She was getting into Salesforce at the same time as me and she was also a seamstress. So I think there might be more sewing and needle people out there in the Salesforce world than you might think. Mike: Yep. Well, this is the diversion that Mike's squirrel brain gets on too quickly. But let's talk about ... I was so intrigued by your post, because I feel like even in the workshop that we do, the AgentforceNow workshop that I hosted, I think I'm back sometime in October because I have some vacation in July. We build an agent for Pronto, which is a food service company and it handles questions and cases and order issues. I mean, I feel like by the end of it, it's pretty complex because we've already built some Flows. There's some Apex actions that are in there. And so I feel like we're getting nitty-gritty into it, but your post kind of almost felt like a breadth mint of like, "Hey, have you ever just thought about asking your users five questions or whatever and then turning on Agentforce and giving it on action to do?" Kacie Molina: Yeah. I really like the workshop, because it gets into the more complex things and you see how the broader, the depth Agentforce can go to. But for me, when I started looking at ... Okay. So I serve multiple clients, and a lot of people are excited about Agentforce and I talk to a lot of admins about it as well, but where do you get started? For me, it was the really simple, small things where people I feel like nowadays more and more are expecting to be able to use natural language. And you don't really need to build a crazy, big agent that takes multiple sprints to complete. You can turn one on fairly simply to answer a couple simple questions and people can start to see that magic work from even a small start. Mike: Yeah. And I feel like, boy, this is me just thinking of that post, but you had really good ideas around not just what I would call the hard aspects of business, which is like invoicing and questions and emails, but also kind of like the soft aspects of business, which is just asking Agentforce to coach you that day or just kind of simple questions that you could give it that would maybe make you as a salesperson or customer service person feel better about what you're doing. Kacie Molina: Right. I do. I think it's really cool that you kind of came back to the small ideas and I'm actually very impressed you found that post because I feel like not many people see my LinkedIn post. Mike: You mentioned me in it, so I got that. But I mean, to be fair though, the small little detail, little things like that are actually kind of the bigger hooks to look for. Kacie Molina: They are in there. To me, they're everywhere. So bigger agent ideas, like there's a couple things that can be intimidating about them. One, they take a lot of time. Two, you're always looking for that big idea that is going to wow the whole company potentially. And then it also entails potentially budget and project approval, which you need to get approval for most things that you do anyhow. But the small ideas are something that you don't really need to take a whole ton of business analysis, say, to get started on it. It's something that you could know off the start like, "Oh, I see my users asking about this in a support ticket frequently." So one example recently I had was somebody who said, "We have these client preferences and they're kind of scattered in the system and they're a little hard to find. So is there any way you could summarize them?" And I said, "I think this would be a really good use case for an agent summary field." So you can build the prompt and pull things together. It's the little things like that when you're listening to details that you might not have to go build a Flow or build something so specific for. And that would be my old use cases like Flow all day, every day. But all of those little use cases that maybe are too specific for a Flow to say, "Oh, we'll grab this and explain it this way." It comes out in Agentforce as the natural language and I think that is a huge thing for users that they're looking to see something that feels like them or feels human so they can click onto a record. Say they go to a client account and then they can see at a glance like, "Oh, this person prefers this and this and they don't like this." And that's much easier than scrolling through a bunch of records. Mike: Yeah. I've been so busy building agents that I forgot about some of the other prompt builder and the grounded fields that we had. I used to call them sparkle fields, I think like that, because they have little sparkles next to it when you can automatically have Agentforce kind of fill in based on a prompt and that's exactly it. I mean, I remember rolling out chatter and I did it probably the wrong way and I turned it on for the whole company and the whole company was like 50 users, but I didn't give them any use cases. And if I was now to go back, I would've picked a team of five people and said, "I'm going to turn it on for you and here's a use case to use it for." And I feel like your post was just ... It just made me feel less burdened to come up with these extravagant big ideas to use an agent for and it was more like, "No, you can just have the agent totally answer your front door and be like, 'Hi, we're not home right now,' and that's it." And I was like, "Oh." Because I feel like admins are sometimes sitting down and thinking, "How do I make an agent that answers the questions and closes a $6 million deal?" Kacie Molina: Right. And then there's a bunch of, in my mind, you have more selling at that point. So if you're coming up with a new idea, then you kind of have to pitch it to the company. But something I like about the small ideas I've been picking up on lately is that it's kind of puts us back into our usual admin position where we're hearing problems and then we're offering solutions. So instead of coming up with a new business flow, start to finish of a new agent that can do some flashy thing, which is also extremely cool. You can also take something where somebody says like, "Oh, I export this data and ask ChatGPT about it. Anyhow, I'm already using AI." And so you can start to hear use cases where you're not coming up with something new, you're just solving something they're already doing in a more secure way. And that's another big idea for me is security within Salesforce is so much more attainable for admins. When people start exporting data and loading it up into an LLM that you don't have control over, that's a lot more scary for as an admin than if they can just use it from within the system. Mike: Yeah. I mean, when you and I talked before we pressed record, you even brought that up. If you're an admin and you're in meetings and maybe it's not even a Salesforce meeting and you hear people bring up a different LLM, what in your mind goes off and what do you think of to do as next steps if you were to help coach admins who are in that position? Kacie Molina: Something that's really incredible about Salesforce that maybe not everybody knows that they haven't played around with Agentforce yet is that you can use customized models. So it's not like you only have availability to use the Salesforce model. There's also, you can bring in different like ChatGPT if you like their open AI's model, you can use those different AI plugins within Agentforce. So that's something that goes off my head is if you like something, you don't have to totally forsake that for something new. So you can feel at home within Salesforce with the different AI models. And also, if you're using different AI models, which just like constantly goes off in my brain is that you can do that with way fewer clicks and way fewer security risks if you do it from within Salesforce without having to potentially like fudge on permissions or fudge who has access to it. So that's something that goes off in my head is like, "Oh, if you're doing this with AI already, you can just pull that into Salesforce and then you have even more data." So you are kind of limited when you export data to what the LLM can see. But when you have it within Salesforce, you have so much expansive broader options that you can use. So you can pull in different records and different things from here and there and you don't have to be so specific in one point in time. You can re-ask again in 10 minutes if you have information flowing in. So for me, it's like the different LLMs that are available within Salesforce and data availability is huge. Mike: Yeah. I mean, plus once you export that data and take it out of the platform, for many companies, you're already violating security because that data is housed in Salesforce for a reason and it's not meant to be used elsewhere. Kacie Molina: Yeah, that's a big risk I think with AI. Most companies I think are using it, whether it's an approved tool or not. So when you even enable to me a basic agent in a Salesforce or it shows users, "Hey, there's a safe place where I can get the answers that I want and I don't have to worry about breaking company policies to get the data I need." Because we are in a fast-paced world and I know some users, they really do need to get answers that maybe they can't get within Salesforce today. So they're exporting data and getting their answers with an AI elsewhere. But if they can have that easily accessible and it's safe to use, then I think that enables both admins to feel safer about their org and the users to save clicks, save time and get a better answer Mike: Absolutely. Back to that workshop, I'd love to know your perspective. So we talk about agents and subagents and even in that workshop we create a subagent to handle, I think it's returns and refunds, or order issues and refunds. I'm trying to remember it without remembering it. When you're working with customers or talking with companies about using Agentforce, do you even talk about agents and subagents, or do you just kind of like, "Here's the magic and I'm going to build everything behind the curtain"? Kacie Molina: I usually don't bring up the different agents and subagents and I guess it depends who your stakeholder is. If there's somebody who's more admin-minded and very inquisitive, I would potentially bring it up. But most of the stakeholders, I'm working with bring-me problems and expect me to be the expert and bring them solutions and they don't really care about the very cool details about agents and subagents I think are so fun to talk about. They just want to see the magic on the end. So for me, it's kind of like Flows. I kind of relate most things back to Flows when I'm learning how to code or anything. It all comes back to Flows for me because Flows are magic and they're so much fun. A lot of people don't care if you call sub-Flows or you have different components in the Flow. They just want to know when X happens, they see the screen and then magic happens in the background. And I think agents are kind of the same way where they're really cool to see the backend for people who care, but you can also talk to stakeholders at a higher level without them needing to know that detail. Mike: So you talk a lot about Flows. How important was it for you when Agentforce came out that a lot of the power behind what it could do its actions are powered by Flow? Kacie Molina: Oh, that was huge for me because it feels like it brings the control back to the admin. So I definitely wasn't the most happy, quick adopting of AI when it first came out. I was definitely suspicious and I love my Flows and I love doing things manually. So I was definitely suspicious of AI in general and I've learned to really love it. And part of that is being empowered to do tasks on the backend. So you have the agents that do all of this, we'll say agent magic in the background, but then there's also the pieces that you can build out manually in Flow so you have control over what information you're pulling, what you're feeding to the agent, that way you get the predictive and answers that you want. Mike: Yeah. And even the builder, I feel like that the new agent builder feels like Flow Builder, because, well, there's also variables in there, which still worry me. Kacie Molina: I do like the UI better. Mike: I'm still not the best at better building Flows. I don't know why my Flow confidence is low, but maybe that shouldn't have rhymed, but yeah, my Flow confidence is low. Kacie Molina: I feel like you're probably much more of a Flow expert than you're letting on. I will say though, the new UI gave me a pretty big boost. So the old UI wasn't quite as intuitive or friendly and that's something I really wanted to post on LinkedIn about as people who maybe like me, they got their certifications and started doing their Agentblazer statuses on Salesforce when it was earlier. And then when you come back and you see the new UI and ease of use and having things like variables where you feel more comfortable like a Flow, all of a sudden I was like, "Oh, I can really do this this time. This makes so much more sense." Mike: Yeah. And the fact ... I mean, we don't get into it with the workshop, but I'd love to know, have you ... So the one thing I want to do is I'd love to have an agent help me build an agent. Have you done that? Kacie Molina: Only for testing. So I haven't done a real life agent building an agent yet, but I did some demo examples just because I wanted to double down on the workshop of how it worked and it really is incredible that you can, one, even if you start, like the agent isn't building the agent yet and you hit an error. In the workshop, I think intentionally you had a couple things that would error out and we'd have to go fix. That way you get very comfortable with fixing things and throughout the agent, you can- Mike: Oh no, I think they threw that in the workshop just to make Mike sweat. Kacie Molina: They might have done that too. Mike: I know they didn't. I'm sure the people that built the workshop listened to the podcast, but I know they didn't, but let me tell you, the first time I had to go into that, I practiced for two days going into script builder. I was like, "Here we go. We're going to do code and we're going to do code in front of a thousand people." And then I forgot my quotes. And I remember half the people in the workshop were like, "Mike, quotes, and then it'll work." And I was like, "Okay, cool. So you can tell that I'm not used to this a lot." Kacie Molina: I thought personally it was intentional because it was really helpful for me, because I was kind of just playing along on the side by myself and when I hit the error, I put it into the agent and it found the error, it found the line and it told me exactly what to fix and where to fix it. I think you can even say like, "Do this yourself." For me, I wanted to get hands on and go make the change, but it can actually implement the change if you want it to if you approve that. So I was really impressed with that and I thought the error was intentional, but that was super fun to see, "Oh, it can help me when I hit errors." And also with the coding part, when you see the backend, I thought that was really comforting as well. So I'm not a coder. I don't really know Apex very well. I can kind of read it. But even with Flows, when you get, this might get a little technical, but when you get into the Headless kind of Salesforce build and you have everything pulled into an IDE and you see everything in the background, when I saw that for agents, I was like, "Oh, this makes sense." So you can see the front end, like the pretty UI, then you can go into the back end and see the code drivers and be able to change granular things. So that's another thing I really liked about the new UI is it's so easy to switch back and forth. Mike: Yeah. I'm with you. I actually, because of that workshop, I think I've gotten better at just reading. I'll equate it to a foreign language. I took a lot of German in high school and I can kind of read German or listen to German TV. I don't know specifically what's going on, but I got a general idea and I feel like I'm the same way with code. I'm like, "I don't know specifically all these lines, but I know here's the inputs and here's the outputs and here's what I'm looking for." I can navigate, but I don't delve too deep far in. Kacie Molina: Right. I want to be writing it from scratch, but I can see what's going on. Mike: Oh, no. No. If they said, "Mike, you're in prison until you can write code," I'd be in prison for a while. Kacie Molina: Me too. Me too. I've tried to learn a couple times and it is on my to-do list. It's just Flows are so much fun and you can do so much in Salesforce without knowing how to code that you can skate by for a while and not really have to learn. So that is where I'm at. Mike: Yeah. You mentioned Headless. So let's talk about that for a second. I'd love to know some of your ideas for Headless. First of all, explain Headless 360, I think that's what we call it, Headless 360 to a Salesforce admin who's never heard it before. Kacie Molina: Ooh, this could be fun. So Headless to me means you're working from Salesforce kind of from the back end instead of the pretty face of Salesforce where you're normally logging in to Salesforce and updating settings within the Salesforce browser. So Headless, you're kind of looking at a developer tool. So I think Headless has probably been around for a while if you really wanted it, but it wasn't nearly as accessible. So there's older tools like VS Code where you can pull down the metadata from the org and you can see like the backend of Flows, which is actually pretty cool. The first time I saw Flow in a code editor, my mind was blown. I was like, "What? It looks so different. This is kind of crazy." And now I can go in and bulk edit and it's very handy. So the Headless 360 is really, I think, enabling admins to do that and not needing coding skills. So you can really use natural language, kind of like I was talking about earlier, where you can enable basic prompts and people can use natural language. You can develop Salesforce, even like Flows, fields configuration from never logging into Salesforce. So you're doing it all from the back end. And of course, you want to log in at the end to make sure it looks good. But Headless is really being able to look at the metadata in its kind of raw form and update it and manipulate it and then push it back into Salesforce and boom, you have the magic happen. Mike: Gotcha. I think it's interesting. I mean, I know we're going to have a lot of really good sessions for Edmunds at Dreamforce about it. So the rapid pace of AI to me is ... I remember doing a podcast just learning about hallucinations and different terminologies like grounding and now we're all the way how far in and have agents building agents and I'm just like, "Wow, where are we going to be this time next year?" Kacie Molina: It is pretty wild. I was playing around with Agentforce, so something I really enjoy as an admin is not writing queries. So there's lots of things that I can do, but I might not want to spend the time doing tedious tests, like writing long formulas or queries. And I saw with the Salesforce inspector, you can download a prompt and I just put that into my Headless IDE and I said, "Hey, can you push this into my org so I can use Agentforce for querying?" And it took it and it had the wrong version, I think. So it updated a couple things and it didn't even need help from me. It was just like, "Oh, this is an out of date version, so I'm going to update this." And then it pushed it in and then I refreshed my page and I could ask the little Einstein Agentforce character to write queries for me. So it is kind of fun on the backend, you can do so much in so short of a time and it's just fun to see. Like you ask something and then, boom, it gets created, whereas before it could take hours. Mike: For admins that want to be in the conversation about AI with their organizations, what would you suggest they do? Kacie Molina: So I think security is one of the biggest places to start and that's where I try to start is having ... Salesforce has good documentation on the different trust layers and how Agentforce works and then cost is another thing. So usually, I'm looking at kind of the different pillars of a project, like the scope of it, the cost of it, and then security as an admin, always a big thing. So backing that up with Salesforce and just understanding that when you use Agentforce that you can keep the data secure, there's that trust layer there so you're not just bleeding out your information to the whole world like you might be doing if you put it in some random AI tool. And then with the cost as well, a lot of companies that I've talked with, they wonder, "How do I get started? Do I need to pay for something right away?" And Foundations has been a really great place to start because you get credits every month where you can try Agentforce and you can monitor your billing and it's safe to use. So that's something I always say like, "You can start really small with this. It's not something you need to implement even to every person in the org. You can have a couple super users that you trust and try small, start with Foundations." So I think the starting small is where I've really doubled down on with clients. That way it's not a big decision necessarily for the company where it's such an IT burden and they're really worried about big things. If you have a really small scope to start with, people tend to feel more comfortable. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, with all the features, we always talk about rolling them out to super users or having that kind of core group of people that helps you vet new features and what's the best use case for your organization. I'm like you, like even the smallest, if you think about it like cracks in the sidewalk, even if you patch two or three of the smallest cracks in the sidewalk, you've still made the sidewalk sturdier. Just because you didn't tackle the big gap doesn't mean you didn't improve it. And sometimes, that little bit of friction for users is what really frustrates them too. Kacie Molina: It is. It can be something even as simple as searching for a record or seeing your top account. There's some basic requests that I feel like I see that are so helpful to users, whether it's like summarizing data, like I mentioned earlier, or being able to search for something. So sometimes people get really frustrated with the search bar and they're not finding what they want and there's definitely things you can do to help with that, but I think it's really helpful when they can use that agent to use natural language and say, "I'm looking for this or I want to create a case with these details." When they can use their comfort language and they don't have to be so technically specific, for non-technical people, I think it's really helpful. Even for me, even though I love technical stuff, I still really like chatting with the agent like a human. I still say like, "Please, and thank you." And I like when it's funny back with me. So there's something comforting about that natural language I think when you enable it. Mike: Yeah, I hear you. Kacie, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. This is a fun conversation. I'm glad you posted randomly to LinkedIn and I'm glad I randomly found it and now you're a guest on the podcast. I mean, that's how I find some of the coolest conversations. Kacie Molina: I'm really happy you reached out to me about it because it's something I've been really passionate about and have some amazing colleagues I talk AI use cases with frequently. And so I was like, "Yeah, let's definitely talk about this," because you can start small and you can have so much fun with it. And my hope for every admin is that they can get hands-on with it, start to use it in their orgs and just have a ton of fun, because that's what new tools are for, right? Just like Flows. Mike: Absolutely. I agree. Thanks so much, Kacie. Kacie Molina: Well, thanks, Mike. Mike: Big thanks to Kacie, Molina for joining us and reminding us that Agentforce doesn't have to start with a giant project. Admins can create real impact just by listening for those small moments of friction and designing a secure solution while helping teams work better with data automation and AI. So be sure to subscribe, share this episode and keep the conversation going with your admin community. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  How Do Admins Set Up Agentforce Coworker in Salesforce 25.06.2026 37min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Parth Shah, Director of Product Marketing, and Rikke Hovgaard, Director of Product Management for the Agentforce Coworker team at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about Agentforce Coworker and what it means for the way admins help teams get work done. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Parth Shah and Rikke Hovgaard. Agentforce Coworker brings AI into everyday business work AI has been a game changer for coding, but integrating it into normal business processes has proved more challenging. That's where Agentforce Coworker comes in. It's an autonomous AI teammate, grounded in your enterprise data from day one. For this episode, I sat down with with Rikke Hovgaard, Director of Product Management, and Parth Shah, Director of Product Marketing, to find out what Agentforce Coworker is and how it can help admins bring new tools to their team. Salesforce permissions remain central to trust and access Trust is central to any conversation about AI. New tools are exciting, but you need to be sure that they won't give people access to data they shouldn't be able to see. Luckily, Agentforce Coworker works around the permissions you've already configured in Salesforce. It's simple for admins, and keeps those guardrails in place. As far as configuration goes, Rikke and Parth are all about keeping it simple and transparent. While Agentforce Coworker automatically inherits the security and governance settings that are already in your org, you also have special configuration options just for the agent. Admins can connect more data through Data Cloud and Slack For Rikke, Agentforce Coworker is especially useful for summarizing her team's Slack conversations. She can quickly understand which team member is working on which issue, and where she might need to lend a helping hand. At the end of the day, Agentforce Coworker gives you a conversational interface to do more with your Salesforce data. "Coworker does the work in the background so that your team can actually focus on what matters," Parth says. Listen to the full episode for more from Parth and Rikke about Agentforce Coworker. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Introducing Agentforce Coworker Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Headless 360 Helps Admins Bring Salesforce Anywhere Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Rikke on LinkedIn Parth on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking with Parth Shah and Rikke Hovgaard about Agentforce Coworker and what it means for the way admins help teams get work done. Now, this isn't just about turning on another AI feature. It's about bringing trusted business context, permissions, data, and automation together so users can ask better questions and take action faster. Parth and Rikke are going to walk us through how Coworker connects to Salesforce data, how it respects existing permissions, and how it gives admins a simpler path to roll out and governance. So, be sure to listen in, press that subscribe button if you haven't already. And I would always appreciate it if you could share this episode with a fellow Salesforce admin. And with that, let's get Parth and Rikke on the podcast. So, Parth and Rikke, welcome to the podcast. Rikke Hovgaard: Thank you for having us. Parth Shah: Thank you. Mike: Well, I'm glad we could get you both on. This is the first time I've had a product manager and a product marketing major on a podcast. Usually, one of them has something too important to do that they bail out, but I'm bringing people together. It's going to be great. So, we're going to talk about Agentforce Coworker, but first I want to learn a little bit about each of you. Parth, I'm just going to start with you because you were the first one to bug me in my Slack DMs about Agentforce Coworker. So, I'd love to learn just a little bit about how you came to Salesforce and what you currently are working on.  Parth Shah: Yeah, absolutely. Slack makes it really easy to bug my Coworkers, especially my favorite ones. I sent a lot of emojis. So, sorry, Mike. Mike: Oh, I'm your favorite.  Parth Shah: Yeah. So, a bit about me. I grew up in Ohio, was a chemical engineer in undergrad, which really I love to build things and I love to, I guess, solve complex problems. And then when I graduated, I didn't want to go work in a plant, in a chemical plant. And so, I ended up going into sales within oil and gas. Did that for about three years, really understood how to actually talk to customers and what their pain points are. And then switched over to a really early stage startup in education technology, really passionate about education. Did that for about three years, which is where I learned a lot about product marketing. Then got my MBA and then joined Salesforce. So, been at Salesforce as a product marketer for about coming up to seven years. And what's been kind of interesting is I started off on the MuleSoft side of Salesforce, so all about integrations. I really learned what it means to connect data between different systems and how developers and admins go about doing that. And that's when I switched over. MuleSoft wanted to launch a new product called MuleSoft Composer at that time, which is now Flow. So, the next level of after connecting data is like, how do you actually use that data to automate processes and make it super simple for admins like our viewers out there? So, help launch that and then moved over to our Data 360, previously data cloud business. And here, I focus on everything that is around unstructured data. So, again, the through line here, if you look at data is, now we can start tapping into the unstructured data that's all out there because of AI. But the more important thing is now that AI is coming in, how do we actually bring that data, which is full of richness in audio, video, meeting notes, et cetera? How do we bring it into AI so that AI is really grounded? And so, that's been kind of my journey. Obviously, looking back at it, everything kind of connected. I didn't know at that time, but the through line I think is my curiosity of what's next within tech has kind of propelled me to go and find out and work on the cool next product that's coming up, which is also how I land on a Coworker. Mike: Wow. I would've had no idea that you started in oil and gas. Also, what's sales like in oil and gas? Hi, do you want any? Yes. Parth Shah: Cool. Yeah. It's very old. It's a very people oriented business. Mike: Yeah. All right. Well, I had to get that joke in. Rikke, I know you're letting me say your name that way, but in all fairness, being German, there's names that we just can't pronounce. So, I'd love to hear how you got started at Salesforce and obviously you're working on Coworker now. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. So, originally I'm from Denmark, which is why my name is a little hard to pronounce. Believe it or not, that's actually a pretty common name in Denmark. So, Rikke is fine here, but I started out after university working for a consultation partner. So, I started implementing Salesforce randomly, started out with Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, moved over to Pardot and Marketing Cloud when that was acquired by Salesforce and ended up also doing a little bit of data and analytics there. And then I decided it was time to move on to other things. So, I joined another partner in London and I moved to London and did that for a bit. I was working a lot on analytics at that point and also marketing. And so, it was mostly focused on what we know now as CRM Analytics and I started a blog on it as well. And so, a few years into it, I joined Salesforce in the CIM Analytics product team, helping customers get the most out of CIM analytics, deescalate some of their issues, best practices, all this kind of stuff. And I think that's where I also got a lot more involved with the community. And then I joined later in Data Cloud, moved over there and about two years ago I started the team with the search team in Data Cloud and we had this idea of Coworker and I ended up working on the admin side. And today I own the Coworker setup experience as well as search manager. Mike: Oh, wow. I mean, all roads lead through Data 360, literally and figuratively. So, Parth, let's talk about that. I mean, for anybody that hasn't heard, what is Agentforce Coworker and what is it there to help with? Parth Shah: Yeah. So, Agentforce Coworker, it is your autonomous AI teammate and it's available in Salesforce and it's also going to be available in a lot of different services like Microsoft Teams, desktop, mobile, ChatGPT, Claude, and a lot more. Fundamentally, what it is is it's an AI assistant that knows your business from day one. It's already connected to all of your enterprise data, whether it's structured, unstructured, your opportunities, your cases, your accounts, all of that context that you have within Salesforce and then what's connected to Salesforce. And of course, it respects all the permissions when you do connect those systems. So, it's grounded in your context from the first prompt that you ask. Number two is it can also orchestrate a lot of your agents. It can also execute a lot of complex tasks so that way, it moves your work forward. In other ways, it takes action on your behalf and you can actually update your CRM using Coworker. And then lastly, we built that headless. So, what's really cool about this is yes, it's available in Salesforce, but now you'll be able to take that Salesforce experience and that data and the context that you've spent so many years building into wherever you work. Now a question that we usually get is like, why do we build it? What was kind of the reason behind it? What's the pain point that is really trying to solve? And I think if you look at the industry trends, what's been interesting and what's kind of been going on is you've seen AI obviously augment software engineering, right? It's writing code and it's improving their productivity, but when we think about how business users actually do their work, it's quite different than software engineers, right? Of course, AI can help write emails, it can create the docs. We're going into customer service, but it gets a bit more complex because in our day-to-day work, we're switching a lot between different applications. We're copy pasting a lot of different data from one application to the next, for example, from Slack to Google Docs and so on and so forth. And it's not adding as much value as it does for software engineering. And so, we said, "Okay, how do we bring all of that context that you have wherever you work into a product that brings in AI and actually helps you do the work so you can focus on a lot of the other things that are more important, like building your relationship?" And Salesforce being Salesforce, we said, "Let's bring in that context and we have that AI and let's put it into Agentforce Coworker, which is where also Salesforce, our users work." And the second thing that we also did on top is if you think through where most of your work actually starts, which is again, very different than how we think about agents in general, it starts from work. Anytime you have a question about a task, you go to search. And so, we said, "Why don't we turn that search into something agentic where search gets you answers and then answers can help you take those actions?" And so, fundamentally what we've done is we brought in that context and made it really easy for our users to use Salesforce and fundamentally get a lot more value out of Salesforce and all the things that it can do with the data that you have.   Mike: Yeah. I think what's cool is Coworker's not just for admins. I mean, we'll talk about that, but it's for all of your users. So, one question based on everything that you said, just to make sure that I kind of wrap my head around it as an admin, if I'm setting it up, I can permission what it can and cannot have access to in terms of data. So, if I have, let's say payroll data in Salesforce, I don't want to give it access to that so that Bob and sales can go down and be like, "Hey, I wonder what Sally makes," and then ask Coworker and get a response, right? Rikke Hovgaard: Well, we're actually using the same permissions that you've already as an admin set up in Salesforce. Mike: Oh, great. Rikke Hovgaard: So, there's nothing extra to set up. We tried to make the setup experience super simple and one of that is also, of course, knowing what you've already set up in terms of permissioning. So, if you have in your object given access to something, then the user that is locking in will be able to see that. And if they don't have access to it, they won't be able to see that data either. Mike: Gotcha. Wow, that's huge. So, it automatically just respects the user's permissions as opposed to me the admin having to go and set something up for it. Rikke Hovgaard: Correct. Yeah. Mike: Wow, that's really ... I mean, what's funny is every time I see or work through some of these new products, I'm like, "Oh, well that totally makes sense." Except I think that was probably really hard to do. So, it's always really cool when it happens. It's like intermittent wipers, I suppose. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. Well, we have some amazing engineers that figure out all the architecture and build this stuff. So, I can't take credit for that, but I guess from my point of view at least, as an admin, there are so many things that you have to learn with all these new features. And so, our vision was really to try and make the whole setup simple. We also wanted to be transparent around the permissioning and the governance around it. So, we've also tried to balance that, but it's also how much information do you give upfront? How much is in the documentation? So, it's a fine balance to try and make it all simple enough. Mike: Yeah. Now can we talk a little bit about the design of it too because I've seen, thankfully I've had an org and I got to play around with it and it couldn't be more intuitive. I'm sure it could be, but can you talk about what went into how you thought about what that user experience is looking like? Rikke Hovgaard: So, I think it's really down to the jobs to be done. What are you trying to achieve? And that's why the ask mode is very much focused on just asking the question and having that conversation. We wanted to make that a very clear, crisp understanding of what is it that you're supposed to do on this screen. I don't know if you had a chance to also play with the other part, which is we also introduced a new search experience and here that's more of a balance where we're trying to figure out, well, all the things that people love from the original search and how do we bring that in as well as also how do we make it a little bit more new and look a little bit more or nicer, so to speak. I think that has been a little bit of a challenge when we're thinking of all of the data that you can bring in Coworker compared to what we have in Global Search. And now I know we're going a little bit more into the admin side of things, but in order to display things correctly, we need to make sure we also have the information of the data in order to show it correctly. So, that has been an interesting challenge to look at, but yeah, really trying to make it super easy for users to know what they actually have to do, prompt them to get the most out of the tool. Mike: Yeah. I mean, it almost feels like at times there's a balance between making it super simple and having people trust it and making it a little bit more difficult just so that people trust it because you've gone through it. And if it's almost too easy, then it's like, "Hmm, but did it really do? Is it really..." I can always feel that anxiety in a user or an executive when you demo something the first time and they're like, "Yeah, but does it really do that?"  Rikke Hovgaard: Especially also when we think about AI, we're putting a lot of trust into it and allowing us to get the answers that we're looking for. And so, I think that's why the whole thinking steps that we have implemented is super important for the agentic response. So, we built a level of trust or transparency in what is it that we're actually looking and giving that information to the end user so they can see how we got to the result. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Now trust and governance is top of mind. It's literally the first thing everybody talks about with AI. Can we talk a little bit about how that works with Agentforce Coworker and maybe some of what you're seeing in the beta version? I feel like I was on that Agentforce Coworker page and there was an admin on that page that's awfully familiar to a lot of the community that had some great quotes. Rikke Hovgaard: Mike, let's maybe start with how do you actually set up Coworker. I think that will lead into how do we control the permissions and- Mike: Yeah, let's start there.  Rikke Hovgaard: Okay. So, the vision we had with the setup page, because if we're being honest, we are using features from other parts of Salesforce. So, we're using Agentforce, we are also using Data Cloud, we're also using global search. So, the thought that we had in the beginning was that's a lot of steps and hoops for an admin to go to in order to set up a Coworker. And so, our vision was really, how can we simplify this? How can we get an admin up and running super-fast? That doesn't mean that they don't have more things they can do, but from the first click turn on to they have access to Coworker, we wanted that to be super simple. So, we have defined a bunch of steps that has to be done in order for you to use Coworker. One, for instance, we have to create the search agent. So, when you click turn on, you actually go ahead and we've automated a bunch of steps for you that goes ahead and creates the things that we need to get Coworker up and running. And in that we've created the agent, we created the permission set group that you need to give access to users and we also have enabled your Salesforce data out of the box. So, any Salesforce data, any custom object, any default or standard object that you have is automatically searchable just by hitting turn on. Now, since we are in a beta, we still need you to opt into the beta. So, there is a little step that some people might miss, which is just go ahead and opt in so you have the new search experience in the front end with the global search bar and the ask button. And then the final step in order to get a user to access and use Coworker is to assign them this permission set group. Essentially, if you're an admin, you're probably familiar with different permission sets are giving you access to different things. So, you need to have a permission set for your agent, you need to have a permission set to use some basic features of Coworker and there's some other things, but essentially we're bundling all of this together in the permission set group. And so, all you have to do is directly from the page, the setup page. You can assign your users directly from that, or you can use the permission sets or permission set group from the user setup page as well. So, that's to say that we tried our best to make everything as simple as possible and then you can lay additional features on top of that with external data, et cetera. So, this is how we are controlling whether or not you have access to it, just permission sets and permission set groups. Mike: That's very easy. So, if an admin turns it on, it's not just available to everybody. Rikke Hovgaard: No. Mike: You can choose whether or not maybe you want a small set of users to try it out first. Rikke Hovgaard: Exactly. Mike: Perfect. Rikke Hovgaard: This is all permission based. Mike: I like it. Parth Shah: Now Mike, following on that, I think if we look at trust, trust goes I think even beyond permissions. And I think one of the beautiful things about Coworkers is built on Salesforce, the Salesforce platform that we all know. And so, it automatically inherits a lot of the security and governance, the data residency controls, the access based policies, audit logging, all of that, that Salesforce has that automatically inherits that. So, to kind of give you a couple examples, when it orchestrates across agents, the agents that you've built, they all have observability and monitoring because they're built on the Agentforce platform. So, you have access to that. So, you have an understanding of what it's trying to do and then also the actions that it's taking and how it's doing it. That's number one. And then if you also look at the data itself, if we look at some of the data built into Data 360, that already has a lot of policies built into it. It also has masking built into it, right? And so, it automatically inherits those. And so, when Coworker actually gives out that response, it's not just looking at the permission sets for the user themselves, but it's also looking at the data and the agent side of governance, security and the trust that comes with the Salesforce platform. Mike: Oh, wow. I mean, that's really, really beneficial there. I was thinking, Parth, you mentioned Data 360. Ironically, both of you have worked in Data 360. Outside of Agentforce just being able to answer questions around the data that we have in Salesforce, we can also give it the ability to get information elsewhere. Can you explain a little bit more about that and kind of what an admin would be configuring and possibly doing there? Parth Shah: Yes. I can give ... Oh, sorry, Rikke, go ahead. Rikke Hovgaard: Oh, no, you can answer. Parth Shah: No, no, no, go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Well, I'll give a high level overview. You can bring in connectors to connect to external sources and then you can also ground a Coworker on the Data 360 data that you have. So, then Rikke, go on. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. So, we knew that we wanted to allow Admins to go ahead and take all of this rich data that they have ingested into Data Cloud and use that as well. So, when you are on the setup screen, we have a little data table as we call it that shows that you've set up your Salesforce data by default. And when you click, there's a little button there that says add more data and in here you can go ahead and add any of the data that you have already ingested into Data Cloud. So, if you have unstructured and structured data in Data Cloud that you want to go ahead and make searchable, you go ahead and go through that flow. And what we've done is very simple model where you select the DMOs that you're interested in. You then have for each one of these DMOs select some search metadata because what I said earlier, it gets a little bit tricky sometimes. With Salesforce, we already know what is the name field. We know what is a supporting field. We know how the layout is, we know the ID, et cetera. For DMOs, we don't know always know that. So, we allow you to go ahead and make those selections, finish that process and at the end we go ahead and create a search index for you that we can use both for the keyword search that appears, but also for the agentic responses that we have. Mike: Wow.  Rikke Hovgaard: So, that's how you can add that data. But I actually remembered that we haven't actually talked about getting Slack data in as well. Mike: Oh yeah. Let's talk about that. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. I know that you mentioned Teams, but we also hopefully have some admins out there that have Slack and we've also made that super simple. So, if you've already authenticated Slack within your Salesforce environment, you can go to that same ad data model and you just select the Slack, you click next and you click save and then you also now have Slack data just within your Coworker experience. And this is again, this is actually federated. So, we're looking at the user and you're only getting access to the data that you have access through that user connection. So, that's another really interesting thing that I would definitely use in my Coworker experience. Mike: Yeah. And it just pairs really well. That way, you know there's conversations happening in Slack that would need to be brought in. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. So, we use Salesforce obviously in Salesforce ourselves. We have our own engineering product engineering environment and in there we've enabled Coworker as well. And so, one thing that I ask a lot is for specific work stream that we're working on, I want to get an update that includes both the work items that I have in Salesforce, but it also includes all the Slack conversations that we're having on the side. And I get an update just by asking Coworker about what's happening. I know which engineer is working what work item and what risk or whatever else we might have that we have to, that might need my attention. Mike: How stressful were you when they turned Coworker on in that org? Because all the other product managers are just eyeballing, right? Is this going to work? I wouldn't sleep that night. You kidding me?  Rikke Hovgaard: I actually felt pretty confident in it. I can't turn it on myself. I'm not an [inaudible 00:25:12]. Mike: Oh, well, that's good. Rikke Hovgaard: But I did have very great collaboration with our admins, both on the GUS and TheOrg62 environment. And I leveraged my partner experience or my implementation experience. I wrote a really detailed walkthrough. I had amazing help from my engineers and it went pretty smoothly, and we had some check-ins every day. We watched the numbers grow and it was pretty cool to see.  Mike: Yeah, I could imagine. Parth, I know we've had some customers in the product as well because it's in beta. What have they had to say? What were some of the things they've shared back? Parth Shah: I think this is one of my favorite products to work on in my career. Mike: Oh, you say that about all the products.   Parth Shah: No, no, no. I say this seriously. I say this seriously because every time I've talked to a customer, they're so excited about it. I'll give you an example. Andrew Russo, he is currently a VP of business systems at, I'm saying it correctly, BACA Systems. And when he first heard about the product, I think Mark Benioff had tweeted about it, he heard about it. He was so excited to quote and kind of paraphrase a bit, he's like, "I felt like Santa Claus on Christmas bringing it to my team." And the use cases that he started seeing was like, start something super simple with a sales and business development team. One of the use cases he mentioned was, let's just get all of the context that we haven't reached out to.  And I think he had mentioned something along the lines of like, it was a holiday coming up and this would've taken up so much of their team's time to actually find the contacts and reach out to them. Coworker did it really quickly and their teams were able to quickly reach out to the customers they haven't been able to reach out to and they were able to engage them. And so, this just kind of shows you the power of Coworker doing the work in the background so that your sales teams can actually focus on what matters, which is building out the relationships. I think overall, when I think about the use cases and how customers have been using it, what I repeatedly hear is the use cases are endless. There isn't just one use case that kind of shines. That's really the power of AI. But what it allows you to do is it allows a person to be as creative as possible. And I think as admins or the folks that are kind of introducing it, what I've seen work really well is nurture it. Give people one or two small use cases to start with so they start to see the power of it and then the natural curiosity of that team just kind of takes over. They're like, "Huh, what if we just get more complex?" It's almost like, can you thump Coworker? And the queries and the prompts that you put in just get more and more and more complex. I mean, even internally, we were recently working on a product of like we introduced a new feature, so how do we email the customers? And part of that is we want to make sure that they have the right license. Historically, that would've taken a long time, but we're like, "Huh, I wonder if Coworker can do it." Coworker kind of became a part of natural language, I guess, that you talk about every day and you naturally go to it because you start seeing the power of it and you're like, "Let Coworker do it." So, I think that's what I've seen is seed it and then just watch it grow. And then once you watch it grow within one team, take that idea, take those wins and take the people that have used it and they will talk about it to the other teams. Mike: Well, I feel like Thursday night bowling league's going to get awkward when six of you are standing around and going, "I feel like we're missing somebody. Didn't anybody invite Agentforce Coworker?" Oh. They couldn't make it. They're stuck at the office. That's it. That's the one joke for the podcast. It never really lands and people always give it a bad review, but that you got to try every now and then. To kind of wrap things up, I always like to see what other people do. I feel having talked with a lot of people in technology, we often have very tactile hobbies or things that we like to do on the side. I'm usually pretty obsessed with my lawn. I can tell you soil levels and pH and all kinds of stuff that's not fun unless you're into lawn care. But Rikke, I'd love to know outside of making Agentforce Coworker awesome, is there a fun hobby that you have that you use to get away from Coworker every now and then? Rikke Hovgaard: I don't know if I would say hobby per se, but for me, I really like going out by the water. I actually bike quite a lot out to the beach and then I have a puppy that I just let run around and that gives me a lot of common peace. I mean, hobbies, I don't think I have anything that I'm super nerdy about except for sometimes I get a little detail with some of my own data, but I feel like that's a little bit too close to work to mention as a good hobby. Mike: Yeah. I'll take the biking thing. Boy, of all the dogs I've had, that was the best way to get them to run. Especially when you've been inside in meetings all day and they're like, "Mom, can we go for a run?" And you're like, "Yes, we can." That was about the only way I could keep up with my dogs was a good mountain bike. Rikke Hovgaard: And I trained him early enough to actually jump in, or not jump, but I put him in a basket and we go.  Mike: Oh, mine were always too big for that. They're either making or they're not. One time though, he was running and I used to live in an area that was under construction. They had a manhole cover off and he was running along just beside me and one of his feet hit that manhole and it popped out of joint and that's when I learned how heavy a 30-pound dog is to carry over your shoulder and mountain bike back to the house and call the vet. Parth Shah: Oh, no. Mike: That was the only time I carried him. No basket for me though. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. I'm happy I have a small dog now. Mike: Right. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. Mike: Note to self. Buy a small dog that's easy to carry. Parth, I mean, you've been doing a lot of things. Plus you were in the Buckeye State, so I don't know, football. Parth Shah: I watch football. I'm in New York, so go Knicks, Knicks in 5. Also, I love this question. Rikke, I had no idea that you bike. I would love to bike with you someday and obviously bring your dog. Rikke Hovgaard: I mean, it's not like a race kind of thing, but yeah, I like biking around. I don't have a car. So, that's the only way I get around. Parth Shah: Yeah. So, I live in New York and there's a lot of things that I absolutely love to do. What I've been really focusing on is one, I love going to museums. I absolutely love going to museums so much that I've pretty much checked out every single museum in New York and I'll go to them again. Part of that is just like it invokes this creativity in me, which is why I'm a marketer, just to see how other people are thinking through life and kind of portraying it. Second thing that I've been trying to get it more into is I've been trying to do a lot more of comedy. I know it's not coming through right now, but that's something that I want to work on. And then the last is yoga. Yoga because no AI is there in yoga. It's just me and myself. Mike: Not yet. Parth Shah: Not yet. Mike: Somebody will invent an AI mat. Parth, your downward dog is not doing so well. Rikke Hovgaard: There's those mirrors where you can get workout commentary on your- Mike: Oh, that kind of weirds me out.  Parth Shah: Oh, me too. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. Parth Shah: I can't do that. Rikke Hovgaard: I prefer my workouts to be just me and whatever I'm doing. I don't need any instructions to do. Mike: You're biking your dog. Rikke Hovgaard: Yeah. I mean, I do other things too, but I would say I don't like anybody commentary on what I'm doing. Mike: Nope. Nope. Parth, that's so cool. I love the museum part. The presentation nerd in me loves going to museums and paying for the guided tour just to see the person and how they kind of direct people through because there's often a lot. There's a lot of people to pay attention to. There's a lot of information. I don't know. I like walking through museums all by myself. Don't get me wrong, but if I can do a guided tour, I always find that kind of fun too. Parth Shah: One tip someone told me is look at the artwork and then also look at the people looking at the artwork. That itself is art as well. And I was like, "Whoa." Mike: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Rikke Hovgaard: I also find that a lot of museums are starting to have free tours with a specific theme. So, they take you on a path. I've noticed, at least when I was in Europe last time, there was a couple of museums doing that. So, something worth looking at the website all the time, because I definitely like having somebody cover a theme and take me through a journey in the museum. Mike: Yep. I've been through a few where they have an app on the phone and you can just listen to and it walks you through. And that was always kind of fun because I feel there's a lot to take in and I'll read the plaque or the information by it, but it's like they can't put everything there. I know I did a few where I think they had the artist kind of comment in addition to what the information was and just kind of standing there and hearing in the artist's own words and seeing their work, it was very powerful. So, very cool. Well, see, it's not all about AI on the podcast. Every now and then we talk about some things that are fun. I want to thank you both for coming on. I think we covered a ton of stuff and I'm excited to see the future versions of Agentforce Coworker. I'm not going to ask you what they are because it's in beta and there's a big roadmap to come, but I think it's going to be very exciting for admins.   Rikke Hovgaard: I think we have some very exciting stuff coming up. We have a lot of good ideas from customers and from what we're thinking about ourselves. So, I think you have something.  Mike: Oh, I could only imagine. And I bet we're going to see some of them at Dreamforce, right? Rikke Hovgaard: I am sure we will. Mike: Knock on wood. Great. Well, Parth, Rikke, thanks for coming on the podcast. Rikke Hovgaard: Thank you for having us. Parth Shah: Thank you for having us. Mike: Big thanks to Parth and Rikke for helping us unpack Agentforce Coworker from search to Slack to that magical moment when users ask, "Wait, it can do that." Oh yes, that's the best. Admins, this is your lane, connecting the data, guiding the rollout, and making sure AI helps the business without wandering off with the keys to the org. Now, if you haven't already, press that subscribe button, share this episode with your favorite Salesforce admin or your favorite Coworker. Maybe they're one and the same, or invite a Coworker to a bowling league. Just say it. It'd be fun, wouldn't it? I'd like to go bowling. Just don't expect them to rent the shoes. Maybe you rent the shoes. I would buy the shoes. Other people have worn those shoes a lot. You never know what could be in those shoes. Anyway, until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  
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  What are Security Essentials for Salesforce Admins 18.06.2026 33min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Laura Pelkey, Director of Customer Security Communications and Engagement, and Sabrina Simeroth, Product Manager for Security Center at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about security essentials for the summer and how Salesforce is helping admins protect their data. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Laura Pelkey and Sabrina Simeroth. Why admins are a target Security doesn't take a summer vacation. And while AI is helping all of us do more things faster than ever before, it's also helping hackers deliver new types of targeted attacks at scale. And as privileged users, admins are finding themselves in the crosshairs. Luckily, Salesforce is rolling out key security enhancements over the summer to help you protect your org. I sat down with Laura Pelkey and Sabrina Simeroth to talk about what threats are out there and how you can be prepared. MFA requirements to protect your credentials Because AI makes it easier than ever to imitate someone's writing style or even their voice, the biggest threats that Laura and her team are seeing are different variations of phishing attacks. In the end, it's all about getting someone's credentials and then using that access to do damage. That's why Salesforce is requiring all customers to use multi-factor authentication (MFA), as opposed to the gentle nudging we've done in the past. However, MFA can still be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, so admins and other privileged users will need to use a stronger phishing resistant MFA. Finally, Salesforce will require step-up authentication for users attempting a sensitive or unusual action, like exporting a large file. I don't have to tell you that these kinds of changes can often be met with resistance. Laura recommends framing things in terms of what they protect your users from. Does a salesperson really want a hacker to email everyone on their contact list from their account? It's not about making you jump through hoops—it's about protecting you from real risks. Security Center Essentials and Health Check give admins a central view We also checked in with Sabrina about how her team is trying to make it easier to get a handle on essential security configurations across the platform and what settings are most critical. Coming in July, the new Security Center Essentials will let you see everything in one place instead of having to wade through a bunch of permissions and toggles. Health Check will help you prioritize which changes will get you the biggest bang for your buck, and help you track your security posture over time. "It's all about allowing admins to navigate the security space in a way that helps to reduce the complexity and provide some guidance," Sabrina says. There's a lot more from Laura and Sabrina about security on Salesforce and what's coming next, so make sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Help: Security-Related Product Updates to the Salesforce Platform: User Identity, Data Protection, and Access Controls Trailhead: Use Health Check to Scan Your Security Configurations   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Laura on LinkedIn Sabrina on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X   Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking security with Laura Pelkey and Sabrina Simeroth. The threat landscape is moving fast and with AI in the mix, attackers are getting better at targeting privileged users like Salesforce Admins. But in this episode, it isn't about fear, it's about readiness, trust, and the systems admins can put in place to protect our orgs. We'll cover MFA enforcement, phishing-resistant MFA, step-up authentication, and how Security Center Essentials gives admins a clearer view of the settings that matter most because today's admin isn't just managing features. They're designing secure, trusted systems that help businesses move forward. So, let's move forward with this podcast and get Laura and Sabrina on. So, Laura and Sabrina, welcome to the podcast. Laura Pelkey: Hello? Sabrina Simeroth: Thank you. Thanks for having us. Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely. Well, it's always good to talk security. I feel like I was watching the news the other day and they talk about kids when they go to school and then they have the summer off and there's that summer slump of information. I feel like maybe over the summer we kind of have a security slump because we're taking time off and we're going to water slides and watching tornadoes in the Midwest, but maybe I'm just crazy thinking about that. Laura, why don't you catch us up and tell us what's going on with security and some of the newest things in summer 26? Laura Pelkey: I would love to. And I was just going to say our catchphrase, which I feel like I repeat every time we do a podcast together and that security never sleeps even in the summer. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yes. Right. That could also be a fun summer action film. Laura Pelkey: Yes. I would see it. Mike Gerholdt: I would. Laura Pelkey: Yeah. So, I mean, we're halfway through the year, which is crazy already. And I'd say in the last year we have seen the security landscape and the threat landscape shift tremendously. And especially, I mean, I think a lot of people at Salesforce and a lot of people who are listening are very aware of and use on a day-to-day basis, AI nowadays, which is great. It's a very powerful tool. But what we're seeing in the security landscape is that AI-driven cyber threats have emerged and hackers have really up-leveled their ability to create and execute targeted cyber attacks faster than ever before. So, it's kind of crazy the speed at which this is happening. And unfortunately, I think we're going to see their capabilities get better and better as these tools evolve. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that's not fair. We're supposed to use AI for good. Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Well, the good news is, so yes, I agree. The good news is that providers are now using the same AI models or better AI models if you're in the lucky groups to enhance the security of their platforms and products. So, now the playing field has really been evened out. Mike Gerholdt: Well, that's good. Laura Pelkey: Yeah. But we're in a really interesting time right now with cybersecurity and AI. Mike Gerholdt: I mean, I feel like everybody's trying to figure out AI and now that kind of only muddies the water of impersonating other people or the speed at which it can replicate good or bad effective use of, I don't know, text messages or different spoofing. Can you walk us through how does Salesforce leverage AI to proactively block the type of threats that you're seeing today? Laura Pelkey: Yeah. So, there are some really common threats that just across the industry we're seeing that AI is being used for. So, account takeovers and this is a really common one. This is where attacker might use AI to create a phishing campaign, which targets users and tries to get access to their account. And then once they're inside a user account, they can then utilize all of the privileges that that user has to continue carrying out their attack. So, it's really about getting credentials, finding creative ways to get around our existing solutions to get those and then get that user profile and exploit it. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I think one thing that you've pointed out in the past is identity-based social engineering. So, I'd love for you to kind of expand on what makes admins and some privileged users such high-value targets for that. Laura Pelkey: Yeah, that's a great question. So, identity-based social engineering is when attackers create very highly personalized phishing campaigns and this can be phishing. Traditionally, we saw that with email five years ago it was primarily email. Now we're seeing phishing campaigns and especially with the help of AI, attackers are conducting these campaigns over voice calls. So that's called vishing or voice phishing. And admins are such a appealing target for these attackers because they're privileged users, they have such a high level of privilege and they can do almost anything within their Salesforce org. And so, that persona in general is highly targeted by attackers because of their level of access. Mike Gerholdt: What would you suggest an admin listening to this do today to start just being ready for if that phone were to ring and it was a malicious actor on the other end? Laura Pelkey: Well, I mean, we always say use common sense. So, there are a lot of built-in protections that I can talk about within the Salesforce platform that will help protect admins, which is great and I'll talk about those in a minute. But if that ever happens, if you are an admin and you get a call from a number that you don't know, from a person that you don't know claiming to be your help desk or claiming to be even Salesforce in some cases and they're asking you to log into your Salesforce account for them so that they can help you do something, that's typically how these things are positioned, that kind of scenario is never going to legitimately happen. No one's going to call you or email you and send you a link and ask you to log into your Salesforce account ever. That's just not something that we do. So, look for red flags like that. And in general, whenever you're suspicious about something from a cybersecurity perspective, the best thing to do is disengage with whoever is trying to speak with you or engage with you and get you to do something and then hang up the phone, don't email back whatever it is and then call your help desk line or call your Salesforce account person in a number that you already have and that you are already confident in and that way you can verify if that interaction was real or not. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I think the thing that always struck me when you would bring it up or somebody from your team, Laura, would bring it up is it's that human nature side that they try to take advantage of like, "Oh, you want to be helpful and you don't want to cause a problem." And so, you just kind of go along with it and it's like, yeah, you're not causing a problem if you just say, "Let me call back the number that I trust and talk to somebody there." Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Yeah. And you can do that in any scenario. If it's like your bank, someone calls and says they're from your bank and they're reaching out to you, that probably isn't going to happen. So, what you said, Mike, is exactly right. The reason that people are exploited is because we have these human behaviors, which human behaviors are great. They make us who we are, but false urgency is one of these tactics that attackers will use and they'll try to get you to do things quickly without really thinking about it. So, if we feel like goosebumps or we kind of have a weird feeling about why is someone calling me and asking me to log into my account, we can just stop and think and that's the best thing you can do to break this cycle. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about some of the security enhancements that has come out over the last few years. I mean, we have MFA and we have a whole bunch of other things. Laura Pelkey: Yeah. Yeah. So, we're very aware that this threat landscape has shifted and that it's our duty to protect our customer's data as it always has been at Salesforce. We take that super seriously, trust. Trust is our number one value. And so, to better help our customers protect themselves against these quickly evolving threats, we have some new enhancements and some new requirements in our platform that will help harden our customer security posture against these kinds of attacks. So, one thing, I'll only talk about a few, but one thing, and everyone really should be using this because it's been around for a while, is MFA, like you said, Mike. And I think we had started requiring customers to use MFA back in early 2022, I think. So, it's been quite a while, but we're actually going to be enforcing that. So, rather than being contractually required, it's going to be enforced in the product, meaning you may not be able to log in if you are not using MFA. So, this is going to happen starting in June. There's a phase rollout based on sandboxes and production environments. So definitely check out the documentation for the exact dates, but it is starting now. So, soon all Salesforce customers will need to use MFA to log in. Mike Gerholdt: And I know we've done security workshops. I've seen you present a lot. One of the questions, and inevitably the person that is listening to this is like, "Yes, Mike's going to ask this question." That comes up in all of the security workshops is, "Well, we use SSO to sign in. Do I still need to use MFA?" And we just threw out a whole lot of acronyms there, so I'll have you explain them too. Laura Pelkey: Yes. So, SSO- Mike Gerholdt: Alphabet soup. Laura Pelkey: SSO is single sign-on. That's a great question, Mike. So, if you do use SSO to access your Salesforce instance, then that does satisfy the requirement, but we ask that you also use MFA on top of your SSO. SSO is great. It's a great tool to make it possible so that you don't have to remember a million passwords for all of your work apps. It's awesome. Just have to remember one, but as long as you are using MFA to access your SSO, you are satisfying this requirement as well. Mike Gerholdt: Awesome. You explained it and you used all the alphabets too. Laura Pelkey: All the letters in the alphabet. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: It's like MFA is like bacon and SSO is like a cheeseburger. It makes it better. Laura Pelkey: Yeah, exactly. Yes, I love that. Mike Gerholdt: Because MFA is also just good on its own. I mean, I'll just eat some bacon. Laura Pelkey: Yeah. So you can either use MFA for direct logins directly into the UI or with your SSO login. Mike Gerholdt: So, this makes me think of, you talked about phishing. Oh, boy, this is where audio doesn't serve me well. Phishing and vishing, which there's the PH and the V, but because I'm from the Midwest, you can't hear the difference. Could you explain the difference between standard MFA and phishing-resistant MFA? Laura Pelkey: Yes. So, yeah, this is actually kind of a newer... Think of it as a supercharged form of MFA. So, what traditional MFA, you have two layers of verification before you can log into an account. With phishing-resistant MFA, you are actually bound to a specific site when you're logging in, which makes it harder for attackers who are trying to get you to log into those fake websites that might look real. It actually helps prevent that. So, that's why we call it phishing-resistant MFAs because that is a really common thing for phishing attacks to leverage is these man in the middle fake websites where you think you're logging into your actual tool or product, but you're logging into a fake version of it. And another thing that's great about phishing-resistant MFA is most users of this use biometrics as their second form, so like a fingerprint or a retina scan depending on the device that you're using to log in. So, that just makes it, again, harder to fake and harder to intercept. So, this is most companies are moving towards phishing-resistant MFA as it's so effective, and which is why we're actually also starting in June, so this month, we are requiring system administrators and privileged users to log in with phishing-resistant MFA. Mike Gerholdt: And why is that? Laura Pelkey: Because those are privileged users like we talked about, they're highly targeted. They're more targeted than their regular user and they have such a high level of access that if their account, especially were to get compromised like an admin, it could cause a lot more damage. And so, we want those folks to be extra, extra protected. So, phishing-resistant MFA we feel is the best thing to ensure that those accounts and those users stay safe. Mike Gerholdt: I like that. Now I know I've had to roll out different features to users and sometimes you can't do it fast enough because they love it and other times it's getting them to eat their vegetables. For admins that are worried about user friction with MFA, what would your advice be? Laura Pelkey: Well, hopefully your users are already using MFA. If they're not, we often find that if an admin holds a training, some informational sessions with their users, some kind of enablement before this change happens and also talk to them about the value that this provides to them. The last thing a salesperson, for example, would want is if their account got hacked and then their clients are getting emails that are sent from them, which are actually malicious. They don't want that to happen. No one wants that to happen. So, just there's some enablement materials that exist on the help portal that could be helpful, but really it's admins explaining and enabling their users why this is so important and helpful. Mike Gerholdt: One last thing, admins love reports and I feel like isn't Salesforce doing something to help admins set up different kind of reports or report actions to understand maybe when a user would log in that's outside of the normal behavior? Laura Pelkey: Yes. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So, this is another enhancement that's coming this summer and it's called Step-Up Authentication and we're doing it for report actions and for anomalous report behavior. So, let's say one of your users all of a sudden wants to export a very large file or something. There's something kind of unusual about this. Anomalous is the word we use in the security community. Our platform is now able to flag that and will cause a step-up authentication toggle to happen. And if you're not familiar what step-up authentication is, it's basically like having to re-log in after you've logged in, which I know might sound annoying, but there is a really good reason for this. So, I always think of it as like the airport analogy. So, when you go to an airport, you have to show your boarding pass and your ID to get through the security line, right? Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm. Laura Pelkey: And then once you're through security in the airport, you have the freedom to kind of walk around, go get a coffee, go get some food, maybe go to the bathroom and you have freedom of movement because these are not sensitive actions, what we would call in security. But when you get in line at your gate and you're trying to board the plane, you have to again, show your boarding pass in order to get on the plane. And that's actually a step-up authentication. You can think of it like that. This is because getting on the plane is considered a highly sensitive action and requires additional identity verification. And so, that's what we're trying to do within the product. So, say an adversary or an attacker did get access to your Salesforce instance through a user and now they're inside and they're trying to do sensitive things or they're trying to do things that are very bad, we are now able to force them to verify their identity again, which would likely stop that action. Mike Gerholdt: Nice. Well, here's your Starbucks, but you can't board the plane. Laura Pelkey: Yeah, exactly. Mike Gerholdt: I like it. Laura Pelkey: I mean, if you lose your boarding pass in the airport, you can't get on the plane, right? Mike Gerholdt: I mean, you should- Laura Pelkey: Oh, wow. Mike Gerholdt: It also probably means I've lost my phone and the whole day is just going downhill from there. Laura Pelkey: That's a big problem. Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Laura Pelkey: But that's the thought behind that. Mike Gerholdt: Sabrina, we didn't forget about you. It's usually Laura has a long laundry list of things to talk about, but I'd love to bring you into the conversation. First of all, I think this is your first time on the podcast, so tell us a little bit about what you do at Salesforce. Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah, thanks so much for having me again. I am a product manager in our trusted services space for a product many of our admins may have heard of Security Center. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, yes, we've heard that. We like that. Yep. You should put it on T-shirts. We'd wear it. Sabrina Simeroth: Yes. And then also a lot of folks don't know that this team also actually owns the Health Check, which is available for all admins as well. Mike Gerholdt: We like Health Check too. That's a fun one to demo. You've created good demoing products. You know that? Sabrina Simeroth: Thanks. Well, we've got more actually. Mike Gerholdt: Well, let's talk about those because I think there's a Security Center Essentials launching in early July. Am I correct? Sabrina Simeroth: Yes. Yes. So, we are launching a version that will be of Security Center that will be made available in all orgs this summer and you are absolutely correct, that is going to be starting in July. So, a very fast follow to some of these changes that Laura has been talking about and really, hopefully this product will actually help alleviate some of those concerns and worries of admins who are looking to comply with some of these changes that are coming out in the security space. Mike Gerholdt: Can you just bring us up to speed on what some of those core problems or pain points were that this is going to help? Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah, absolutely. So, for admins, security configurations can kind of be really hard to navigate. They're found all across the platform and it's really kind of hard to know what is most critical. So, Laura was talking about things like MFA enabled. These are configurations that you can actually enable through certain permissions as well as toggles and setup. So, these types of security configurations is exactly what we are trying to provide visibility to admins so that they have a single place to see critical security configurations like their session settings, their MFA enablement, how are they set up to allow their users to actually enter the system, whether they're restricting it through login IP addresses and how do they have installed packages, external connected apps set up in their org. All of these things can impact their security and what information bad actors could get to depending on how they have their users configured. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I know you listed... This is going to be so cool, by the way. I loved when we had Health Check and we still do, and I love that this is getting available to everybody. You mentioned some of those metrics. I know there's about seven of them, I believe. If you're a Salesforce admin who's listening to this podcast and you're like, "I don't know where to start." Of the metrics that will be provided in Security Center Essentials, what do you think the biggest bang for the buck is in terms of improving their security posture? Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah, a great question. So, we're initially launching with a curated set of seven metrics. That's kind of our MVP for our rollout. We're going to have a very fast follow-on where we're expanding the number of metrics that will be very curated, very targeted to the things that they need to look at and that are probably most critical. The first one of the seven that I would say is really essential is that Health Check. So, on important thing is when we say Health Check is going to now be made visible in Security Center Essentials, Health Check contains about 44 configurations that are critical for your security. And with those configurations, Salesforce actually takes a stance on here's what we recommend is the way to configure those settings and have that set up so customers can actually take action and see if they're in compliance with that. So, the Health Check is going to probably be the biggest bang for the buck. And the great thing about pulling this into Essentials is now you can kind of track as these configurations change over time, you can see when those changes happened, how those changes occurred, and then you can take action to remediate that. So, Health Check contains those configurations around identity that we were just talking about enabling MFA, enabling SSO, how those are set up, what are your password policies and all of that information will be contained into this metric that they can monitor changes to those configurations. Mike Gerholdt: We'll play devil's advocate here for a second because I know some admins are listening and they think, "Well, that sounds cool." And the big organizations that have all the fancy bells and whistles will probably really benefit from this." Do you think smaller organizations will find value in some of these features as well? Sabrina Simeroth: Absolutely, because the things that we are talking about are the configurations, the critical items that actually impact every organization. It shouldn't really matter the size. These are the most critical things that administrators need to be aware of in order to ensure that they have an appropriate level of security, that there aren't gaps in their security posture. So, these are definitely things that impact all orgs of all sizes. And it really is allowing admins to navigate the security space in a way that helps to reduce the complexity and provide some guidance. And again, this kind of transcends whether you are in a very small environment, very few users because this is more configuration based, or you have a very large environment and many environments to manage. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, no, that's really good. I think sometimes you forget how much there is out there and the best security is the stuff you never see because everything just works properly. So, this is great. I'm excited for it. I think come July, admins will be coming back from some PTO and have fancy new dashboards and things to look at. Sabrina Simeroth: Absolutely. Laura Pelkey: I can't wait. Also, I don't know if we can talk about this, but there's a couple of things on the roadmap that might be really interesting to admins too. Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, like I mentioned, this isn't the end. So, the initial launch is just getting us started. As kind of a fast follow to the July launch, we will be incorporating even more metrics around providing visibility. Laura, you were talking about those privileged users and specifically there are certain permissions that are associated with administrative level permissioning. Those are kind of the targets for any users that have those permissions. That's where we want to try to find the weak spots and get in there. So, we are actually going to be pulling in our permission metrics, some related to this like export exfiltration, modify all data, those administrative permissions, exactly what's called out in this new phishing-resistant MFA enablement required for those types of users. We will have permission metrics so that admins can now monitor when there are changes to those access, who's granting that access, when is it being granted and they can take action to make sure that those permissions are limited to only the users that need those. And we'll continue to produce more metrics and visibility into some of these critical configurations and expanding that information in the months to come following the initial launch. Laura Pelkey: That's amazing. Mike Gerholdt: So there will be even more fun stuff to see at Dreamforce this year. Sabrina Simeroth: Yes, absolutely. Mike Gerholdt: I think in closing, because I could probably sit around all day and talk security, Laura knows that, but I'll start with you, Laura. And this question's for both of you. If everybody listening took only one action after listening to this podcast to prepare their orgs for the upcoming security changes, what should that single step be? Laura Pelkey: So, I would recommend immediately after listening to this going over to the help portal, help.salesforce.com and looking at our documentation where we're outlining all of the enhancements happening this summer. And there's a full list. It's going to give you all of the dates, all of the enforcement details, all of the pre-work, if there is any, to get your org ready for these enforcements that are coming out and we'll get you all set up so that it's a really seamless transition. Mike Gerholdt: That's great. Sabrina, do you have anything to add to that? Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah. No, I think Laura, her answer is perfect. I think gathering information ahead of time is so critical to ensure that you have a smooth rollout. So, definitely take a look at the help articles and then also leverage resources if there are questions around what these things are. There are so many resources on our help documents to help guide admins around what is this, what are the impacts and how do you implement these critical configurations? And I think that that's the first step. Mike Gerholdt: I know I've worked a world tour before and this leads me into my last question because I pointed out our trust and help services and where we used to have release notes. But if admins had a specific question about these enforcement changes and how they'll impact their unique org configuration, where would you suggest they go? Laura Pelkey: If they have a account success person, definitely ask them. They can also go to the Trailblazer community and we're engaging with customers there on these things. So, that's my recommendation. Sabrina Simeroth: Yeah. And I think Laura, you mentioned there are a couple of articles that have come out to help them prepare for the MFA enforcement and the specific things that we are enhancing. So, those are really great resources and those can also be found on the help.salesforce.com website. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And I can go ahead and link those in the show notes. Sabrina Simeroth: Awesome. Mike Gerholdt: So people can click on those. Sabrina Simeroth: That'd be great. Mike Gerholdt: Laura, Sabrina, thank you so much for coming on. I know there was a lot to cover and we could do this every month, I'm sure, and have a new fresh topic, but admins always need to be security minded. Laura Pelkey: Yes, we love that. Sabrina Simeroth: Yes, absolutely. Laura Pelkey: Always great chatting security with you, Mike. Mike Gerholdt: Absolutely. Well, I'm sure we'll do this again for the winter release or sometime before Dreamforce to get admins ready for that as well. So, thanks for coming on the pod. Laura Pelkey: Thank you. Sabrina Simeroth: Thanks for having us. Mike Gerholdt: Huge thanks to Laura and Sabrina for making security feel less scary and maybe even a little fun. We covered AI threats, MFA, suspicious phone calls, airport analogies, and why admins should absolutely know what's happening inside Security Center Essentials. Now be sure to check out the show notes for the resources we mentioned. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And then finally, share this with an admin who enjoys trust, dashboards, and keeping bad actors off the plane. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  
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  How Agentforce Helped Build a Food Waste Solution in Days 11.06.2026 25min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Parth Sevak, Director of Technology and Principal Architect at Incepta. Join us as we chat about how Parth built a multi-agent system designed to connect surplus food with the people and organizations that need it the most and won the Agentforce for Good Grand Prize at the TDX Hackathon. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Parth Sevak. The Hackathon project focused on reducing food waste If you listened to last week's episode with Alexandra Iyer, you know that Agentforce for Good was a popular problem at this year's Agentforce Hackathon at TDX. Contestants took on big issues like nonprofit volunteer coordination and disaster relief. That's why I was so excited to sit down with Parth Sevak, whose project Harvest Bridge won the Agentforce for Good Grand Prize. Harvest Bridge is a multi-agent application that connects food donors with organizations near them. As Parth explains, food waste is a serious problem. According to the UN's World Food Programme, about 318 million people are facing acute hunger today. "In North America, 30-40% of the food that is produced never gets eaten," he says. So he decided that this would be the perfect problem to tackle for the Agentforce Hackathon at TDX.  Simple integrations and out-of-the-box tools Under the hood, Harvest Bridge features multi-agent coordination between four agents to handle donor intake, food matching, volunteer logistics, and reporting analytics. While it sounds incredibly complicated, Parth is quick to point out that 80% of the work was done in configuration with out-of-the-box admin tools. Parth needed to write some Apex to do specific things like geo-matching, which he vibe-coded with the Claude plugin for Agentforce. Crucially, he didn't have to write glue code to make everything work between Agentforce, Data 360, automations he built in Salesforce, Slack, and Tableau. "All of it just worked like a charm," he says, "five years ago, that integration story would have been months, if not years." How to get started building Agentforce solutions In just a few days, Parth was able to build an autonomous, multi-agent system that uses Agentforce, Data 360, Slack, and Tableau to match surplus food with local organizations and coordinate delivery in under 90 minutes. If you're looking to get started with Agentforce, Parth recommends jumping on Trailhead as your first step. The Agentforce Specialist certification gives you the tools you need to start building, and then it's all about getting your hands dirty. Make sure to listen to the full conversation with Parth Sevak about how he built Harvest Bridge and won the Agentforce for Good Grand Prize. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more UN World Food Programme Trailhead: Agentforce Specialist certification Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Agentforce for Good Shows the Power of Inclusive Innovation Watch the Demo Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Parth Sevak about how a real world food waste solution went from idea to working system in just days using Agentforce. Drawing from a challenge that impacts millions globally, Parth built HarvestBridge, which is a multi-agent system designed to connect surplus food with the people and organizations that need it most. Now, this was part of the TDX26 Hackathon Challenge and what makes this conversation the most compelling isn't just the technology, it's how admins and architects can really orchestrate data automation, AI agents and human coordination together without months of integration work. We also get into what it means to design a trustworthy system where humans stay in control while AI handles scale and speed. So, if you've ever been wondering about how Agentforce changes the role of the Salesforce admin from builder to system orchestrator, this episode's for you. Be sure to subscribe, share the episode with your team, your friends, your local Salesforce admin user group and let us know what kind of real world problems you'd solve with Agentforce. But for now, we're going to get Parth on the podcast. So, Parth, welcome to the podcast. Parth Sevak: Thanks, Mike. Really glad to be here. Mike: Well, I'm glad to have you. So, if everything shakes out, the episode before this will be the episode with the Agentforce for Good People, but sometimes scheduling is what it is. But I was at TDX this year and we had Hackathon winners and you were part of the Agentforce Hackathon. And so, that's how I got connected with you. But I think before we get into that, I'd love to know a little bit about how you got started in the Salesforce ecosystem, what you do and let's go from there. Parth Sevak: Absolutely, Mike. Again, thanks for having me. So, the story of how I ended up in Salesforce is really interesting. That was not my plan. In fact, back in 2011, I was a fresh computer science engineering grade hunting for my first real tech off somewhere. And that time, the startup economy was just taking off and Java was the thing, the only thing in my perspective as far as I was concerned. And then my boss pulled me aside and said, "Parth, you are going to work on Salesforce." And I said, "Oh, what is Salesforce? I'm looking for Java opportunities." So, he made his pitch. "Apex is basically Java, you will feel right at home. And there is this thing called Dreamforce, massive event, you might get to experience it someday." And that's where you see a lot of enterprise innovation is going to come in. Basically, he sold it and 16 years later, here I am loving the challenge, loving the stretch, always finding ages I haven't touched yet and it keeps me motivated. Mike: He was a heck of a salesman. Java, here's Salesforce. It's just like Java. And if you're good enough, you might get to go to Dreamforce. That's awesome. So, go ahead. Parth Sevak: Yeah. And just to tell you what currently I'm doing. So, these days- Mike: Yeah, please. Parth Sevak: ... I'm working as a director of technology at Incepta Solutions where I lead data, CRM integration and agentic AI transformation for enterprise clients across financial services, retail manufacturing and pharma healthcare. But I make sure to keep one foot in hands-on building always. And that's how HarvestBridge happened at TDX, as you see. Mike: Yeah. So, let's talk about that. I mean, it's really cool. This isn't our first hackathon since we've come out with Agentforce. We've been doing hackathons and the early hackathons, I was a judge in quite a few and some of the really neat ideas that people were coming up with for the use of AI agents and some agentic use cases I think were really kind of interesting. I know we had that at TDX. So, I guess let's start off with the TDX Agentforce for Good Hackathon. What made you want to enter that to begin with? Parth Sevak: Yeah, to be really honest, it was again, my boss encouraged me because even I was not sure whether I would be attending the TDX in first place, but my boss was really motivated to join the party and he invited me. And then I realized, okay, if I register for TDX, there is an option to participate in the hackathon. And that's how my journey began. Mike: Oh, well, we made that awfully easy for you, didn't we? Parth Sevak: Yeah. Mike: I mean, I would like to think I'm a competitive person, but when it comes down to it, I think I really like watching competitions as opposed to competing. What made you think, "Oh, I'm going to get into this because the idea that I have is so great." So, tell me a little bit about what your idea was and what it solved for. Parth Sevak: Yeah. So, honestly, the topic I picked is not a fleshy topic, right? I picked the food waste, which is definitely not a hackathon topic. It's not a biotech, it's not a blockchain. But my heart said, pick it anyway because food is the most basic thing and somehow we managed to throw away nearly half of it while families a few blocks away are skipping dinner. And then again, I am a data guy, so please allow me to share some numbers here. Mike: Oh yeah, please. Parth Sevak: And that application for me, that 2.5 billion tons of food wasted every year, 783 million people are facing hunger. And when I read that and thought, "This cannot be right." And I check UN website, food banks' websites, and again, the numbers held up. And the on that hit really hardest is this number, which is in North America, 40% of food produced never gets eaten right here in our cities, whether it's San Francisco, Toronto, basically with our neighborhood. Mike: I mean, that's crazy. I know I've seen ... I forget the show. It was on Discovery Channel here in the US and they talked about ... I didn't know there were hog farmers out in Las Vegas, but there are and they work with the casinos. The casinos have all those buffets to get all their food scraps. I thought that was really, really fascinating. I guess you think about it and until you look at it on a larger scale, do you even understand how much food is produced and unfortunately how much is wasted? Parth Sevak: Yeah, totally, Mike. Mike: So, let's talk about your solution because it involves Agentforce. So, were you going to feed Agentforce some apples? That's a joke because you can't feed it apples. I mean, you could feed it apples maybe like an emoji. Parth Sevak: So, yeah, I think let me first of all piggyback on this one, this idea that this HarvestBridge as a idea, right? When you look at this project from the outside, it may sound like as a big AI project. We have four agents, multi-agent coordination, the whole team, but the reality on the inside is three of those four agents are about 80% configuration. And this is the Agentforce play in my opinion because I used agent builder topics, instructions, guardrails, then flow for orchestration, custom objects, validation rules, formula fields, like typical standard admin toolkit. And obviously, there was a 20% which is code, which is attacks actions for things like geo-matching. So, that also like I wipe coded with cloud plugin for Agentforce available. And what came back was the quality of a season developer with proper design patents, clean error handling, governance limit aware as I made sure to provide the right context. That is very important. So, anytime if anybody ever built a flow with a decision branch and a few validation rules, you can think the way you need to build an agent. The tools just caught up with you. Mike: Yeah. Well, actually we had a few presentations at TDX and the admin track from admins who are vibe coding and I've had a few people on the podcast talking about how they've vibe coded and just the product itself is just insane to think you can sit down and there's a plan and there's an action button. And even in the plan button, I was really impressed with how much Agentforce Vibes could give you back as an admin to really help you plan your application. Parth Sevak: Yeah, that is really empowering thing has happening just in front of eyes and not just that, but we are at the forefront of that innovation and definitely the Agentforce for Good is really the category that should motivate everybody to get their hand dirty for something to produce something really good. Mike: Yeah. So, let's talk about while you were building your application to deal with food waste, what was a point in time when you sat back and maybe learned something that you didn't know as you were building it? Parth Sevak: Yeah. So, before I answer that question, I need to tell you how I approach the build process if it is okay. Mike: Oh, please. Parth Sevak: Yeah. Okay. So, basically like Mike, to be very frank, I didn't follow a plan. I would love to say that I sat down on day one and map out a clean sprint like user stories and backlog, but that was not what happened. What actually happened is I just started building right away. So, I picked the first thing, which is a donor bot. This is the agent that talks to donors and captures surplus food. First I got that working and the moment it ran, the next question was obvious that, okay, now surplus is in the system in the Salesforce. Now where does it go? So, I built the matchmaker agent and once matchmaker was written in matches, the next question came up on its own that who actually picks the food up and delivers it? Who is the volunteer? That became logistics coordinator on Slack and by then, I had data flowing through the whole system and it was almost asking to be visualized and that become impact analyst on Tableau. So, overall, I ended up building four agents, each one revealed the next. And what made that look possible beyond Agentforce itself is that I had AI assistance alongside me the whole way, like not just for the apex spaces we talked about, but for the thinking too, like should this be one agent or two? What edge cases am I missing? Is this topic structure clean, less a solo build and a more long conversation with a partner who is read every Salesforce document kind of like ever published. So, when I started building on the Agentforce platform, I had some high expectations and let me tell you, like what really surprised me in a pleasant way is the breadth. I use Agent Builder for the agents themselves, the topics, instructions, custom actions. Then underneath, I relied on agent script for the deterministic safety rules. So, things like allergens and expiry windows are not left to the LLM to decide. From there, I brought an Agentforce voice for the call-in donation capture, which I think just became GA recently, which I think, yeah, an intelligent context handled passing food details out of photos that donor send in. All of it was sitting on Data 360, which held the unified profiles of donors, recipients, and volunteers. Here is the part that genuinely caught me off guard. I didn't write any glue code between those layers, like an agent would hand off to a flow which will call an apex action that will update the records in the Data 360 and that would trigger a Slack message. That would feed back into another agent's context and all of it just worked like a charm. And if I reflect like five years ago, that integration story would have been months, if not years and this made me possible to deliver something so amazing in just few days and that was my wow moment from the whole build. And Mike, if I just like tell you another perspective that the other thing I was nervous about going in was hallucination because I am building four different agents and then you have obviously hear the horror stories, right? But between agent builders topic structure, agent script for hard rules and clear instructions, that's how I make sure that my agent behave very well. So, food safety rules around allergens and expiry are not something that I would let an LLM to decide. I would make sure to enforce them deterministically at the architecture level and for that I leverage agent script and thank God, that agent script work really well and where I would love to see things improve is just the debugging because when an agent's reasoning across topics and data sources, tracing what it actually did is still a bit difficult. So, the tooling is getting better, but its place still I'm watching. Mike: Yeah. I do an Agentforce Now workshop every month and I always try to point out when we're building it and preview how you can go through and see what the agent is doing and how it's deploying its sub-agents. And I think with everything we're still learning what AI is and how to debug it and it's this interesting intersection because we want the intelligence and the context and the engagement of AI, but I think people got really hooked on how perfect a bot would respond and a bot would respond because it's always A, B or C and we gave it those answers. And the nice thing about AI is it doesn't necessarily have those answers, but it can think independently, but we still want that control. So, it's like building the perfect employee. Parth Sevak: Yeah, absolutely. And that's why, like as I said, Mike, the deterministic approach is very significant and particularly, I would kind of rely on agent script that really gives that control back to the human or admins or architects so that they don't need to basically do the guesswork that, okay, what will be the response of agent if I do this prompt versus that prompt? It can simply be predictable. So, that is the cool thing I would say about the agent script and what it makes possible now in the reality of governance. Mike: So, I think one thing that's really cool about hackathons is it's kind of blue sky and green field. You can come in with a solution and like in your case, it really solves a real world problem. If somebody is listening to this and thinking, "Wow, I'd really like to get started with Agentforce," what was the first thing that you did to get hands-on with Agentforce and start understanding the product to the level that you do now? Parth Sevak: Oh, I think I don't recall exactly the date and time, but I think it was I think a couple of years ago when there was already like Agentforce discussion has already began because I was active in the community and thanks to Trailhead. And I basically started my journey to equip myself about like what is this best Agentforce, right? And then I did few modules and ultimately I think last December, I got certified in the Agentforce as Agentforce specialist. So, that really gives me clarity that okay, just not about like, okay, what I can build for the demonstration purpose, but also for me, it's very important that I can actually pass on that knowledge to my team so that they can ship the products or ship the agents that is really the kind of like configurable and scalable across the systems, not just one particular cloud or system or CRM. Mike: Yeah. I mean, anytime I need to learn something for a demo or for a presentation I'm putting together, I usually turn to Trailhead first and kind of walk through it and get an idea of what the product can and do and how I can configure it. So, I'm right there with you. Even Salesforce people still learn on Trailhead. Parth Sevak: Yeah, that's amazing actually. I call it as a live report, it's always live. You never get any stale recipe or stale dishes. So, that means everybody, whether it's a employee of Salesforce, partners or customers, everybody can rely on Trailhead for the real time information for sure. Mike: So, moving forward, we have a little event in the fall that we do called Dreamforce that you mentioned. Obviously, none of us have a crystal ball. Well, I'm sure a few people in Salesforce do to know what we're going to show, but what are some of the things you would love to see this year at Dreamforce? Parth Sevak: Okay. So, as I said, I have been part of the Salesforce ecosystem for almost 16 years and what really amazing to see is that the platform never sits still. So, when I started, here is the context, Mike, what I'm talking about is when I started we were building the S controls and it came to Visualforce. Mike: Yeah, that's back when I started too, called them Superman controls. Parth Sevak: Yeah. Then Visualforce, like proper MVC, controllers, pages, then Aura framework. And my first test of real component-based DUI was that Aura and then Lightning Web components. And I remember thinking, okay, this changes everything. And now 2026, we have got React running on Lightning Web Runtime along with the Headless 360 and agents that reason and act on their own and every leap has bigger than the last, right? So, it is the one ecosystem I have worked in that's never stopped becoming more interesting. I will make sure like a kid, I always go without any expectation that, okay, oh, what I'm going to get out of this conference because I know whatever will be there, it will be super amazing, super productive and make everyone's life much better than it was before. Mike: Yeah. Wow, that sets the wheels in motion to draw the bar even higher for all the rest of us. I appreciate you sharing that. And I will say one thing that we do at Dreamforce every year is we not only have volunteering activities, but I know the entire event is very conscious about the food that we use and how it gets recycled and dispersed evenly to make sure that we have the right amount. Because conferences I'm sure are big places where a lot of stuff can go to waste as well. Parth Sevak: Yeah, no absolutely. And I couldn't be more prouder than this, particularly like I was not also that conscious about all these basic problems, but then I started volunteering. I involved with some foundations and then I realized, "Oh man, wow, we are living in a 21st century and still we are not able to figure out the solution for this day-to-day problems." And it really kind of like hurts in our heart like if we see. So, basically like my belly is full. It's not solving the problem, right? I cannot be that selfish and truly like I couldn't agree more like Dreamforce. And that's I think really set the high bar that how the conferences should be run from the humanitarian angle as well. Mike: Yeah. Well, thanks for the kind words, Parth. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. This was a great conversation. I will say this now I should be able to find your TDX video and post that in the link so that everybody can see the demo of the app that you built and see how cool it was because I know we like to showcase those winners and so hopefully it inspires other people to not only participate in the hackathon but bring those solutions back to their communities as well. Parth Sevak: Yeah. And Mike, if you permit, can I say something like I would take maybe a one minute- Mike: Sure. Parth Sevak: ... which is very close to my heart and this is like a period like everybody is going through the transition. So, what I say is like, yeah, we need to be a jack of all, but master of one. And what I mean by that is that we don't want to restrict ourselves doing the same thing for too long. It's easy to get comfortable. For example, you are good at your role, the work is familiar, but comfort is also the thing that quietly stop you from growing. And right now with where the technology is, the agentic AI is here, right? This is exactly the moment to step outside that comfort zone, not because that you have to, but because the upside is so much bigger than the downside and Agent AI use well is probably the most empowering tool any of us have had access in our professional journey at least. So, I can take you somewhere you couldn't get along, but only if you handle it right, it can. So, stay the architect, keep judgment in your hands, let it stretch you instead of replacing you. The individuals who lean into that, who do the thing that is needed most for their clients, their employers, and honestly for their own sake, those are the people I think come out of the next two or three years transformed. So, for me, what is next is more building, more sharing, more conversations like this one. And if one person listening today challenges themselves to try something they have been putting off, that is a great month. Mike: I would agree. Couldn't have said it any better than you did. Well, Parth, thanks for coming on the podcast. It was great having this conversation with you. Parth Sevak: Yeah, thank you, Mike. This was a real pleasure. Mike: Huge thanks to Parth for joining us and sharing how HarvestBridge came together at the intersection of AI, automation, governance, and real world impact. I know one of the biggest takeaways from this conversation is that the future admin isn't just configuring tools, they're designing systems that connect people, data, agents, and outcomes responsibly. So, whether you're experimenting with Agentforce for the first time or already building multi-agent workflows, the opportunity is bigger than just productivity. It's about solving meaningful problems faster and with more intention. Of course, if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review, share it with somebody who's ready to start building what's next. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  Agentforce for Good Shows the Power of Inclusive Innovation 04.06.2026 27min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Alexandra Iyer, Director of Marketing Strategy and AI Transformation, and Global EVP of Abilityforce at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the Agentforce for Good Hackathon at TDX and what happens when technology, accessibility, and community come together to solve real-world problems. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Alexandra Laxmi Iyer. Agentforce for Good expands AI beyond business problems This year, we added a new twist to the types of problems you could solve for at the TDX Hackathon. We called it Agentforce for Good, and it offered participants a way to work on some big problems: food insecurity, nonprofit volunteer coordination, disaster relief, and more. That's why I'm so excited to bring Alexandra "X" Iyer on the pod. She's the Global EVP of Abilityforce, Salesforce's internal business unit for people with disabilities and their allies. They've been running an internal accessibility hackathon for years, and Agentforce for Good grew out of a desire to open it up to the community and broaden its scope. "Builders who probably never thought of themselves as social impact developers shipped working Agentforce solutions for all sorts of big problems," X says, and 62% of this year's Hackathon entries were solving for Agentforce for Good. Inclusive design creates better technology for everyone "When we are challenged with designing for the edge, you make the center better," X says. Finding challenges that force you to push tools like Tableau, Slack, and Agentforce in new ways helps you uncover capabilities that you might not have otherwise thought about. As X likes to put it, "Good design is just good design, full stop." Going forward, X and her team are looking for ways to expand Agentforce for Good beyond TDX. Consider this a call for participation, and she encourages you to get in touch to volunteer or bring Agentforce for Good to a community event near you. Lived experience is a valuable design credential "One of the main things I would love for people to take away from our conversation is that your lived experience is a credential," X says. "It's not a distraction." After all, designing around new challenges is how we come up with innovative solutions that nobody else would have thought of. Your unique perspective is valuable. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more insights from X. Next week, we'll hear from the winner of the TDX Hackathon, so make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Trailblazer Community Group: Abilityforce Salesforce Equality Groups Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social X on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes! Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, we're talking about what happens when technology, accessibility, and community come together to solve real world problems. I'm joined by X or X, who is the director of marketing, strategy and AI transformation at Salesforce and Vice President of Abilityforce to discuss the Agentforce for Good Hackathon that happened at TDX. Now we're going to find out that it started as an employee-led accessibility initiative. And has grown into a community movement bringing together admins, developers, partners, and customers to build solutions that address challenges like food insecurity, disaster relief, and volunteer coordination. We're going to talk about why designing for inclusion leads to better outcomes, how AI can help scale impact, and why your lived experience might be one of the most valuable design credentials you have. So if you're thinking about how data automation, AI agents work together to create meaningful change not just inside your organization, but in the world around it, I promise you this episode is for you. So let's get Alexandra on the podcast. So Alexandra, welcome to the podcast. Alexandra: Thank you for having me, Mike. Mike: I think it's going to be a fun conversation because we're talking about Agentforce for Good today. So let's get started to learn a little bit about you and your path to Salesforce and your path to the Agentforce for Good Hackathon. Alexandra: Absolutely. Thank you for asking. And by the way, I go by X for short, so feel free to call me X. Mike: Perfect. X: I'm the director of marketing strategy and AI transformation for our customer success and partner marketing team here at Salesforce. And I'm also the vice president for Abilityforce, our employee resource group for people with disabilities and their allies. And when we're talking about the Agentforce for Good Hackathon, this is really a moment where these two worlds actually collided. Normally, they wouldn't collide, but the hackathon is genuinely where they did. I come from 20 years of go to-market experience. I'm not a builder by background. I actually got curious in a marketing role about the products that I was marketing and how they worked. So that curiosity pulled me into the platform, into development, into force certifications that I did not see coming. And then, I went from talking about technology to building on it and that changed everything. I believe that the AI era is only worth building if it's built for everyone. That's not a tagline for me. It's a design requirement. And I truly feel that admins have always known that. Admins are the ones closest to the humans using the platform, the problems, the friction, the gaps. And I also believe they're the closest to the solution. So I think it's not a support function, it's a superpower and I'm really happy to be here. Mike: Yeah. Well, I agree with everything you had to say, X. I do agree that admins are very superpower. I also think just in general, when we think about technology, it's not how do we roll it out for some people? It's how do we roll it out for everyone? And I remember this is a long time ago, but when I first joined a company that did workplace assessments, I remember they said, "Well, when creating the test, we have to assume the person doesn't know how to use a mouse." And I remember thinking to myself, this is ... closed-minded is the wrong word, but I just was unaware. And I was like, "Well, who doesn't know how to use a mouse?" And they're like, "Well, you don't understand." And I was like, "Oh, that is a huge challenge." And sometimes until you get someone else's perspective, do you really understand like, it's not that you've been living under a rock, it's just too often sometimes people assume their world is just like everyone else's world and it's not. So there's a Mike side of I had to remember that not everybody knows how to use a mouse sometimes. X: Well, Mike, frankly, I consider that the main dish. I don't think it's a Mike side. I think that if you're designing for the default user, it's not really good technology and that when you optimize for the average, you're excluding by design. So I think it's the main dish and it's part of the reason why the Agentforce for Good Hackathon even exists. So to give you a little context, three years ago, the Agentforce for Good Hackathon was an internal-only, employee-only hackathon led by Abilityforce. I mentioned earlier Salesforce's business resource group for people with disabilities and their allies. And then, last year we said, "Why does it have to be about accessibility only and why does it only have to be for employees?" So then we opened it up to the community. We had partners and customers and employees all building on the platform, really stretching the platform, bringing us to TDX this year, where builders who really probably never even thought of themselves as social impact developers shipped working Agentforce Solutions for food insecurity, for nonprofit volunteer coordination, you name it. So when we all come together to threshold platform for everybody, not the default user, we're really shipping great technology and boy, did the admin community really show up for this. Mike: Yeah, no kidding. And just as kind of a teaser, next week on the podcast we have the winner of the hackathon to talk through their application. So that was a fun conversation, but let's dive into what some of the things that you did around the hackathon, some of the stuff that you saw and what some of the participants tried to tackle. X: Absolutely, so we had ... so a little fun fact for you is that of all of the submissions for the TDX Hackathon, over 62% of them self-selected to say, "I want to solve for the Agentforce for Good." It wasn't required. And then, 50% of the Agentforce for Good projects were participants could submit in multiple categories, but 50% of those 62% of the projects were only for Agentforce for Good. They solved things from disaster relief to supporting teams post-addiction to food rescue, truly really pushing the boundaries of the Salesforce platform. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I always think sometimes that we're trying to solve problems with technology where it's just how do you layer in the technology? But I do feel ... and I was there when they gave the awards, I do really feel that the integral solution for a lot of these works the technology along with the process that is also needed. There's just things you can't do without the technology that when you layer that in, wow, it unlocks a different world. X: Yeah, absolutely. I think that when we are challenged with designing for the edge, you make the center better. And so I'm sure that some of these solutions that put together Tableau and Slack and Agentforce have uncovered some capabilities that maybe we might not have thought about, whether it's for a good cause or not. So I do think it also allows very special kinds of developers and admins to come to the surface as well. Mike: Absolutely. So in your work with the community and around the community, what are some of the events that you go to? What are some of the presentations and content that you put out there that people find valuable and useful? X: Well, I mean, I'm only starting to get into the conference circuit or the community circuit, to be honest with you. I've been kind of- Mike: I like that we call it a circuit. X: Yeah. Mike: Get around the circuit. X: I mean, for me, it's something that I've always been ... and this might be a little too raw, but I am an open book, Mike, so hear me out here. I have never, ever had the ... what's the word I'm looking for? It's kind of like, I guess confidence is the right word. I've never been raising my hand to say, "Oh, I should submit and speak," or, "I should fight to attend this event because this really matters to me." And it's only recently where I've started to get my legs a little bit more to do that. I've published a couple of articles on LinkedIn, building with Cloud Code, using Slack, Slackbot, all these things. And so, I'm just starting to get out there and really getting exposed to the possibilities of our platform. I actually don't know how to answer that question, except for I'd love invites, I'd love to know what the community finds interesting and I'd love to facilitate doing good in the world, doing as much good as we are solving business problems. Mike: Yeah. I think ... I mean, you're also just taking the first step. Some people ... I'll just go, but I'll never present. And I always encourage people, even ... you don't have to go to a big conference or you don't have to present at Dreamforce, but even getting up and sharing things at your local user group, the thing I'm reminded of, somebody needs to see somebody like you presenting. X: Well, thanks for saying that. I'm actually presenting at Connections this week. Yeah. It's my first real speaking session and we're talking about how we've used Slack and Slackbot to scale top level support to our incredible partners. We have over 13,000 partners in the Slack community and we have a lot of different skills that we're using to help our partners go to market faster in a more customized personalized way. And so, we'll be talking about that. But back to the hackathon, the one thing I did want to underscore is that Salesforce has a total of 16 equality groups from Abilityforce, to Neuroforce, to Asiapacforce, to Outforce, BOLDforce. And we all came together for this hackathon and we're going to continue to do that. So likely, you'll see us at Dreamforce and at TDX again. So I would love to have the community just continue to support this and participate and start the platform. I'll say that our community is proving that intersectional volunteer-led initiatives drives higher engagement and faster product adoption than traditional top-down motions. And so, I just want to have a call to participation. If your community or your listeners want to participate, we're definitely open to having more volunteers support and would love to see these at our community events as well. Mike: Yeah. I've already been to a community event MidAtlantic Dreamin', this year in Philadelphia. And I love going to those events because it is all community presenting and really showing their perspective on giving different solutions and tackling different challenges. And it ranges from technical through just giving presentations to your executives and having the confidence to walk into a boardroom and really working through that, not all the presentations are exactly technical. And so, you can learn different skills that way, but I appreciate you bringing that up. That's always very good and good for you getting up on stage. It's okay. I do think sometimes ... I've spoke on a lot of different stages. Sometimes it's the smallest ones that are the hardest because once you get up on a big stage, there's just so many people that your brain can't absorb it. It's crazy. X: Yeah. Well, I guess my little theater session at Connections will have to do, but- Mike: You never know, there could be 200 people there and do a little theater session. X: I know, I know. My goodness. Yeah. What I'm curious about, Mike, from your perspective is why do you think ... Here I am, I'm asking you a question. Mike: Please. X: Why do you think we had such incredible participation? Because it really was humbling the amount of community support we got from folks joining the Agentforce for Good Hackathon. Mike: I thought about that too and I think it's maybe a couple of things. One, I've been a part of either on the team where people around me are planning the hackathon. I've been in the judging room sometimes for a few of the events and going through, watching the submissions and watching the integration of how did they use Agentforce and what was the solution they were trying to solve. I feel like the opportunity for solving things that really provide, I'll call it exponential value to the community, is so great. And it also kind of, in some respects, opens up the creativity because depending on how long you've been a Salesforce admin, how long you've been a Salesforce developer, you might not have all of that kind of exposure into different businesses and different processes. I know for a long time, a lot of hackathon people were tackling things in the medical world and I won't give away ... Well, I can give away the winner because we all know it. But the unique solution that they come up with, you have to think of it's not what is the technology solved for, it's what was the issue and the challenge that provided the biggest gap that technology proved out to do the most good. And I just think after talking with the winner and seeing that solution, I think a lot of people just genuinely found a lot of really satisfying things to build when it comes to solutioning ... I'll call it solutioning for good, as opposed to solutioning for profit. X: Right. Mike: Because then you're like, wow, if we can do this, this and this, because the gaps are always there and they're always huge because nobody ... For lack of a better terms, nobody is maximizing good for profit. X: Yeah. Mike: And so, the thinking of just different things around animal adoption or adoption shelters or food and food insecurity, there's always communication gaps there. And the biggest thing that AI we found and Slack, and some of these other tools, but the biggest thing that AI solves is communication. I was on Amazon the other day just not as a tangent, but kind of ... and they have this new button now you can click and it generates kind of an AI overview of the product and some of the common answers to the questions that they have. And I thought to myself, that gap probably didn't exist, but AI solved it and AI is able to communicate with us. And I think that to me for things that do good and help others, communication is always the key and it's always the biggest gap because communication at scale never happens. X: It's interesting that you say gap and it's making me think of something I'd love to share about our employee hackathon. So we are still doing our employee version of the Agentforce for Good Hackathon and this year, we're adding an AI fluency track. So we have our traditional builder track, and then we have our AI fluency track and you don't have to be building an agent to build something powerful. Mike: Right. X: And so, we want to provide an opportunity for admins and marketers and all sorts of folks to be able to confidently collaborate with AI to give our users agency to drive impact at speed and scale. And so, I think admins do a really great job at understanding human like you were saying the Amazon button and clicking that button as an admin, you kind of know why the user might click it or why they might click the wrong one because of maybe where it's placed or is it accessible or things don't get filled out correctly and you know how to create some workarounds. And so, I think the AI fluency track for us is about really bringing more of that human element back into the AI. So I'd be curious if the community would be down with participating in an AI fluency track where it's like writing ... like it's not about building something. Maybe it's like the most artful skill, Slackbot skill, or maybe it's a killer Gemini prompt or something along those lines. But I think you mentioning the gap really made me think about how I want AI for all technology that empowers everybody, but I also don't want to leave anyone behind. Mike: Right. Yeah. I mean along those lines, I was talking today with my manager and we were discussing something and she's like, "So what do you use?" Because at Salesforce we have a wealth of tools. I think comparative to ... I've talked with other friends and like, "Wow, you get to use that and that and that?" And I'm like, "Yeah, and there's probably more that I don't know about." And they're like, "Geez, we don't even have ..." So that part alone was ... I was like, "Yay. Well, I'm glad I have a wealth of resources." But she asked what I was going to use it for. And I said, "The biggest thing that I try to use AI for in looking at a lot of data on sheets or 10, 15 page documents, what are the blind spots for the stuff that I don't normally pick up?" And that to me was the greatest prompts that I could use. And back to some of your Agentforce Hackathon stuff, I think actually that's some of the biggest opportunities that admins have across their org is we always look at, well, how can the agent improve this or that? Boy, I would just love it if ... how could the agent just look at the record somebody created and be like, "Yeah, Jim, that's not going to cut it." X: Absolutely. Mike: "You left a bunch of fields blank and you know what, those fields are there for a reason. Go back and fill them in." That's what I would want. I would want a little snarcastic clippy coming up and being like, "I think you can do better." X: Yeah. Mike: But it's also not, how do I make myself perform in a greater capacity or increased speed? Yes, that's part of it, but also, how do I make myself save myself? X: Yeah. Mike: So how do I look at this, but tell me what I'm not seeing because I don't know to look for it. X: You've inspired me to share one of the main things I would love for people to take away from our conversation, which is your lived experience is a credential. It's not a distraction. So how you experience things, the type of inputs you would want. In the Agentforce for Good Hackathon, we're asking for accessibility and equity lenses that only people can have through their lived experiences of what's broken, what's inaccessible, what might be perceived as unfair in technology. That is absolutely a credential and not a distraction. And so I am happy to hear that those are the types of thoughts you have and I hope that all of us do that. All of us have the agency to think about those things in our designs. Mike: Yeah. I mean, your answer brings me back to long ago publishing days and I remember I used to work selling textbooks and I worked the sales desk set by the editors and the author's desks and we could all mix and mingle and talk to each other. I remember one of the authors for a book in New York City came over to my desk and said, "Can you read this question and tell me what the answer is?" And the question had, it was like for fifth or sixth grade, if the kid was at his window and wanted to look at the stars, what would he use? A microscope, a telescope, binoculars, or ... I forget something else. And I remember saying, "Oh, well, it's obviously a telescope." And they said, "Yeah, but you know that because you know telescopes exist. What if you don't know that telescopes exist or what if you didn't know you could see the sky?" And it was because it was based for a book in New York City where I live in the middle of the Midwest, I can go outside and see the sky. I can walk two feet outside my front door, but some people ... And I've been in parts of New York, you walk outside and the buildings are so tall, you might not ever see the sky. And I thought, wow, what an interesting perspective. And so, I use that example with a lot of AI bots that I work with to be like, here's an example of, not a blindness, but something I wasn't aware of. And can you look for something similar to that in my writing or in this thing that I'm looking at? Because sometimes if you grew up in the Midwest and you could always see the stars in the sky, you might not know that there's a sky. X: Right, right. Okay. So real talk here, did you influence any of these authors? Are there books out there tech book- Mike: There was. There was. There were No Child Left Behind Test Prep books, which I think have probably faded into obscurity, but I probably have a few in my closet somewhere that I took before I left the company, but I would like to think so. X: I'm sure there is. And that's such a good story and such a good analogy. I mean, at times I've thought to myself, well, what if you grew up every single day thinking blue was red and then somebody told you red was blue and you were wrong. Your perceived lived experience changes very basic things like that. Mike: Right. I grew up with Four Seasons because we have all of them in Iowa and some people haven't. Or the other conversation I had with the author that was working on the New York books was around green grass because the likelihood that a child might not have ever seen green grass in their life is very high in New York City. And I was like, "Wow, actually you're right." X: Exactly. Mike: And you don't think about those things when your perspective is, I can see green grass outside of my window, why can't everybody else? X: Yep, 100%. Well, at the end of the day, this conversation that we're having is exactly why the Agentforce for Good Hackathon is so important. One of my taglines in one of my recent articles is that good design is just good design, period. And it truly becomes non-negotiable when the stakes are someone's health, their safety, or their dignity. And that is what is so exciting about the Agentforce for Good Hackathon. Mike: Yep. I think that's perfect note to end things on. So X thanks for coming by and sharing with us on the podcast. And next week, we get to talk to the listener or to the hackathon winner. X: That's going to be exciting. I can't wait to tune in and thank you for the opportunity to share more about this hackathon and look forward to the next one. Mike: So that was a great conversation with X. I'm glad she could come on. And by the way, I teased it out, but just a reminder, next week on the podcast we have the hackathon winner on, to talk about their solution and what they're passionate about. It's a really great episode. One thing that stood out to me is that great solutions don't start with technology. They start with understanding people, their experiences, and their outcomes that matter most. As Salesforce admins, we're often the ones connecting systems, stakeholders, and now AI agents to solve problems at scale. So whether you're building your business, your community, or a cause you care about, there's an opportunity to design technology that works for you. Be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And you know what? If you found this conversation valuable, share it with a fellow Salesforce admin. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  
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  Salesforce Admins Can Reduce Risk With Proactive Security 28.05.2026 20min

  Salesforce Admins Can Reduce Risk With Proactive Security   Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce.   Join us as we chat about why security is the foundation for how data, automation, and AI work together.   You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kate Lessard. Why strong security is proactive, not reactive Security can often feel like the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it's important, but the amount of work needed to do it right can feel daunting. Thorny problems like accumulated tech debt and organizational inertia can make you feel like you're better off not talking about it.    That's why I sat down with Kate Lessard. This month, she ran a workshop called Security in Action to highlight the simple steps you can take to strengthen the security posture of your org. She got hands-on with an example org to demonstrate how to use Health Check to identify and fix security problems.   It's all about taking a proactive approach to security, rather than waiting for something to happen to you.  Your Health Check score is a security action plan "Health Check is no longer just a list of settings for you to review," Kate says, "it's your dynamic risk mitigation dashboard." Issues are sorted into four categories: high-risk, medium-risk, low-risk, and informational. There is also a status to rate the level of urgency for each issue: critical, warning, or compliant.   Health Check is also customizable. If your organization's security policies are different than the Salesforce Baseline Standard, you can download an XML file and tweak the criteria. You can compare your policies to what's recommended by Salesforce, and maybe identify some low-hanging fruit.   In short, your Health Check score gives you a prioritized list of which security issues need to be addressed first so you can walk into a meeting with stakeholders with a solid plan of action.   Helpful reports for user management Security and user management go hand in hand, and Kate recommends some reports that admins can run to help with governance.    First of all, the Active System Administrator Report can help you find users who might have more access than they need. This can often be an issue in older orgs where it was easier to give someone admin access than to sit down and solve the permission problem. Kate also likes to run a report on Reports, to keep track of what her users are interacting with the most.   As Kate says, it's all about making a shift towards a security model built around permission set best practices. As admins, we need to find a way to fit security seamlessly into our organization's business processes, and vice versa. There may be an upfront cost, but it's all about making security easy in the long run.   Listen to the full conversation for more from Kate about security and Health Check. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.   Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog: Securing Your Org: From Reactive to Proactive Kate Clicks Through It: Protect Your Salesforce Org With Health Check   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Kate on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, I sit down with Salesforce Evangelist Kate Lessard to unpack why security is really no longer a side conversation for admin, but the foundation to how data, humans, automation and AI all work together. We're going to cover her new security workshop that she led last week, and talk about health check upgrades, permission set security models, and of course how Salesforce admins can move from reacting to security problems to proactively designing trusted systems. We do touch on a little bit of governance, user access, and why secure data is the backbone of every successful AI implementation. So if you've ever wondered how modern Salesforce admins evolve from feature builders into stewards of trust, this episode is for you. And with that, let's get Kate on the podcast. Kate, welcome back to the podcast. Kate Lessard: Hey, thanks for having me back. Excited to be here. Mike: Well, it feels like a lot of relevant things for admins are coming out of your camp lately from True to the Core Deep Dive to last week's security and action. I feel like there should be like a thunderclap after that. Security and action. Dun, dun, dun. Kate Lessard: Yeah, absolutely. Data and access. Mike: Right. Mm-hmm. Yep. Like a comic book hero. And then you got to do the comic book land. Anyway, totally off topic. Look at that. 30 seconds into the podcast, we're already in comic books. People- Kate Lessard: I mean, I am here for it. Admins are superheroes, especially when they are securing their orgs. Mike: We are. So let's talk about what that first workshop was, and what you covered, and how it went. So tell me a little bit more, tell everybody a little bit more about what that workshop was. Kate Lessard: So in the Security and Action workshop, we were really focused on data and access and using HealthCheck as our guide. So essentially we started off with some security basics knowing that much of our audience was at different levels. So we had people joining us that are brand new admins that are working on their first certification. And then we had people joining us that have been in the ecosystem and in a Salesforce role for more than 10 years. So wanted to make sure that we had a strong foundation and that we had reviewed some security foundational knowledge base points for everybody to get on the same level. And then we got hands-on in an org that just didn't have a great health check score and had some security concerns that we went through, and hands-on adjusted together until we improved our score, we better secured our org, and just increased our security posture. Mike: Cool. I didn't hear Agentforce in there and we're in the age of AI. Kate Lessard: Yeah. So I do think we didn't specifically touch on Agentforce in this first workshop. We really wanted to focus on that strong security base where it applies to all of your org. And that might mean that it applies to your users, both human and agent, but really focusing in on that prime security. And then we do have plans in the future to enhance this and take this to the next level and really expand on some of those agentic guardrails. But I think that it's just really important to have that foundation first. Mike: Yeah. I mean, all of it bases around good, clean data and secure data. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. And you're not going to have a successful Agentforce implementation without that. That is the foundation point that's going to set your organization up for success using AI. Mike: I did the Agentforce Now workshop that week, and I always emphasize the importance of filling in description and metadata fields as well. Kate Lessard: Yes, hugely important. Mike: So one of the things, it's really cool the workshop pivots all around HealthCheck. And I know having worked some of the Q&A, people were like, "Wait a minute, I thought HealthCheck went away." Kate Lessard: Yeah, HealthCheck has not gone away. It is free for admins to use and it actually recently got some pretty impressive and exciting upgrades that we spend some time on in the workbook. So it's no longer just a list of settings for you to review. It is really dynamic and serves as your risk mitigation dashboard. So you can do things like not only configure the specific settings for your org security, but you can also set up email notifications for system admins or anyone who that you would like to receive notifications when your security score changes. So maybe members of your IT team, your security team, if you work with a governance team, making sure that they get notifications because as you know, security is a team sport. I think the coolest thing that we do in the workshop and that I really want everybody to be able to take advantage of is you can actually export the standard Salesforce baseline and customize it to your own organization's security criteria. So if you have different security criteria like maybe your password policy has a minimum of 11 characters at your organization, the Salesforce baseline has eight characters. That is a change. And you want to compare your Salesforce security settings against your own organization standards, and you now have the ability to do that, which is just incredible. Mike: Yeah. And it's not like the way that you walk through it, it's not that daunting. I mean, is it an XML file that you download? Kate Lessard: Yeah, absolutely. So you don't have to start from scratch, which is the really nice thing. You can actually export the standard Salesforce baseline. It is an XML file. In the workshop, we walk through what the download looks like and how to actually make the edits. It's pretty easy to read. And even in the file, there's a link to help notes so that you know exactly what types of formatting to use when you're editing the XML. And then you can just save it as your custom, re-import it, and set it as your default. Mike: Yeah, I thought that was really cool. One other thing that you dive into is, and of course it's set up because it's a workshop, but number of admins that... Kate Lessard: Oh yeah. Mike: Or number of people that have the Salesforce admin profile. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. So everybody's favorite admin horror story that you log into an org for the first time and take a look and realize that you have just a completely disproportionate number of system admins and folks that are over-privileged just because it was easier to give them that permission than to really sort through a proper permission set model. And in our org, we have the very scary informational security setting letting us know that we have 100% of our users as system admins opposed to the typical 5% that you see in the standard baseline. So we address that and we talk about who really needs admin permissions. Mike: So I mean, let's expand upon that because we've had that idea of delegated admins as well. So they wouldn't have a system profile or a system administrator profile. Kate Lessard: That is correct. Yeah. You might have your delegated administrators that are taking certain tasks for certain teams, but that doesn't mean that they have the full system admin profile. It means they're a delegated admin and they have certain admin responsibilities that they take on, but it does not give them the keys to the castle. Mike: Very important. Very important. With HealthCheck, I think it's always one of those big discussion areas because there's different levels that we call out. We have critical. What are some of those stages? Non-critical, informative. Would you as an admin getting started approach HealthCheck as maybe it's like a topic we should bring up in governance? Kate Lessard: I absolutely think it's a topic we should bring up in governance. And it really is set up well to help you prioritize. So if you're going into a governance conversation or maybe a meeting with your security stakeholders, and you want to present different actions that you would like to take or approaches and settings that you'd like to address in your org, it's broken down by high risk, medium risk, low risk, and then informational. And then in each of those different categories, we have it called out what is a critical status, what is a warning status, and then where you're compliant. And so you might want to prioritize your high risk critical items, and then you could share that information of what your value is versus that baseline so that you can provide a really strong recommendation about where to take action to better secure your org. Mike: That makes sense. You've been doing a lot of security stuff lately. I mean, you've had some workshops. Outside of this, we had the True to the Core Deep Dive. What are one of the areas that almost consistently comes up as a theme that really maybe this year admins could address the most? Kate Lessard: That is a really great question. I think we've seen it in the True to the Core Deep Dives that we've had. We had one recently on security and user access. And I think those are two things that go hand in hand and something that comes up consistently. It was also a major discussion point at our admin day of security before TDX. We had a day zero event with several admins and that was just a common conversation as well. Really making that shift towards the best practice of having a permission set led security model, what that looks like for your organization, how to get there, what tools are available to help. I think that things like user access summaries, which we dove into in the workshop as well last week. There are just so many tools that can help admins better move to that permission set led security model. And I mean, I don't have to tell you that security and user management really go hand in hand, and oftentimes are interchangeable topics about how we can better secure our orgs and create a better user experience as well. Mike: Absolutely. And being proactive on topics that come up, one of the things that you cover that I really enjoyed, this is also, this speaks to how long I've been in the ecosystem. It wasn't until I joined Salesforce that I think you could do really in depth user reports, basic reporting was available, but one of the things that you create is the active system administrator report. I'd love to know, I mean, you were an admin out in the world more recently than myself. Were there reports that Kate always created to help her understand her users outside of just if they had a license or if they didn't? Kate Lessard: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the active system administrator report is a great one to call out, but it is looking specifically at users that have that system admin profile. And you might have other concerns about your users or things that you're checking up on them and what they're doing and what they're using. I loved to create the report on reports to get little snippets and information into what reports my users were using. I found that to be really helpful. And also there is a great Salesforce Labs report package about different administrator reports to help you get a little bit more insight into your user activity. So I think that something like that is really helpful if you don't have advanced security options to pinpoint that user activity for you. Mike: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. In addition to knowing when people log in and when they don't, it's also what are they doing? Because I remember I did an implementation and they were adamant about having a login component on a dashboard. And I had one user that I, to this day, I think all they did was wake up, check their email, and then log in and out of Salesforce because they were always head and shoulders above everybody else. They'd have 300 logins for the week. Kate Lessard: Oh, interesting. Mike: I'd be like, "Are you just logging in, updating a field, and logging out?" And they were very dodgy about their answers, but I think that's what they were. I think that's what they were doing because they liked being at the top of the board. Kate Lessard: That is hilarious. Mike: And I always had to reframe the conversation with executives of, we have to look at the entire dashboard, not just logging in because it could be meaningless. Kate Lessard: Right. They're just like logging in, logging a single activity, logging out, coming back in. Mike: Refreshing a dashboard, refreshing a report, and then that's it. Kate Lessard: Oh my goodness. Well, and then the other concern is where are they logging in from, if we're talking about dodgy behavior. When I was an admin out in the wild, one of the stories I like to tell about why security is so important. I worked for a mental health hospital system, and as you can imagine, we dealt with a lot of PHI. And I noticed some funky login IP ranges, and it turns out that someone had given a local college student access to their Salesforce credentials and was having them log their activities for them. Mike: Uh. Kate Lessard: Yeah, I know. And thankfully they didn't actually have access to any PHI because we had a good security model set up. However, obviously huge concern and something that Salesforce was able to help us identify because we were able to see those different login IP ranges, spot what was going on, and address it, and prevent it from becoming a big security concern, which I feel like that's really one of the big takeaways that I... If you asked me what I wanted people to take away from this workshop, it is to shift from being reactive about your security and just waiting to become a statistic to really being proactive and getting ahead of things and making sure that your org is secure and that you are addressing those risks versus waiting for them to happen to you. Mike: Yeah. I mean, to that point, I often look at things that are security that don't sound like security. And one of them is process management. So to me, that sounds like there's a complete separation between what executives expect in Salesforce and what the actual process is. Because the process, the technology should support the process that's needed, and here it sounds like it's burdensome to the process. And that to me is a security risk. I mean, if you don't have the process ironed out so that it feels natural, every action has a deliberate and equal technology component, then the security's going to fall apart. Much like a Salesforce admin shouldn't learn about a person being separated from a company four days after they've left the company. They need to be part of the off-boarding or onboarding process. They don't need to know why, but they need to make sure because that person should or should not have access to that system. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. I think that it is certainly a role of power and responsibility because you are getting that notification, best case scenario, to freeze that user. And again, you don't need the why or the explanation, but to have an actual process in place to be able to continue to secure your org so that after someone's left an organization that you're able to say, "Yes, this is still secure, this is not a risk." And you know you're not maybe going through a full deactivation process right away, but that ability to freeze that user and be able to take action is just so important. Mike: Absolutely. Well, Kate, I appreciate you coming on the pod and helping admins keep all of their data secure and their org secure. Kate Lessard: It is my pleasure. I mean, I love to talk about security any chance I get, and I think that we have so many brilliant people on our security team at Salesforce who I'm always learning from and happy to partner with. And this workshop was just a real labor of love, and I'm so happy that so many people were able to attend last week and glean the information and be able to take that and go use HealthCheck and better secure their actual orgs, not just our fake, very poorly-secured org that we fix and adjust in the workshop. Mike: Yeah. I mean, it works because you can spot things very easily because I think in the real world, sometimes things aren't as obvious as they should be. I know the biggest question that we can answer, and we're doing it at the end on purpose, will there be more of this content? Kate Lessard: Yes. So I can't give you a date, but we are planning to continue this on a monthly basis. I do think that there are plans to expand the content as well. And you'll also maybe catch us doing these workshops hands-on at some community conferences over the next year. Mike: Ooh. See, even more of a reason to go to community conferences besides the fact that they're super fun and held at really interesting locations. Kate Lessard: Absolutely. And get to actually really connect with the community, which I am very excited about. Mike: Yeah. Yep. I hear you. Well, Kate, thanks so much for coming on the pod. Kate Lessard: Thank you so much. I'll talk to you later, Mike. Mike: So big thanks to Kate for joining us and reminding us that security is more than just a technical checklist. It's really a mindset for Salesforce admins as we operate to bring scalable systems to our entire enterprise. Of course, be sure to check out admin.salesforce.com for the announcement of more Security and Action workshops, which are also coming to future community dream and events, and start thinking about how your own org can shift from being reactive to an intentional system stewardship even with IT. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, share with a fellow Salesforce admin, and of course, I always appreciate it if you leave us a review. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  Can AI Help Salesforce Admins Build Apps More Efficiently? 21.05.2026 33min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Nick McOwen, Senior Salesforce Administrator at Alpine Intel. Join us as we chat about his path to Salesforce and the TDX workshop he gave about the development lifecycle, sandboxes, and data masking. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Nick McOwen. Nick's unconventional path into Salesforce Nick is the second touring musician I've had on the show this month—I promise I'm not raiding a recording studio somewhere just to find podcast guests. He was waiting tables in between gigs when a guest called him over to ask if he might want to try something different. A chance encounter turned into an entry-level job and, eventually, an admin certification. I caught up with Nick fresh off his workshop at TDX, where he shared how he uses sandboxes and data masking to build new agents and apps for his organization. Learning better development habits and sandbox management They say every warning sign has a story behind it, and the same goes for best practices in Salesforce. Luckily, Nick had Salesforce MVP Kelly Bentubo around to show him the ropes. He learned about the importance of consistent naming practices, managing user expectations, and having a structured deployment process instead of building in production. Recently, Nick was tasked with building a new recruiting app for his organization. He was able to spin up a sandbox with an app they had already built and, using that foundation, quickly reconfigure it to meet the new requirements. Once the app was in good shape, Nick moved it up to a staging sandbox environment for testing. There, he could copy data over from production and use data masking to keep everything secure. Once everything was thoroughly vetted, it was finally ready to be deployed into production. How Agentforce Vibes can help admins collaborate with developers Recently, Nick's been taking advantage of Agentforce Vibes to work more closely with his dev team. He was able to write an Apex class and, while the code isn't perfect, he was able to go through it with a developer to learn what was working, what wasn't, and why. "It was a great launching point," he says, "something that would have taken days was written in an hour." For Nick, the most important thing admins need to do to get the most out of Agentforce Vibes is to learn the basic underlying principles of Apex and coding. It's just like using a calculator—you still need to have some way of knowing if the answer you're getting is in the right ballpark. Make sure to listen to my full conversation with Nick for more on sandboxes, data masking, testing, and why AI is a new opportunity to grow. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Headless 360 Helps Admins Bring Salesforce Anywhere Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Why Pattern Recognition Matters for Salesforce Admins Salesforce 360 Blog: Your AI Could Be Better: The 4 Tools You Need for Continuous Improvement Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Nick on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, I'm joined by Nick McOwen, which means now I've started a trend of having former musicians who become Salesforce admins as guests. Anyway, Nick is going to show us how he went from touring in a band and waiting tables to leading Salesforce projects that involve sandboxes, data masking, deployment processes, and AI assisted development. We talk about the early build it in production and hope for the best admin days, how Agentforce Vibes is changing the way admins approach coding and why today's Salesforce admins are becoming orchestrators of systems instead of just builders of features. There's also a little Apex talk and surprisingly deep analogy involving semi-trucks and AI because you know my analogies and a confirmation that developers will always think their code is prettier. So hit subscribe, share this episode with your favorite Salesforce admin and let's get Nick on the podcast. So Nick, welcome to the podcast. Nick McOwen: Hey, Mike, it's great to be here. Mike: Well, I was introduced to you through a couple product managers at Salesforce that are always on the hunt for finding good Salesforce admins and you were also presenting with them in the admin track. So before we get to that, let's learn a little bit about Nick. How did Nick get started doing Salesforce and be in the ecosystem? Nick McOwen: Well, it was a complete fluke. I had been touring in a band and we just kind of stopped playing music and I was waiting tables at a country club and one of the members was, "Do you want to keep waiting tables?" I said, "Not particularly." So got me a job doing the entry level position at the company and I realized I didn't want to be doing that either. So I went to the developer at the time who was also the CIO and the CTO and said, "I'm going to learn Salesforce." And he kind of looked at me in the way that an adult might look at a middle schooler who said, "Watch me hit this three point shot." And I eventually learned it after a few misses, but they decided to take a risk on me and many, many years later here I am working with Agentforce agents writing a little bit of Apex here and there. And yeah, it just didn't intend to get here, but here I am. Mike: I mean, people are going to think I went down and raided the local music festival because not but a couple weeks ago I just had Adam Stark on who was also a musician that became a Salesforce admin. So apparently it's a trend. Nick McOwen: Yeah, that's the track. That's the track line for most musicians, I guess. Mike: Yeah. I mean, let's see. Should I be like an '80s metal hair band or an admin? Nick McOwen: Oh, that's a tough call. Mike: I know, right? Let's talk about some of the stuff that you presented at TDX because you covered a lot of things in terms of development life cycle and sandboxes and I felt like you were in that area for stuff that admins are interested in and kind of that next level of their career building apps. Nick McOwen: Yes. It was a talk that focused around seeding sandboxes masking data and my experience with that and it's funny because prior to the presentation at TDX, shout out to Allie and Sam, I was talking to them and they were running a booth and they were saying how many people that they'd talked to who didn't use sandboxes or didn't quite see the value in sandboxes. And so I realized that this talk probably had a lot more impact than I thought it was going to be. My particular use case was how we had rebuilt an app that our recruiting team was using for our field agents and how we spun up a sandbox specifically for it, rebuilt everything using the foundation of the app that was already there and got to test in a secure environment, move it up to our staging environment and then production. So it was an interesting experience and an eye-opening one too, getting to talk to everybody. Mike: I mean, to be fair, I don't think when I started as an admin, I really had to pay attention to what my organization's life cycle for app development was because you're kind of, and in this case, and I don't know about your company, but you're kind of a small scrappy unit and maybe they got Salesforce for like 20 or 30 people. I mean, nine times out of 10, I was just building stuff in a dev org to make sure it worked and then literally just not even deploying it, rebuilding it in production and Monday afternoon being like, "Okay everybody, so there's a new field on the account." I think back to those days of like, "Wow, what was I doing?" Nick McOwen: 100% identify with that because that is exactly how I more or less learned when we were first starting out because like I said, it was just the developer and then me and we had to get things done because it was a startup environment, things move fast and so it was tested in the sandbox and then move it. And I didn't want to bother him so I wasn't using change sets and so I would make a field or whatever he asked me to make and then rebuild it in production when nobody was working and just, yeah, it was loose and fast. Mike: I mean, nine times out of 10 when I was building things in my dev org, I wasn't paying attention to naming. I was just trying to like proof of concept and so I never wanted to package anything up because I didn't want to move it over because I was like, "Well, when I get to production, that's when I'm going to make the names nice and shiny." Nick McOwen: Yeah, I remember we brought on Kelly Bentubo, MVP. She sat me down and was like, "All right, we're going to start fixing some of these habits," which totally warranted. And I mean, she was great at helping me understand the value in the consistent naming, the process aspect of everything. So she really elevated my abilities and my use cases and everything. Mike: So as somebody that just started, obviously went from waiting tables, which by the way, 20% tip is not excessive. It just means that you got everything good and on time, you should tip more. Thank you for attending my waiter tipping TED Talk. Just getting into this and thinking, okay, I guess these are bad habits. I bet you had the same bad habits I did. What was the first things that she kind of tackled? You mentioned some of it was naming. Did she help you set up sandboxes and kind of a deployment life cycle? Nick McOwen: So we had the sandboxes and she came on at the time when the dev team was starting to grow and the company itself was starting to grow. So we needed more organization and she kind of sat me down and helped me with these processes, like how to move it up through the environments, the value of making sure that everything is tested within the sandbox environment and then user management, which I think is something that I relied on when I first started. It wasn't necessarily that I knew what I was doing a lot, but I knew how to put on like a waiter attitude so to speak. And if somebody asked for something and I didn't know what I was doing, it was just that kind of like, "Oh, I didn't burn your steak, but let me make this better for you." And so through talking with Kelly, I kind of like refined how to shape expectations for users. If I couldn't figure something out, then she would kind of help coach me through the deployment issues or level setting and expectations with users, which that was a big one. Mike: I mean, I think that also we've talked about order taker admins before and it's very easy to sit across the desk from somebody and listen to them be like, "Oh yeah, this is totally easy to do," or, "I have no idea what I'm going to do." And then say, "Yep, let me just work on it and kind of forget that maybe there's bigger things in the organization they need to pay attention to as opposed to everything that comes in front of me right away." Let's get into that recruiting app that you built. Was that your first kind of get your hands dirty in the org per se, building something new for the organization? Nick McOwen: That was my first project that I led from start to finish. I got the specs from the higher ups. They said, "This is roughly what they're asking for, figure it out." And immediately went to the recruiting manager and said, "Okay, let's figure out how we want this to look." And we had an app that was already built and I knew that the foundation of that app was great. And so it was really a matter of building off of those blocks and reconfiguring it, re-imagining how it could be used and then future-proofing it so that it could scale as the business grew. And it was definitely a lesson in organization and communication, which is good. Always want to keep learning and growing. Mike: Yeah. So let's dig deeper into that organization communication. What organizationally, do you mean the way that you organized stuff, understanding your company's organization, a little bit of both? Nick McOwen: A little bit of both. For me, it was keeping track of everything that was getting worked on, making sure that we were trying to document the change in processes and communicating those changes to the business side so that they would know, you might not interact with this functionality, but this is what's going to happen to get you this result. And that it sounds pretty straightforward, but I think that can get lost sometimes on people, especially in larger projects where it seems peripheral and intuitive, but it might be what's intuitive to someone who built it might not be for the person that's going to end up using it. Mike: Yeah, which leads into communication. I always feel you can't communicate enough. I feel with every project I've ever worked on, you always learn more about communication. What did this first jump in kind of give you in terms of maybe some best practices that you follow now or stuff that you learned really quick? Nick McOwen: I think the accountability aspect maybe was if you presented an idea and it's kind of your child and you say, "What do you think about this, huh?" And then the end user going, "No, that's not going to work for us." There's like a little bit of an ego bruise where you think, "That was a really good idea though." Maybe it wasn't, but then kind of absorbing that critique and then using it to build something that you know is going to work and not being stuck ruminating on the fact that your idea didn't get accepted, that was kind of a lesson because prior to that it was somebody else's idea or I was building something that was given to me. It wasn't as personal, but that was the first time I got told, "Hey, I don't like that." Mike: Yeah, that can always... It's funny because you almost want your cake and eat it too, right? I don't want to take the rejections personal, but you 100% take the wins personal and it's like you can't have both. You really do though because it does feel like, "Well, no, I know how this thing works and I promise this will really work for you, but you're just not seeing it." And that can be the frustration that I always ran into. Nick McOwen: Exactly. And then even after I built it, my bosses came up and they said, "What is this object?" Oh, well, I made that because that was giving the solution to the end user and they said, "Hmm, well, why didn't you do this?" I was like, "Ah, I don't know why I trusted my gut and stuck to it." Mike: Right. Well, this is the way it is now. Let's talk about, I feel like that's always the first part. Your path into Salesforce, they always talk about individuals that grew up and like I was in high school in the 90s just to date myself, but I remember in middle school there was no internet and when I got to high school, you could go to the library and check out the internet for 15 minutes on a computer. I bring that up to say, obviously now everything's online and I don't know how I even got anything done in 15 minutes with dial-up modems back then, but apparently I did. You kind of came in to the Salesforce ecosystem at about the same kind of inflection point with AI in that there's really best practices and development aspects to learn, but then, oh, hey, by the way, now we've got a lot of new stuff coming like Agentforce Vibes. How did you kind of balance those two that learning path? Because I think it would be very easy to, "I don't need to learn this. Vibes can do it for me." Nick McOwen: I think that's something that is incredibly important in this time with the ubiquity of AI and how many people are using it. I think people need to become literate in AI. I don't mean learning how to program large language models or even write agents, but just understand how it functions. And in the context of Salesforce, I remember I first started getting into the predictive analytics for Einstein and thinking, "Oh, this is super cool." We didn't end up going that route, kind of kept my eye on everything going and then Agentforce came out and started learning that. And it feels like every couple weeks something's getting rolled out, which is exciting because there's always something to learn and I don't know, I would hate to be stagnant and have to do the same thing over and over for 20 or 30 years. So it's a blessing and a curse to have a product that constantly evolves for you to learn. So it's exciting. Mike: I think you covered Agentforce Vibes in your TDX workshop. What have you done in Agentforce Vibes? Nick McOwen: Shockingly, I made an Apex class and a test class that- Mike: Hey. Nick McOwen: If you had asked me... Mike: It's kind of what it's there for, right? Nick McOwen: Yeah. The musician that could barely string sentences together is all of a sudden writing Apex classes and test classes. I mean, if you asked me even a year ago, "Hey, Nick, would you think you could write an Apex class?" I was like, "Yeah, give me a couple years so I can write it line by line over days." Mike: Sure. Let me put an ad out on Craigslist and see if I can get a developer to do it. Nick McOwen: Yeah. I would've laughed if somebody said that and then all of a sudden this product comes out, which actually Allie and Sam, when we were doing our ... We did a webinar for the sandbox seating and data masking and they were talking to me about the Agentforce Vibes and I said I hadn't really looked into it. And so after that talk, I started to and that kind of encouraged me to look into the foundations of Apex and coding languages. So it wasn't just learning Agentforce Vibes and how to use it. It was also getting a base understanding of the underlying principles. And so through that journey, I was able to use Vibes to write an Apex class and then I could take that class to the developers and then the developers would look at it and go, "Well, my Apex is better, but we'll use yours." And corrected a couple things because... Mike: Wow, you really nailed the developer intent like mine's better, but we'll use your... Nick McOwen: It could be flawless code and still, mine's prettier. No, I do. I enjoy working with all those guys and they were great helping walk me through everything and showing me, "Okay, this is where Vibes made this. This is the intent but it doesn't quite hit. Here's how we're going to fix that. Walk me through." And it was a great launching point. Something that would have taken days was written in an hour. Mike: Oh, wow. Nick McOwen: We're not talking thousands of lines here. It was- Mike: No, but still. Nick McOwen: 150. Yeah. And then the test class on top of that, it saved us a ton of time. Mike: If you threw me in jail and said, "You're out when you write 150 lines of Apex class," I'll be like, "What's for dinner?" Nick McOwen: I've been be here for a while. Let me get some furniture. Mike: We're going to be here for a few years. Do I get a shave every now and then every few weeks to keep me from looking scruffy? I mean, I was so impressed getting the admin track ready for TDX this year with the submissions that admins had. I watched them demo vibes and just use the planning tab and really kind of have vibes spell out like, "Here's everything you need to do and here's kind of an action plan." And I felt like natively some people had that, but for a lot of people, wow, this was really helpful because I had this monster of an application but I didn't know where to start and it wasn't just, "Oh, I have to vibe code this super hard application." It's like, "No, this is actually just helping me get my steps down." Nick McOwen: I'm excited for the future of the vibes and Salesforce integration, specifically with your organization's metadata and being able to find, where are these fields referenced? What would happen if I did this? I think when that becomes a reality, it could be something that's really cool. And I imagine that's something that's possible if it's not already. I'm not a vibes connoisseur just yet, but I think something like that would be incredibly beneficial. How many times have you tried to figure out where an error is coming from on the admin side and you just go, "Well, I hope a developer has time to help me figure out this error." Mike: That, or how many times do you go to delete something and you can't because there's a dependency and then you spend the next four hours chasing all of the dependencies just to get that one thing done. I mean, the benefit the listeners have is last week on the podcast they heard from Khushwant Singh who was literally leading our Headless 360 development. And I mean, I asked him, I was like, "Do you envision a world where a Salesforce admin sits down and talks to Salesforce to build the application?" And he's like, "Yes." I mean, not forward-looking statement, not by Dreamforce, but that's the rubber band that I think everybody with AI is going to is, "Well, if we make the AI smart enough that it can actually build and rebuild the applications that it's running, why wouldn't you?" Nick McOwen: Yeah. And being on the other side of the wall, so to speak, to be frank, it can be scary on the tech side because you think, "Oh, is this something that's going to replace me?" But having talked to people, it's also an opportunity to learn and grow. And if that's something that you want to do, then you grow and you adapt. I kind of think of it like painting and photography when the photograph came out all the painters like, "Oh, that's poo, poo, poo, throw it out stinky cabbage and it's a tool." And then it kind of grew into its own path and now it's a separate form of art for most people, I'll say, but I kind of see similarities in that sort of mistrust of this new technology and maybe not everybody wants to be an admin for the rest of their life and they'll go and be an artisan baker or make candles or something. I think that's great. That's the beauty of life. Mike: Yeah. No, I mean, I've had the very same discussion too of, well, is AI going to take your job? And I think of it like I happen to think of it as you see a lot, you look out on interstate, you see a lot of big semis go down the road and is it really cheating that the guy's driving the semi to move 80,000 pounds? If he has to get some steel from California to Pittsburgh or Pittsburgh to California, it's kind of silly to think that a person would pull that. No, they're going to use a vehicle that is optimized for moving that kind of capacity and payload. And I look at the way we use AI in the same ways. It's not cheating for me to use AI. It's I'm using my skill to navigate and move and maneuver the AI to produce the product that I want the same way that the truck driver navigates the semi through traffic and road construction and busy city streets to get the product from A to B. Nick McOwen: And to that point, exactly like you said, you're using the tool to build what you've envisioned and it is a tool and I think people need to be careful not to rely on it as their brain and we need to keep learning the foundations of Apex so that if you do use Vibes to write 2020 lines or something, you can sit down and look at it and see, okay, where might this be going wrong What do I actually know about this? So using it as a tool and not your brain replacement, I guess, be- Mike: Right. It's the same way we had to, your math teacher was telling you to use a calculator. You should know the answer before it tells you. Nick McOwen: I mean, I look back now and how frustrating that was as a kid to be told, can't use your calculator and now so many years later it's, well, now that makes sense. Now I see why they said you can't use your calculator. Mike: And it does help. I think the irony is I didn't realize how much I needed a calculator until I sold shoes for a living because people always wanted to know, well, how much are these? They're 10% off or they're 25% off. And I learned the little trick of how you find 10% of anything because once you find 10% of a number, you can literally find any number. And so somebody would ask you like, "Well, they're 39.99, but they're 25% off. Well, how much is that?" And you're like, "Okay, so 10% is 390 and 20 would be 390 times two, and then 25% would be 390 times two and then half of 390." And you do the math really quick in your head, which I'm not going to do right now, but it's around what, like six, eight, 10 bucks, something like that. And you tell them like- Nick McOwen: They can work for that. Mike: "Wow, how'd you do that so fast?" And you're like, "Because I can do math in my head." Nick McOwen: This is going to turn into a math hacks podcast. Mike: No, never. It'll be a food podcast before that, but I did want to cover... So one thing you did talk about that I haven't covered on the podcast is data masking. And I feel like it's because I've never really ran into it as a use case for me anyway, but it's not that I don't understand it, but what was kind of the use case that you guys ran into for really needing to make sure that you used data mask in... I mean, you used it in a sandbox, right? Nick McOwen: Yes. So very relevant to me at the moment. We're in the process of a big build and to get prepared for that we spun up a sandbox and needed accounts and contacts and we could have made it one by one. That would've just been cumbersome. We didn't really have the time for that. So we seeded it and then masked all of the data. So now we've got dozens of contacts for each account and we needed to be able to test email deliverability, but you don't want to send a test email to your clients. Mike: No. Nick McOwen: "Why did I get this test? What test-" Mike: "Oh, it's just us testing things. Thanks." Nick McOwen: Yeah. And then all of a sudden you get a pink slip in the mail, but no, nobody wanted that for anybody. So we changed and masked all the data, removed all the personal information, made scrambled emails, phone numbers, anything that could potentially link to a client and all of a sudden we've got a fresh sandbox with no real contacts and information. We were able to go in there, test the email deliverability safely and then once we proved out our process could move it up to the larger sandbox environments and eventually into prod. So without that masking feature, we're spending time one by one creating contacts and filling out information. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, the goal is when you're building something, you always want to... I want to test it on as real of data as possible and or if I'm bringing in a consultant or somebody, they also don't need this data. They just need it to act like data. They don't actually need to understand what that data is. I think that's always incredibly valuable. Nick McOwen: And in the context of training agents, you don't want to just unleash an agent in your production environment and go, "Well, I hope this works." Mike: Oh, very true. Nick McOwen: If you start testing it in a sandbox environment but you're skewing the data or you're giving it biased data, then you're not going to get a representation of how it's going to function in the production environment. So to be able to seed it with randomized realistic data, you have a better environment to then build and train that agent to move to production. Mike: Yeah. You don't want it thinking that you have 15 random widgets that you sell. Nick McOwen: This is working great. Wow. Mike: Yeah. Look at it. It's going to build the widgets for us and then you put it in production and the agent realizes everything's a lot more complicated. Nick McOwen: Yeah. Then you're sweating. Mike: Yeah. Well, the agent's not, you are. I guess as we kind of wrap things up, if you were to go back to the Nick when he was learning Salesforce and getting into this, is there anything you would tell yourself to do differently that you wish you'd done at the beginning? Nick McOwen: That's a tough one. I think what was important for me learning was having the ability to create a sandbox in Trailhead and really just explore the things that interested me and follow the paths of the things that interested me. I mean, if I'm going to be real nitpicky, maybe spend some more time trying to learn the foundations of Apex because it can be frustrating as an admin to have this brilliant idea and then not have a developer have time to be able to help flesh out that idea although there's a product now that's kind of doing that. But that would probably be if pie in the sky, do it again, learn a little bit more about coding. Mike: Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, for as much as every application builds front end usability stuff, there's still always code running somewhere that somebody's going to have to upkeep and build more of too. Well, very cool, Nick. Thanks for coming to speak at TDX. I know sandboxes and data seating and data masking can fall farther down on people's popular list in terms of cool fun stuff to see, but it's very important. I'm glad you also came on the podcast and talked about it and gave people some tips. So thanks. Nick McOwen: It's been a blast. Thanks for having me. Mike: Huge thank to Nick for joining me this week and proving that sometimes the path to writing Apex starts with playing in a band and waiting on tables. We covered everything from the startup style deployment chaos to Agentforce Vibes, data masking, AI literacy, and the universal admin experience of chasing dependencies for a few hours just to delete one field. What stood out to me most is how the admin role is evolving into systems of thinking and understanding not just what gets built, but how humans and automation and AI all interact together. Now, if you like this episode, please subscribe, share it with another Salesforce admin that you may know or maybe spin up a sandbox before making changes directly in production tonight. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  
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  How Headless 360 Helps Admins Bring Salesforce Anywhere 14.05.2026 23min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Khushwant Singh, SVP of Product Management for the AI Application Development Platform at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about what Headless 360 means for admins and how Salesforce is building towards a future where setting up complex systems becomes a conversation, not a checklist. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Khushwant Singh. What is Salesforce Headless 360? If you're not a developer, the idea of a "headless" platform may sound a little spooky. My guest this week, Khushwant "Khush" Singh, is here to tell us what it all means and why Salesforce Headless 360 represents a step forward into the future of the Agentic Enterprise. As Khush explains, in a headless platform the frontend is separated from the backend. If you have a pixel-perfect website that you love and you want to use Salesforce applications, or visualizations, you can do that without having to change anything. If your organization relies on Slack, your users can interact with Salesforce data and agents in the chat instead of having to open another browser tab. "Headless 360 is about bringing Salesforce to wherever you need it," Khush says. Headless 360 builds the foundation for the Agentic Enterprise One of the main reasons for Headless 360 is to rethink the Salesforce stack for AI. "For the last 27 years, those layers have been put in place for a human," Khush points out, "so how do we open this up for both a human and an agent?" To do that, Khush and his team are translating the entire platform into a set of model context protocols (MCPs), skills, and metadata that can interface directly with AI agents. This makes conversational tools within the platform, like Setup with Agentforce, even more powerful, while also allowing you to use any other outside AI model you like. And while these changes have the biggest impact on vibe coding for now, Headless 360 lays the groundwork for a future where we build agents, create applications, and configure Salesforce through a conversational interface. No coding required. Why trust is even more important with the rapid pace of AI AI is quickly transforming the way we work, and the conversation can become centered on how to move fast. But that makes trust, quality, and governance even more important, Khush explains. Headless 360 is built with trust as a core feature, so you can move quickly without making compromises. There's much more from Khush about Salesforce Headless 360 and what it means for admins, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce 360 Blog Post: Introducing Salesforce Headless 360. No Browser Required. Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Setup with Agentforce Makes Salesforce Admin Tasks Easier Salesforce Help Article: Setup with Agentforce (Beta) Salesforce Admins Blog Post: What Is MCP? A Simple Guide to Model Context Protocol for Salesforce Admins Trailhead: Salesforce Headless 360: Quick Look Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Khush on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, I'm joined by Khushwant Singh to talk about what happens when Salesforce stops just being a destination and starts becoming part of every system your business already relies on. That's right, from Headless 360 to Setup with Agentforce, Khush breaks down how admins are moving beyond configuring features and into orchestrating how data, AI agents, automation and people work together across the business. Now, we're going to dig into what Headless actually means for admins, why governance and trust matter more than ever in an AI first world, and how Salesforce is building toward a future where setting up complex systems really becomes more of a conversation than a checklist. This episode is really about systems thinking, how admins can connect experiences without forcing teams to rebuild everything from scratch. So if you've been trying to figure out where AI fits into your role or how your role is evolving alongside it, I promise you this episode gives you a practical look at what's already happening and what's coming next. So be sure to hit that subscribe button. Share this episode with your favorite architect or admin friend, and let's get Khush on the podcast. So Khush, welcome back to the podcast.   Khushwant Singh: Thank you for having me back, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: I say that because I had to look and it was 2022 back in the day you were talking Experience Cloud when we last had you on. You've since moved on, moved up, had your hands in a lot of things, did an admin keynote with me. So let's start there and let's kind of catch everybody up on some of the products you've been working on, and then we're going to talk about the newest one that we launched at TDX this year.   Khushwant Singh: Yeah, happy to. And again, great to be back. I think back in the day, started obviously with Experience Cloud. Experience Cloud really was building a product that is external-facing and again, it's built on the same platform. And again, as we looked at the product portfolio, it just made sense to start to bring things together. So we've actually sort of rolled and morphed into the application development platform, obviously within the platform organization, everything pro-code, low-code, desktop, mobile. And so there've been quite a few products leading up to here, anything from our delivery on mobile, mobile offline, the Salesforce mobile app, all the way to Agentforce Vibes, the Agentforce Experience layer, obviously a fair amount of work on the Headless side of things. So yeah, it's been quite a journey to this particular point, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, it's actually hard to point out things that aren't admin-friendly that you've had your hands on because you've always kind of championed everybody being able to build on our platform. So let's talk about TDX this year because we launched Headless 360.   Khushwant Singh: Oh yeah, we did.   Mike Gerholdt: By the way, in case you forgot.   Khushwant Singh: Yeah, it was a massive announcement. I think, look, as you think about what's happening in the market right now, you've got customers engaging through many different surface areas. We've got customers on ChatGPT, on Claude, on Gemini, Teams. At the same time, you've got developers also using a variety of different tools, different IDEs, different coding agents. And so I think Headless 360 really is a testament to acknowledging this change in the market in the industry and trying to meet the customer where they are. The customer being an end user or the customer being a developer and admin, just meeting them where they are in whichever tool, whichever interface they might be.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, do you recall ever a time in technology when it was, I hate to use the euphemism, but like the Wild West where I feel like there's so many choices for what you can do just in regards to AI?   Khushwant Singh: There is. And there is obviously a good side to it. There's also a downside to it. The good side is really your [inaudible 00:04:31] for choice. There is innovation that is helping you drive productivity day in, day out. The downside of this is you just have to be really careful about quality, about trust, about governance. And you have to ensure that while you're going fast, you're not sort of compromising on that trust aspect of things. And that's what we're trying to do here at Salesforce and just trying to be a little bit more thoughtful in our approach over here.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. So my developer friend, Josh Burke, who comes on the podcast, usually has to explain things to me every now and then. I think developers are very familiar with the term headless.   Khushwant Singh: Yes.   Mike Gerholdt: I'm not sure outside of Headless flows, which I know what those mean, I'm not sure admins could understand or could confidently buzz in on a game show and answer what is Headless 360. So can you help them kind of understand what is Headless 360 if they had to tell their manager?   Khushwant Singh: Yeah, sure. So one way to think about it is, let's say you're a customer and you've got your own website, it's built out of React, it's not built on the Salesforce platform, but there is so much of your goodness and investment that you have within the Salesforce platform that you want to be able to easily reuse in the context of this other website that you have, portal that you have, mobile application that you have. All of that may not be built on the Salesforce platform. You want to be able to reuse your investment seamlessly. And so Headless 360 really is about how do we empower you, the customer, to be able to easily use those assets, those investments within the Salesforce platform in that surface area that you've got that may not be on the Salesforce platform. So it's really about giving them that flexibility so that they can easily reuse their investments in all of these various surface areas and just meet their customers wherever they are versus bring their customers into Salesforce.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I think it makes sense. I mean, I was a customer way back in '06 when I remember it was like transfer and move to Salesforce, and everything was "have it on the platform, have it on the platform." And then shortly thereafter it was kind of like almost the realization that we had was, "Well, it's a lot of friction to constantly move platforms. What if companies just integrate and we become that connector to everything?" And I feel the same way with this.   Khushwant Singh: 100%. And you know what? Look, I think the one example is if you go into the Williams Sonoma website, right? Williams Sonoma website, it's not built in Salesforce, but if you use their sous chef AI, I think... I'm not sure what they call it, but-   Mike Gerholdt: I'm sure it's something really, really snappy and small.   Khushwant Singh: Olive. Olive. There you go.   Mike Gerholdt: Olive. Yeah. See?   Khushwant Singh: A snappy name right there. That agent is an Agentforce agent, right? So that's on example where Salesforce is being used in whichever head that you'd like us to be in. And so in this particular case, the Salesforce agent is in the Williams Sonoma website. So that's just one example where we are trying to make it easier for this integration to happen through the Headless 360 platform. Now that's one view. And that's the view, I would say, an easy way to try to understand what it means for Headless 360.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, because then as an admin, as a developer, you're not having to sit down and say, "Okay, well, if we move to the Salesforce platform, we have to deprecate everything that we just spent the last two years building on our site." Marketing's like, "No, no, we just got the site pixel perfect the way we want it. Now we can integrate best of everything that we want." For admins who aren't thinking of maybe websites, how does Headless 360 play into other integrations that they may talk to IT or internal stakeholders about?   Khushwant Singh: Yeah. So for example, when admins are chatting with their other internal team, they may have a custom application that they already have in place and they want to be able to have Salesforce data, Salesforce visualizations surface in whichever application they may have already, right? That's one example. So again, it is about bringing Salesforce to wherever they may already have. So for example, an admin may have a business application that already runs within ChatGPT. So ChatGPT, for example, it allows companies to create bespoke applications. And if you want to be able to integrate Salesforce into that application, that's doable as well. It doesn't have to be in ChatGPT. It could be in any other existing non-agentic application as well. But it's about that, look, you don't have to rebuild everything. Wherever you are, you've got an existing application, we'll find a way through Headless 360 to be able to bring Salesforce to it.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, it totally makes sense. I mean, in that way we can really think about how are we making sure that the departments have the software and the tech that they want, but also access to all of the information that they need to do their jobs the best.   Khushwant Singh: Mm-hmm.   Mike Gerholdt: So Headless 360 is a big thing we talked about. I also know I saw you in some True to the Core and True to the Core Deep Dive stuff. Was there some features you were talking about in that that possibly play into what admins are going to be working on for the rest of this year?   Khushwant Singh: Well, yeah. I mean, a few aspects as we think about Headless 360 that would be of interest to admins. So first and foremost, you've all seen the stack diagram of the Salesforce platform. You've got those four layers. You've got your layers of engagement, you have layers of context, you've got the sort of our data foundation, et cetera. So you've got those layers that make up the Salesforce platform. For the last 27 years, those layers have been put in place for a human, right? And now what the product teams and the engineering teams are doing are going back and saying, "How do we now open this up both for a human and an agent so the agent can do that work on behalf of the admin when the admin sort of wants a task to be done for that particular reason?" And so what that means is that we're translating our entire platform into a set of MCPs, a set of skills, a set of metadata that is grounded so that these agents can do the work on behalf of the admins. So one good example is the setup with Agentforce, which is so far so good. We've gotten great feedback on it. Now behind the scenes is a set of skills, a set of MCPs that are firing off to be able to get their tasks done. And so that's one thing that I think our admins can look to benefit from. The other piece is I know we have some admins who are familiar with some of these IDEs that we have out there. They use Cloud Code quite a bit. They use Vibes quite a bit. It may not be the entire admin audience, but for those audiences, again, the ability to be able to use all of these MCP skills in these development environments is another thing that our admins can really look forward towards. Now the other thing that we've also worked on is, over the last few months, the foundation for these skills, these MCPs, this Headless 360 foundation has been very sort of focused on how do we unblock these pro-code use cases, whether that's in Cloud Code, whether that's in Vibes, et cetera. But this is the same foundation upon which as we speak in safe harbor, I share that we are building what we call our no code offering as well. So how do you go about in an unintimidating sort of type of interface, have this conversation with an agent, which behind the scenes is interacting with that same Headless 360 layer to help you build out your agents, your applications, to help you augment your existing agents and applications, help you set up provision, configure Salesforce from a zero to one point of view, because we all know how setting it all up is quite a taxing task for our admins? So that's the potential I see for Headless 360 for our admin personas.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, to go back on some of the stuff that you were mentioning, I remember the first time I thought, "Hey, I could have ChatGPT rewrite ChatGPT's instructions." And I remember thinking like, "I'm so far ahead of the curve, man. I'm making AI rebuild AI." And then it was only a few weeks later that Cheryl was demoing Setup with Agentforce and I thought, "Oh, that makes so much more sense because all of the things that you were having that setup agent do are things that not necessarily admins don't like doing. It's like paper cuts." It's the little things that take 20, 30 minutes out of your day when you really wanted that solid hour to build that application kind of start to finish.   Khushwant Singh: Indeed. Indeed. So we really viewed Headless 360 as the foundation upon which agents can work on behalf of the admins. And again, look, this is agents and admins working together because again, we've got to have the human presence to be able to validate, to be able to interrupt, to be able to initiate any actions that are performed by the agents. And if these agents can help drive greater productivity, then it's a win-win while at the same time having governance by humans over it.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. Absolutely. Do you envision us being at a point where all of setting up Salesforce could just be a conversation with an agent based on the business and what they're trying to accomplish?   Khushwant Singh: We are trying to do that. We are trying to do that. Now, I'll give you a view into our approach over here. We're taking a steel thread approach here where just trying to, for example, set up a customer service agent. That cuts across Service Cloud, cuts across platform, cuts across Agentforce, cuts across Data Cloud. So we've got to take a system view, an end-to-end view versus a feature view because that's what our admins go through. That's what a practitioner goes through. They look at it from a steel thread point of view, and that's what we as product teams have to do. And so as we think about using agents to go ahead and help provision, set up, get Salesforce up and running really quickly, that's the new strategy that we are taking over here, a steel thread view so that we can look across the board and say, "Look, which MCPs are missing? Which skills are missing? Which APIs are missing? Which metadata needs to be grounded? How do we ensure that across entire steel thread, quality is being ensured, governance is being woven into?" So we are starting that way and we want to scale that way as well. So my hope is that come Dreamforce this year, we'll be able to at least have a sizable number of steel threads that we feel really, really confident about on Agentforce really helping and agents helping in this particular side of things. So yeah, that's the approach we're taking, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: Wow, that's going to be amazing. Every time you think, "Oh, we've probably invented everything," technology just comes along and pulls the rug out from underneath of you and says, "Haha! There's new stuff. You got to figure this out now." I'd be curious, you're so ingrained in a lot of things that admins do on the platform, a lot of things developers do on the platform and then also having to keep up with AI. What is a piece of advice you could give people for how you personally keep up with the newest news and innovation on what's going on with AI?   Khushwant Singh: Wow, that's a good question. I think first and foremost, I spend a lot of time just looking at reading publications like what's on TechCrunch, what's on Techmeme, trying to just understand how are technology providers adapting, how are companies using AI. That's one. The second one is actually you learn a lot via speaking with others in the community, right?   Mike Gerholdt: Mm-hmm.   Khushwant Singh: You talk to customers, you talk to other admins, you talk to other developers and you get to understand there are use cases that they're working through and some of the very many innovative workarounds or users of AI that they're applying. And then you're thinking about this that, "Wow. There's a trend here, there's something that we should be backing up and maybe providing out of the box within the product." And so I think that community piece speaking with other customers, with your peers, your colleagues from different companies, that sort of brings a very practitioners and practical view to things. So I think if you combine it with some of these ... So if you take a combination of both, what's being published out in the internet, what sort of bleeding edge and all of these various publications and then you sort of marry that and juxtapose that with the practical aspects on how it's implemented in all of these various by your peers in different companies, that's kind of how I ... That's at least the approach that I've taken. And I've seen it help even with some of my teammates who use a similar approach as well, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, coming fresh off of being at a conference, just even talking with people, you find more resources than you think you could find and it exposes you to different levels of thought. As we kind of close things out, I'd love to know I'm always big, especially when I'm coaching people for events, for TDX, for keynotes, because I've been in keynote with you. I feel like when people are done listening to something, I always want to give them something very actionable that they should do when they get done listening to a session or they get done listening to a podcast like this. So if you are a Salesforce admin listening to this podcast, what is one thing you think you should do right after you listen to this podcast?   Khushwant Singh: Good one. It's a tricky question. I would say that, look, I would encourage everyone to go ahead and use and try and give Setup with Agentforce a run, right? Take it out for a spin. It's available in an open beta. And I would encourage all of you all to give it a try, please. We've gotten so much great feedback. We are a stone's throw away before we make it generally available. And this is our first approach to using Agentforce, using AI to help improve the productivity and quality of life of our admins. It's not our last, but it is definitely our best foot forward right now. And we'd love to get your feedback. Like I said, we are in the final mile and your feedback is much appreciated, so try it out.   Mike Gerholdt: I love it. Khush, you've always been a fan of admins. And I am so grateful to have you back on the podcast and even more thankful that you are constantly helping Salesforce innovate for everybody in the tech industry to be successful. So I appreciate you spending a little time with us today.   Khushwant Singh: No, of course it's my pleasure. Admins are the lifeblood of Salesforce. You're out there, you're representing our products, you're using our products, you're championing our products, you're giving us tough love. And we can't be more appreciative. And so this is an honor to be here on this podcast to speak with you, Mike, and to speak with all of our admins.   Mike Gerholdt: And a big thanks to Khushwant Singh for joining me and sharing how Headless 360 and Agentforce are reshaping the way admins build and manage systems across the business. My big takeaway? Well, the future admin isn't just configuring Salesforce. They're designing trusted systems where automation, data, agents, and people all work together for better outcomes. And as Khush said, trust and governance will still sit right at the center of all that work. So if you haven't already, take Setup with Agentforce for a spin and start exploring what human plus agent collaboration can look like in your org. And of course, be sure to subscribe, leave a review. And as always, I would love it if you share this episode with your friends. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  Why Pattern Recognition Matters for Salesforce Admins 07.05.2026 32min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Adam Stark, CRM Systems Administrator at Belmont University. Join us as we chat about how his experience as a musician with learning and pattern recognition has set him up for success as a Salesforce Admin. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Adam Stark. From the stage to the Salesforce Admin chair I met Adam Stark at TDX, and he had such an interesting path to becoming a Salesforce Admin that I had to bring him on the show. Based out of Nashville, he's been a professional touring musician for twenty years. But when everything shut down during COVID, he spent his days on Zoom making an album, and his nights on Trailhead working towards his admin certification. Adam's experience in the studio made it surprisingly easy to jump into automations on Salesforce—they made sense to him. "As a music producer, one of the things I got really good at doing was accomplishing signal flow, like trying to get a sound source to a final, presentable stage," he says, "and that sort of signal flow process is the same with flows." Whether it's building tracks in a DAW or building solutions in Salesforce, Adam discovered that it's still the same underlying logic. How pattern recognition makes learning Salesforce easier Starting out in Salesforce can feel overwhelming because the platform is robust. But, as Adam explains, the same could be said for learning guitar, and he realized that he could draw on his experience as a music teacher and performer. A part of learning any instrument is pattern recognition. You practice scales or licks in isolation so that it's easy to find them and play them when you're performing. "The more you do it, the more familiar you get, the more you begin to recognize patterns," Adam says, "and once you see the patterns, things start to feel smaller." Over time, something that seems very big, like learning a piece of music or trying to use campaigns in Salesforce, becomes more manageable. Acing your job interview with honesty I also wanted to hear how Adam got through the interview process and landed his first job as a Salesforce Admin. His experience as a musician helped here, too, because he was already used to doing interviews with radio stations while on tour. But nerves aside, Adam feels the key to his success was honesty. "I don't know everything," he says, "but if I don't know it, I'll figure it out, and we'll find a solution." For the folks out there who are still breaking into the ecosystem, Adam encourages you to get out there and meet working Salesforce professionals as soon as you can. Go to a community group, or even TDX, and pick someone's brain. It can help you piece together what you're learning in Trailhead by understanding what Salesforce looks like in action. There's so much more great stuff from Adam about how he learned Salesforce and landed his first admin role, so make sure to listen to the full episode. And as always, make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, and we'll see you next time. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: How Do I Transition Into a Salesforce Admin Career? Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Building Salesforce Projects To Land Your Next Role Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Adam on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, Adam Stark didn't start in Salesforce. He started on a stage, building songs and touring as a professional musician. In this episode, he's going to share how that same mindset of thinking and systems, sequencing steps, and designing outcomes translated into building solutions with data, automation, and now AI. In this episode, we're going to dig into how admins aren't just learning tools anymore. They're designing how work actually gets done across people and technology. Adam's going to walk us through his journey from Trailhead to his very first admin role and what it really takes to connect those dots when you're building something bigger than just features. So if you've ever wondered how your past experience shapes the way you architect solutions today, this episode's for you. So with that, let's get Adam on the podcast. So Adam, welcome to the podcast. Adam Stark: Happy to be here, man. This is awesome. Mike: I'm glad we got connected through our architect friends. You are at TDX this year. So let's just give people an overview of who Adam Stark is and how you got started at Salesforce. Adam Stark: Yeah, absolutely. So I work down in Nashville, Tennessee. I work at Belmont University. And my journey into Salesforce is quite a unique journey. I actually was a professional musician for a long time. I was a touring artist, a professional songwriter, producer, and did that for many, many years. And then a thing called COVID hit in 2020 and really put a damper on the touring side of things, as you can imagine. So during COVID, I went through my own personal little existential crisis moment of, are we ever going to play shows ever again? This was a huge part of my income stream to provide for my family. And so I'm going through this crisis moment of what's next, what should I be doing? And a really good friend of mine who is a Salesforce developer, he told me, he's like, "Man, you should look into Salesforce. Just go on Trailhead and just poke around." And this is me not knowing anything about it. I didn't even know what a CRM was, but went on Trailhead and shout out to the Trailhead team because what an incredible resource, like unbelievable resource for people to learn the platform. Just really, really impressive. But yeah, I would spend my days working on music with my... I was a duo, if you will. I was in a band with another guy and he and I produced our records and we wrote all of our songs. And we're doing that virtually during the day during COVID where we're songwriting over Zoom, which is a complete interesting exercise to try to be creative over Zoom. And then we're recording audio files and sending them back and forth and compiling them into a record, which was wild. Doing that during the day. And then at night, I would just get on Trailhead and just start learning. And the more that I learned, the more interesting it got to me. And yeah, I got hooked and was really fascinated with what Salesforce as a platform was capable of doing and honestly how beneficial it is to businesses and organizations. Mike: Wow. Adam Stark: So yeah, I started learning. I was really determined to get an admin certification just to have in my back pocket. And then the world opened back up. And we did what artists called revenge touring because so many people were starved for entertainment at that point in time. It'd been a year, year and a half of no real public entertainment. So we got busy, went back out on the road, and I put Salesforce on the back burner for a little bit and then had more kids and talked to my wife and we just decided we're at a spot in life where being home is really, really nice. And I was pretty invested into the Salesforce journey at that point. So I went ahead and finished up, got my admin certification and I saw that Belmont was looking to implement Salesforce and went ahead and filled out an application and landed the job. Mike: So I've shown Salesforce to people. I've taken good friends of mine to user groups and I've had friends of mine even get up to Ranger status, which is a hundred badges and still be like, "Meh, it doesn't make sense to me or nothing's clicking." Something clicked for you that was like you got it and it's hard to describe, but I know what you're feeling, but what was it for you? Adam Stark: As a music producer, one of the things that I got really good at doing was accomplishing signal flow, like trying to get a sound source from one stage to a final stage, final presentable stage, if you will. And what I found was when I really started to get into some of the automation tools in Salesforce, especially flows, I realized this actually feels like a very familiar muscle to me. How do I get from A to B and what are the steps I need to take and in what order? What's the logic to get there? If I was producing music, it would be, I've got this... Say it's a vocal, do I want to EQ the vocal first or do I want to compress the vocal first? And then do I want to bus it to a different channel and affect it there with other things or do I want it to be isolated? And really that signal flow process is the same with flows. And then I just watched what it could do with data and I was like, "This is actually really fun because you're building solutions." As a songwriter, you're building songs. As a producer, you're building tracks and you're building records and I'm still building. It's just a different medium now. Mike: Yeah, that's fascinating because the next question I was going to ask you was... So I will confess, when COVID hit, I was one of those people that's like, "I'm going to learn a skill." Except I didn't do like you, I wasn't as devoted. I bought a guitar, a really nice acoustic guitar. And let me tell you why. Two reasons. One, I was like, if I'm going to learn, I'm not going to learn on some Walmart guitar level, I'm going to learn on something good. Adam Stark: Good for you. Mike: And two, if I buy something nice, then I feel like the investment will... I'll feel bad if I don't use the investment, right? Adam Stark: Mike, I'm the same way. When I told my wife, I'm going to get into cycling. It's like I need to buy a nice bike to make myself get on the bike. Mike: Right. I'm not going to buy the Lance Armstrong. I didn't go out and buy a Les Paul and spend a used car's money, but I got a nice acoustic guitar and people come over to my house, they see it on the stand. They're like, "Wow, do you play?" So here's the moral of the story. I took guitar lessons online for like a month solid and I realized, I don't know what it is, but music and math are two things that my brain's like, "Hey, that looks like I should go on the couch and sit and eat some Cheetos and somebody else will figure this out." That is exactly what my brain does. And so I would get to the point where I could learn the chords and figure out the finger and then they started to get to the point where they're like, "We're going to teach you music." And those notes on those bars, it might as well have been a foreign language. It was to me. It just didn't make sense. And I'm sitting here, during the day, I do Salesforce and we're dealing with complex flows and data validation and all this other stuff. And I'm like, "Why can't music make sense to me?" And it's funny because the reverse almost sometimes doesn't hold true. What works for you in understanding music did not work for me in taking understanding Salesforce to music. It's crazy. So anyway, so the moral of the story is I have a really nice acoustic guitar- Adam Stark: We're going to do some guitar lessons out there. Mike: ... that has sat on its stand. But I did play it for a month. Adam Stark: Well, you bring up an interesting point, and this might cross over to just some meta principles in general is the longer you're doing something, when you first get into anything, whether it's music or Salesforce for that matter, Salesforce is so daunting to get started because it's just so robust. There's so many things. It's overwhelming. It feels like this massive mountain you have to scale, but the more you do it, the longer you go about doing it, the more familiar you get, you begin to recognize patterns, right? And then once you see the patterns, things just start to feel smaller, if that makes sense. And I think the best way I could describe it is, that has been my journey with Salesforce. To get started, it felt like this massive undertaking. And the concept of campaigns, it's like, what are those for? I still don't really know why someone... There seems like there's several different angles to use campaigns, and it's just trying to get your head around it without ever being a user in Salesforce. But then you start seeing one example of campaigns, and then you see another, and then you're like, "Oh, well, now I've got some creative ideas because I recognize some patterns and I know what the functionality of this thing is." So yeah, I just think the longer you work at something, you recognize those patterns and then it's like, "All right, this actually is starting to make a little bit more sense to me." Mike: So you got your certification, you did Trailhead on and off when you weren't revenge touring, which is a fun term. I also remember that when the world opened back up and we were like, "Oh, let's do a thing." And maybe ironically, the first thing I did was I went to a Hyatt Regency and I got French fries. Adam Stark: Yes, sir. Mike: Totally boring, but man, the quality of French fries in those restaurant style fryers, nothing at home makes the same. Adam Stark: You are right. Mike: Everybody right now that's listening to this podcast wants me to ask this question, so I'm going to ask this question. Adam Stark: Okay. Mike: What was your first interview like? Because you obviously did a remarkable job of interviewing because you got a job. And I asked that question because I probably every day get a dozen or so DMs across various social networks of, I'm starting in Salesforce and I want to be an admin and how do I get my first job? Adam Stark: It is the million-dollar question, right? Mike: Right. Adam Stark: Again, going back to familiar muscles, one of the things that I was familiar with was the concept of interviewing because I did interviews with radio stations all over the country for years. So the idea of someone sitting in front of me and asking me questions, I wasn't expecting it. I was pretty nervous about it at first when I was venturing into this new career path because I was like, "I haven't had a job interview in how many years? It's been a long time." I was pretty nervous about it. And then once I sat down and started having the conversation, again, it was like a familiar muscle of like, "Oh, this is an interview just like a radio interview is an interview." So I felt pretty comfortable in the interview environment. And then it was me being honest. I really wasn't trying to put on that I knew more than I actually did. I wasn't trying to talk technical where I didn't understand it. I was honest with the idea of who I was as a person, what I'd learned. I'd achieved my certification. I have a pretty good base of knowledge for what Salesforce is and what it can do, but I don't know everything, but I'm determined to find out. If I don't know something, I'm the person that will figure it out. That's what I've always done. In my music career, where there were technical needs, we didn't always have resources to have somebody else meet those needs for. So I would be the one that would go and dive into it. I would figure out how to code lighting rigs and write DMX and program a light show for us because we needed a light show. So that's just my makeup is I'm a hard worker, I'm a learner, and I was honest about that in my interview. If I don't know it, I'll figure it out. We'll find a solution. And it worked to a point. Obviously, the organization took a chance on me because of an experience gap, but they saw something in me, I guess in my integrity and honesty, but also my drive to find solutions and not be afraid to go learn was attractive to them. Mike: Yeah. Well, from your perspective, what were you the most concerned about going into that interview? Adam Stark: I would say I was most anxious about the technical interview side of things, mainly because I have never been a front end user and I'd never been an admin before. So I was a little anxious about, am I going to look like a fool if they're asking me technical questions that I should know answers to? And there was a little bit of that. We found some limitations in that interview process, but again, I always said, "I'm happy to go learn. I'm happy to run that down and figure it out." Mike: Yeah. That's always, I feel like, the first question is, how do I get through the interview? How do I get through... I've never had a Salesforce admin job before. Aren't they going to look for experience? And to me, my first job, I didn't have a Salesforce admin certification or anything, and I just got handed that as a responsibility. I think it depends on the vision and commitment that people see. They saw something in you and said, "Hey, he can grow with us in the same way that we're probably looking to grow this platform." And also, you were a good fit culture. I think people are always like, "Well, what if I'm not smart enough?" Well, the other part of it too is, do they see themselves working with you? Adam Stark: Absolutely. That's a really good point. And I should mention, I don't think I mentioned this, I graduated from Belmont, so I went here for undergrad. Mike: A little bit of alumni. Adam Stark: I had the alumni angle coming in. So that really helped because I did understand the culture. I was here for four years. I'd know what the school represents. I knew how, at least on a basic level, how the school functioned and what some of the departments and teams were. So that was a starting point, right? But you're absolutely right. What you know is, I don't want to say half the battle, maybe more than half the battle, but there's a large percent of the battle is like, are you going to be someone we enjoy working with day in and out? And are you someone that thousands of other faculty, staff and students are going to be interacting with? Are you the person for that job? So you're right, the culture fit is a huge part of it and not to be underestimated. Mike: Yeah. What part, now that you're in it, of the job has probably been the most rewarding that you didn't anticipate? Adam Stark: Oh, it's for sure this idea of going through a journey with people. As admins, you find your users and you go through the discovery process with them and you learn about what are your pain points and you just learn about the language they speak and their staff, their workflows, all that stuff. And when you can deliver something that helps relieve those pain points for them, and at the end of it, they see that beautiful chart that they've been longing to see for two years, or they see the one-click automation that just executes perfectly and performs the need they need. When you can look at each other and high five at the end, and just it's so rewarding. I just love those wins with people. Mike: Yeah. The best part for me was always go live day. When somebody finally gets that solution and they're like, "Oh, I don't have to look at that green DOS screen anymore." God knows whatever else they were dealing with. Adam Stark: Absolutely. And then you see the spreadsheets and things that they've been managing. Mike: Oh, [inaudible 00:18:03]. Adam Stark: "Oh, Lord, this is your world." Mike: It is. But what's funny is some people, I'd say, almost get to the level of coding with the amount of cross tables and pivot tables and references that they build in these spreadsheets. You almost have a robot there. Adam Stark: You are right. You are correct. Mike: So you spent some time at TDX this year. Was that your first Salesforce event as an admin? Adam Stark: It was my second. I was able to go to Education Summit last year first, but I got to say TDX was awesome. I loved it. Mike: A lot of people that listen to the podcast don't get to go. Some people do the over under. I wish all my listeners could go to TDX, but for you, what were you going there thinking, "Here's what I need to leave with?" Adam Stark: It's a really good question. For me personally, I am not content staying where I'm at. I always have this need to grow. So as an admin, I feel like I'm getting comfortable with some of my admin tasks and I'm always looking to grow into the next stage. If that's going to be growing as a developer or a consultant or whatever that would be, I'm always looking for the next thing and eager to just up my skills. So going into TDX for me was this exciting opportunity to interact with people who are way smarter than me and way more talented at the platform and just pick their brains. The cool thing about TDX was it's so, I would say, question-friendly. You can walk up to ask the expert tables and just sit down and have conversations and really glean a ton from some of these technical architects. And there's great hands-on training... Not training, but almost hands-on demos and hands-on with certain products, which was really cool, too. I don't get to mess around with agents a lot because we don't use agents yet. So being able to go and sit and work on, build some agents and see how that's working with Salesforce was really great. But mainly the thing I wanted to do was just go have conversations and glean from those who are far ahead of me in their Salesforce journey and help determine what path am I most excited about going forward? Do I want to be a developer or do I want to go more of a consultant, like client facing route? What's the next thing for me? So yeah, that was my goal. Mike: Yeah, no, and that's what we're there for. Obviously, get you hands on with agents, but also I think to be exposed to what other roles in the ecosystem there are, or you can always just stay in admin. Adam Stark: Well, you know what I found so interesting with how Salesforce is growing and developing, I feel like the admin might be the most important and diverse role of all of them at this point because so much is being brought to the admin's table of possibilities. We can do so many things with native Salesforce tools now that, I don't know, man, the admin is such a key role that maybe I'll never move on from being an admin. Maybe I just become a super admin. Mike: Yeah, that was always one of the things when I got started with Salesforce that I found empowering was that I could configure the product using the product. And I don't recall at that time or even... Now short of a few website builders, did enterprise architecture live there. It was always, you had to plug in a development app and then you had to work in that app and then you had to shove your changes to the monolithic CRM. And if you didn't know code and you weren't a computer programmer, it was easy to really make a mess of things. And it just never made sense to me. And then when you would open up Salesforce and be like, "Oh, you can configure this and you just go into set up, here I can just configure this whole page." And it's immediate. It's right there when you press Save. I was like, wow, okay, wait, this is... I still remember, I don't know if you've built this. This makes me feel so old. The very first time I built a dependent picklist, I was like- Adam Stark: Magic. Mike: I was like, "I can run the Internet." Adam Stark: I love that. Mike: Because I just made this picklist value dependent on this picklist value. And I remember it was a little thing on our leads and it was basically just our tests were categorized in a certain way. And the previous admin, which there hadn't been one, just used one picklist value. It was a monster and it was a word hyphen, another word. And so you had to type out every variation of that and you would open the picklist and it would literally go from the top of your screen to the bottom. Adam Stark: Oh my gosh. Mike: And I remember I was like, "Well, this is just really two values." And I looked it up and I just remember my users being like, "Oh, that's amazing and I can't select the wrong one anymore." Adam Stark: I had that moment with Lightning Record Pages moving on to page layouts. When I realized the power of conditional visibility with Lightning Record Pages, I was like, "This is incredible. I'm a genius." Mike: Yeah. And I remember we rolled out dynamic record pages in a keynote and for how long as an admin, I didn't want that. Just the ability to show the field when they need to fill it in and then take it away. And I'm from the days when our account pages used to have 300 fields on it and every person used a different area of that record page and you would go to their desk and everything else would be collapsed except for that area. And I just remember thinking there has to be a way to make this only visible to them and 10 years later we can. Adam Stark: And it's so satisfying. It's just beautiful when it works. Mike: Right, absolutely. So looking ahead, agents and AI are the thing for now for a long time. We went through mobile and social and there was a brief internet of things and connected devices, but we really were headed towards this AI stuff. What are some of the things you're paying attention to that you're trying to learn and how is your musical skills or other talents helping you learn those? Adam Stark: I feel probably like most people feel because AI is just developing so quickly. I feel so behind the curve on what's happening, but TDX was definitely an eye-opening experience for me that it's here. The power of AI and agents is here. And so it's time to really start learning. Lately, what I've been doing is just trying to get my head around some of the 30,000-foot concepts of how AI even works. How do these large language models work? Like what is a vector database and the MCP connectors and how do all these things work together? Because I'm that person where I don't have confidence in what I'm doing unless I have a conceptual understanding of how the whole thing is working. So I don't like just blindly building something saying, "I think this ought to do what we want it to do. " It's like, I need to understand on a deeper level how it ticks, if that makes sense. And for better or for worse, that's just how I'm wired. And I will say AI is a behemoth. It is to get your head around it and to understand what it can do and then try to keep up with all the changes. Wow, it is daunting, but very impressive. I have been really excited since the conference and since I've been learning more about the possibilities with AI. It's starting to spark some creative ideas for me and some creative ideas for how it could be implemented in my organization. So that's side note there. But overall, I feel a sense of excitement of where we're going with all this stuff. And I encourage everybody else, if you feel overwhelmed with the idea of AI or having to implement AI tools, rather than just fighting it and putting your heels into the ground and saying, "I'm not doing it," just start learning and start seeing what it can do, what the possibilities are, and then see where your creativity takes you. You might surprise yourself. But yeah, I'm still in my infancy of learning and getting my hands on the tools, but I will say I'm excited about where we're going. Mike: Yeah. I've often heard it described as we're in the steam powered era of AI, which means, wow, it's going to be something. I guess last question, which hearkens back to your beginning, for somebody who is listening, and first of all, I don't know how they would find this podcast, but let's say somebody that's not in Salesforce finds the podcast and they're listening, is there anything you would do different when you were getting started learning Salesforce, knowing what you know now? Adam Stark: I think I would... If I was getting started now, knowing what I know, I would have made an effort to connect with Salesforce professionals sooner than I did. I stayed in my room and stayed on Trailhead and just kept completing modules. And the best way I can describe the feeling was I felt like I started putting all these dots on a plot, right? I had all these scattered dots that I was learning as I had complete each module, but I was having a hard time connecting them all. And Trailhead is so big now that if you can easily just wander off on a path of learning that you don't really know if you need it or not. And then you wonder like, "How have I found myself configuring SSO and I don't even know how opportunities work?" So I think I would have really tried to have gotten involved with community, either the Trailhead community or user group meetups locally, but just start getting plugged in with working professionals and start having conversations because again... And even TDX is a perfect example, sitting down on tables and just asking questions with technical architects. And 15, 20 minutes of that is just so helpful to connect all those dots and have that little bit of a light bulb moment of like, "Oh, all right, that makes sense now." So yeah, get involved, get in a community. I think that's going to be the most beneficial if you're just getting started. Mike: Yeah, no, that absolutely makes sense. I'm glad you pointed that out. Adam, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and sharing with us your story and your insights. I think it's always super valuable because the community continues to grow. I was at TDX this year and it used to be a thing where I would walk around and know everybody. And now I felt like I walked around. I didn't know anybody. And it was because everybody was so new. I hadn't met them yet. So case in point yourself. Adam Stark: Yes, sir. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I have enjoyed your podcast. Side note, I'm just going to give you a little shout-out here, Mike. Your podcast was super beneficial for me getting started because it was allowing me to have an insight to what an admin does because I had never been in the ecosystem. So just the value that your podcast brought me getting started was huge. So thank you for what you do and thank you for having me today. Mike: Well, I appreciate that. You probably also learned too much about food because there's food in every podcast. Somehow- Adam Stark: You can never learn too much about food. Mike: ... everybody is always like, "I never know how you're going to work it in." But every now and then food shows up and I'm like, "We all need food. It makes it very relatable. Adam Stark: Absolutely. Mike: Adam's story is a reminder that being an admin today isn't about where you start. It's about how you think. From designing signal flow in music to orchestrating automation and exploring AI, this role is evolving into something much bigger, building systems that actually move the business forward. If this episode helped you see your work a little differently, share it with somebody in your network and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening. And as always, until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  Agentforce Grid Enables Next-Gen Admins to Scale AI Workflows 30.04.2026 25min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Avi Shah, Senior Director of Product Management for Salesforce AI. Join us as we chat about Agentforce Grid, a new way to coordinate data, automation, and AI agents. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Avi Shah. Spreadsheet-style AI workflows to simplify complex automation Salesforce Admins deal with data, automations, and AI every day. But how do you make everything work together in a way that makes sense? That's why I sat down with Avi Shah to talk about Agentforce Grid, a spreadsheet-like tool for creating AI workflows. "Agentforce Grid is, in our opinion, the fastest and easiest way to build AI workflows," Avi says. "You have columns for your data and the actions you want to take with it." Some columns are AI-based, enabling you to run prompts or agents you've built, and others are action-based, allowing you to update records or call an invokable action to send an email. Put it all together, and you can build complex AI automations that can transform your organization's workflows. Combining data and actions As Avi explains, Agentforce Grid gives you a simple, spreadsheet UI to perform powerful transformations on your data. You can pull things from Data Cloud, uploads, or even the web into a data column. Action columns give you a way to act. You can run prompt templates, agents you've already built, or inline prompts. Not everything needs to be an AI step, however—you can also perform more deterministic actions like formulas, updating records, or invoking flows. AI and non-AI actions work together in workflows All of this makes more sense when we talk about actual use cases. For example, you can use Agentforce Grid to assist with case categorization, working with a list of cases, a prompt column to analyze them, and another prompt column to look at those analyses and categorize them based on theme, priority, or issue. Avi has also seen customers take advantage of Agentforce Grid for transcript and session analysis for customer-facing agents. You can use the prompt column to analyze, classify, and extract information from transcripts to make sure that everything is working the way you want it to work. Be sure to listen to the full conversation for more from Avi on Agentforce Grid. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: How Salesforce Admins Can Streamline AI Workflows With Agentforce Grid Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Avi on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript
• 
  How Agent Script Is Redefining the Admin Role 23.04.2026 17min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joshua Birk, Senior Director of Admin Evangelism at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how Agent Script helps admins build more predictable and reliable AI solutions. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joshua Birk. How Agent Script expands the admin toolkit The new Agentforce Builder gives admins new tools to create effective AI agents to help their orgs. Chief among them is Agent Script, which gives you more control than ever before over how your agents operate and behave. I sat down with Josh Birk to find out how it all works and why Agent Script redefines the admin role. Agent Script is a simple, high-level scripting language that lets you create complex instructions and actions for your agent to follow. You can step in as the human in the loop and create a framework for agent behavior and context, helping you build more predictable and reliable AI solutions. Redefining the admin role In simple terms, Agent Script lets you look under the hood at how your agents function. If you're comfortable with coding, Script view allows you to make fast, precise changes and analyze error messages. Canvas view, meanwhile, uses visual blocks to make it easy to understand what's going on with your agent. And of course, the Agentforce assistant is always available with suggestions if you get stuck. With so much more control over agentic behavior, Agent Script puts admins in the driver's seat for how their organization will evolve with AI. You're not just building a solution—you're designing interactions between humans and agents. In the big picture, the role of the admin starts to look less like traditional system configuration and more like experience design, governance, and operational strategy. Getting started with Agent Script All of this requires a great deal of thought in terms of how you're building new agentic solutions and rolling them out to your organization. Josh's biggest piece of advice is to take it slow: "Don't panic, learn Agent Script," he says. Your existing agents will continue to work, so take your time to experiment with Agent Script to get a better understanding of what's possible. Build some new agents and take it one step at a time. Listen to the full episode for more from Josh about what admins can do with Agent Script. And subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog: Build With Confidence: Inside the New Agentforce Builder Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Josh on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, if you've ever been wondering why you can't just copy and paste your old agents into the new version, this episode is for you. I'm joined by Josh Burke, who recently walked our admin relations team through what's really changing with Agent Builder and Agentforce. And more importantly, why it matters. We're going to unpack a little bit of hybrid reasoning, what determinism really means for admins, and how Agent Script gives you even more control without losing all of that magic. So with that, let's get Josh on the podcast. So Josh, welcome back to the podcast.   Josh Birk: Thanks for having me, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, we know that a few people are vibing now because of the dulcent tones of Josh Burke. So in all honesty, you were in a team meeting last week and you were kind of updating the team on stuff that's coming out for new products and beta products. And the biggest thing that you always explain is like, so why is this important?   Josh Birk: Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: And of course, every now and then you end your little skit with, "Thanks for attending my TED Talk."   Josh Birk: Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: And I remember last week's meeting, I was like, "Oh man, that's a podcast. I need to do that."   Josh Birk: Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: Because the way that you would explained what was new with Agent Builder and Agentforce, I was just like, "Oh, that totally makes sense to me." So this is where we're at and this is what I was hoping we would talk about.   Josh Birk: Yeah. And I'll have to try because I kind of remember getting into a very weird, almost like conspiracy theory level stream of consciousness.   Mike Gerholdt: Oh, okay. Well, it didn't feel that way.   Josh Birk: Good. I think that's years of experience of thinking in streams of consciousnesses, whatever the plural of that is. So yeah, so I think to kind of recap a little bit, so there were two things that I think are kind of important to consider about the new Agent Builder. One is what we mean by hybrid reasoning and what we mean by determinism. And then the second thing is, where does Agent Script fit into that? So the question we were kind of tackling was, why didn't we just go back and revise the old builder? Why can't we just reiterate on it? Why are we starting completely new?   Mike Gerholdt: And I think you even said, not to interrupt you, but to interrupt you, why can't I just move my stuff over? Why do I have to rebuild it?   Josh Birk: And why can't I just move my stuff over? Why isn't it just copy and paste? And Agent Script is part of that. So the original engine wasn't hybrid, is I think the easiest way to put it. So this came with a conversation with product management where I was trying to describe the differences between the old builder and the new builder. And they're like, well, let's ... The old builder wasn't doing anything wrong, so much is that the new builder's doing something more. And what the new builder's doing that is more is that when we say hybrid, when we think of AI, we think of AI being autonomous, making its own decisions. So we had the Atlas reasoning engine that's like, "Oh, Mike is looking to find a description on a certain account. I'm going to take these actions. I'm going to put them together into a plan and then I'm going to try to make that work." What we didn't have was the human in the loop portion of that. And where Agent Script really comes into play is it allows users to basically be like, "In this scenario, I want you to behave like this." So when we say hybrid, we mean, yeah, we're letting the engine kind of do its own magic. But then we're also applying almost ... I don't want to say flow because that's such a loaded term for a Salesforce community.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah.   Josh Birk: But well, let's go to the name, right? A script, right? A script that a human can actually control personality, control tone, control behavior. When you see this, do this, when you need to call it human. So kind of giving this very human-friendly dialogue that you can then apply to the agent. And so that's how we provide more determinism. So the reason you can't just copy and paste your old agent into the new agent is the old agent doesn't have that connection to Agent Script. And so it's literally missing a piece of the puzzle to run the engine kind of thing.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. No, I think ... I mean, hearing you explain it, sometimes, at least as an admin, I was always like, "Oh, so they just came out with another version because they had to stick another layer of something on."   Josh Birk: Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: Or like a car analogy, they changed the fuzzy dice. But this is, no, no, no, no. We're really moving from this version, which ran a certain way to an even better version. And that's the part that I feel like ... Because you brought up Flow, I feel like we've been through this with Flow.   Josh Birk: Yeah, totally.   Mike Gerholdt: We got like a business process ... Business management process is what it used to be called. And then that thing went through iterations and then we found a different engine to run it on. And then we had ProcessBuilder for a while and then now we have the new Flow. And it's like sometimes it's not just the interface that changed, but it's actually the guts behind it. Because I mean, I can't recall ... It's sometime between after the pandemic and today that AI came around. And I feel like that's the window that works in my brain because I can't put down a time.   Josh Birk: Totally.   Mike Gerholdt: Was it 2022 or is it 2023? I don't know. Post pandemic, before today, AI happened. But just when you thought, okay, I've kind of got this thing figured out, nope, all of this stuff changes.   Josh Birk: Yeah. And it happens in technology, right? It happened with the Lightning Web Components. We really kind of had to go back and take the new ECMAScript format and take the new ECMAScript standard and really rebuild the way our web components work so that they work in a standard based way. So that they're more similar to React and more similar to these other frameworks. And there wasn't really a way to go back to Aura, now it's called, and just be like, "Hey, Aura, be more standards based."   Mike Gerholdt: Right.   Josh Birk: Because Aura was effectively just ... It was pre-standards is the easiest way to put it. So this happens, right? Now, if people are listening to this and like, "Oh gosh, I have all this work in my old Agent Builder, what am I going to do?" First of all, Salesforce does not like taking away people's toys.   Mike Gerholdt: Right. We've learned that.   Josh Birk: We've learned that. I've said this anecdote in workshops so many times because when we did release Lightning, one of the most common questions I got was, "Are you going to end of life Visualforce?" So I went to the product manager, might have been Skip at the time. And I'm like, "Hey, when would you end of life Visualforce?" And his response was, "When I pull up a dashboard and I see there are zero active users using Visualforce, and then I'd probably wait three months after that."   Mike Gerholdt: Just in case.   Josh Birk: Just in case, right?   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah.   Josh Birk: So the classic one is not going anywhere anytime soon. But I think the other important thing is a lot of our messaging when it comes to building out agents is that you're already an Agent Builder. You're already somebody who can build AIs because you know Flow, because you know Salesforce. Now you've learned topics, now you've learned actions and all of that kind of stuff. All of that is still true. It's all still true. And so you're still getting to use your existing skills in order to control it. It's really just adding the skill of knowing how to write out the Agent Script. Now, one of the cool, really cool things about ... Well, there's two cool things about the new builder that I think will really help people with that. One is the Canvas mode. And so Canvas mode takes what you write in Agent Script and puts it into a visual UI interpretation. And so this is very handy for two things. Number one, it gives you a little bit of kind of a predictive window as to what your script is going to be doing. It also gives you a very visual way of thinking about it. It's also a really neat way to go look at somebody else's Agent Script and translate it. So you don't have to read through all the thing. You can flip over to Canvas mode and be like, "Oh, that's trying to get these parameters in order to do these actions." The other thing going back to vibes and this new AI coding AI is that you'll have an AI assistant in Builder to help you build the AI. So you're not alone. Agent Builder itself will also help you create these things out. So my biggest statement back in the Lightning web component today was don't panic and learn lighting. And now it's, don't panic and learn Agent Script and you're going to build out some really powerful solutions.   Mike Gerholdt: Well, and I think back to ... I mean, I was chatting with Jennifer today too, and just the way that we started using AI. And I remember, I mean, not that long ago doing workshops and saying, "Okay, you need to tell the AI your role, its role. And then what you want it to do and what it can do and what it can't do." And for everything, whatever model you were using, I remember writing prompts a certain way. And I feel like for this and with Agentforce, especially for admins, this is the least set it and forget it kind of thing.   Josh Birk: Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: Because you can always go back and make it better.   Josh Birk: And tweak it. Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: And this is-   Josh Birk: And tweak it in theory. Yeah, exactly. In very small corners too.   Mike Gerholdt: Small corners that make a huge difference because like with Flow, I mean, half the time I'm just excited that I got it to do what I needed it to do. And then I look at what Jennifer built and I feel like I'm over here rubbing two sticks together.   Josh Birk: Together.   Mike Gerholdt: But with Flow, that's your goal, right? You just want that, okay, boom, it's done. But with agents, people are interacting with them, they're asking them questions, I can make this so much better and I can make this better. Here's the clue when people stop using them. To your point of when you would replace Visualforce. Well, if you're looking at your Agentforce dashboard and seeing, "Hey, your users aren't using it." well, now might be a time to like, "Well, let's switch over, let's round some edges, let's change some things." And I would say this is like an every two weeks kind of thing. Which sounds crazy, but the amount at which you're going to find feedback from your users. And the amount of rounding of edges, I worked myself into an English problem here. It's going to be like, you're going to find like a star and then it's going to look like a ribbon of rounded edges that you have to work on. Because as you use that new builder, now your users are happier and being more proficient. And I think like even today, when Jennifer and I were talking, we were talking about building Gems in Gemini. And I said, "One thing that I do is I'll actually have another window open and ask it to refine my instructions in Gemini."   Josh Birk: Oh, yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: Because the way that I write the instructions works for me, but maybe not for it and it can refine it. And I've seen it take thousand word prompts and reduce it down to 200 and it's actually faster. And so having all of that is sometimes there's a lot to keep up with. But it's all for the better because now you're like click click, oh wow. And then you get that ... I think it's always, at the end of the day, the admin is going after that first look on a user's face and they're like, "Ooh, this-   Josh Birk: Nailed it.   Mike Gerholdt: ... just made my life so much easier."   Josh Birk: Exactly. Yeah. And I think to kind of append to that, again, not to overuse this analogy of Visualforce. But it's like don't be in a rush to go and recreate your existing agents in the new Agent Builder. If you have a new agent you're building, I would start with the new Agent Builder and go from there. Two reasons, don't fix what's not broken. And also you'll learn more about Agent Script and things like that. So when you do decide to move your old agent to the new builder, you'll be more educated on how to do it. Now, huge forward-looking statement, asterisk, safe harbor, there is a conversation internally about creating a porting tool of some kind. It's on a roadmap somewhere, no guarantees.   Mike Gerholdt: Oh.   Josh Birk: But I do think people should know where we are looking at that kind of thing. So stay tuned because we do want to make this as easy as possible.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Yeah. But also there's some joy in rebuilding things and maybe that's just me. But I've always-   Josh Birk: Seems like part of the tech world. Yeah, exactly.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, there's that and there's also, it reintroduces you to things that at one time you were good at and brings it back. And then I think too, anytime that these new features come out, one part is, okay, well, here's the tech to change it. But also, has the process changed? Has the stuff that people do internally changed? And that might also be true. And the other point you brought up, which was really salient, just because you can change it, doesn't mean you should right now.   Josh Birk: Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: One thing that ... And I was a part of this, doing a big org rollout. What are the other changes that your users are experiencing within your organization? And so you adding to that, is that one layer too many? Or when would be a better time? Like we always joke, like you're not going to roll out a sales opportunity change the last week of the quarter.   Josh Birk: Right, right.   Mike Gerholdt: So picking your timing, this means that gives you time to test.   Josh Birk: Yes. Yeah. And I think this goes into a lot of the conversation we're having about admins in the AgentiCare. Like what kind of a steward are you being? And how are you using those existing instincts and skills as an admin to not topple over the apple cart, but now you're doing with AI?   Mike Gerholdt: Right. Because in my opinion, admins are getting paid for their judgments.   Josh Birk: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.   Mike Gerholdt: Josh, thanks for coming on and helping us understand the new Agent Builder.   Josh Birk: Thanks for listening to my TED Talk. Yeah.   Mike Gerholdt: I knew you had to fit that in. And we've got just enough time that Daryl can hopefully get his boat from home to the internal ... It's not internal. Inside the podcast joke.   Josh Birk: Inside the podcast joke.   Mike Gerholdt: You have to go back to the Daryl Moon episode-   Josh Birk: Yeah, exactly.   Mike Gerholdt: ... and then it all makes sense. It's the key to unlocking the mystery of the Dan Brown episodes. I don't think so.   Josh Birk: I love it.   Mike Gerholdt: Anyway.   Josh Birk: I love it.   Mike Gerholdt: Have a good day, Josh. Thanks for coming on.   Josh Birk: Cheers, my man. You too.   Mike Gerholdt: Huge thanks to Josh for coming on very impromptu and turning what could have been, I think, a little confusing of an update into something that actually makes sense. New engine, new script layer, AI helping you build AI. Awesome. I like it. So remember, don't panic, learn Agent Script, and it's all about having fun. And like any powerful tool in Salesforce, it's less about flipping a switch and more about steady improvement over time. So if this episode helped you clarify your next steps, share it with another Salesforce admin who's navigating some AI right now. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
• 
  How Salesforce Built a Scalable AI Puzzle App in Six Weeks 16.04.2026 16min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jagan Nathan, Senior AI Architect at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how he built a Slack app for Salesforce's "Million Dollar Puzzle" ad, where millions of concurrent users raced to solve riddles by chatting with Slackbots. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jagan Nathan. The tech behind the "Million Dollar Puzzle" contest If you were watching the big game, you might have seen Salesforce's "Million Dollar Puzzle". As soon as the ad aired, the race was on for contestants to solve puzzles by chatting with Slackbots to discover the location of a secret vault. My guest this week, Jagan Nathan, built the Agentforce-powered Slack app that made everything possible. They needed Slackbots that could act as a conversational gateway for millions of concurrent users. And with a million dollars on the line, they needed to be sure it couldn't be tricked into giving away the answer. Even more incredibly, Jagan pulled all of this off in only six weeks. I sat down with him to find out how he did it and what he learned along the way. Using AI to build quickly at scale Just like with any project, the first step was to gather requirements—though it's more fun when your stakeholder is the "Puzzle Master." Jagan and his team needed a thorough understanding of what they were dealing with and how they could translate those gaming mechanics into the application. The clock was ticking, and AI was pivotal for accelerating the development timeline. Jagan and his team used Salesforce Vibes for quick prototypes and wireframes to help them decide what to build. But the development team still needed to take these ideas the rest of the way. "AI cannot help us solve all of the architecture problems," Jagan explains, "we have to have a human in the loop." With millions of concurrent users, they needed to do thorough testing—and quickly. Luckily, they could use Salesforce Scale Center to stress-test for performance issues and identify bottlenecks so they could be sure that when the ad ran, the app would work flawlessly. Designing for security with a million dollars on the line I know this might be shocking, but when you're holding a contest with a million-dollar prize, some people will try to cheat. So Jagan and his team needed to make sure there were plenty of guardrails in place to make sure someone could win it fair and square. They needed to start with a security mindset and think through any security vulnerabilities as they designed the application. Einstein Trust Layer was crucial for toxicity detection and monitoring for anything malicious, like prompt injections. Most importantly, they were very careful with what information the Slackbot knew and what it didn't. It didn't have the solutions to the puzzles, so even if someone managed to crack it, they wouldn't be able to get very far. Instead, puzzle answers were always validated by humans. There's a lot more from Jagan about building for scale quickly, so make sure to take a listen. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more MrBeast + Salesforce Behind the Scenes The Million-Dollar Puzzle: How Slackbot and MrBeast are Rewriting the Super Bowl Playbook Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Empowering Admins: Build Org Scalability With New Scale Center Features True to the Core Deep Dive: What's New in Lightning Experience Performance and Agentforce Vibes Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Build With Confidence: Inside the New Agentforce Builder Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jagan on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X   Full show transcript   Mike Gerholdt: When you think about building on Salesforce, it's easy to focus on features. But today's admins aren't just implementing features. They're designing systems that have to perform, scale, and hold up under real world pressure. In today's episode, I'm going to sit down with Jagan, an architect who helped deliver a high stakes, high scale experience serving millions of users through a custom Slack-based AI system. We're going to unpack what it actually takes to compress months of work into weeks and how to design for trust and guardrails from day one, and where human judgment still matters in an AI-driven architecture. So if you've ever wondered how your role evolves from building flows to orchestrating full systems, this is the conversation because this just isn't about speed. It's about responsibility at scale. Now if you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe, share it with a fellow admin and let's get Jagan on the podcast. So Jagan, welcome to the podcast.   Jagan Nathan: Hi, Mike. Thank you for having me.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Well, I was excited when you sent me the Slack DM about some of the projects that you've worked on here at Salesforce. But for people that don't know you or maybe didn't listen to the episode of the Developer Podcast you were on, could you tell us a little bit about what you do at Salesforce and the fun project you got to work on recently?   Jagan Nathan: Sure. Hey everyone. I'm Jaganir. I'm architect part of our AA practice team here at Salesforce, building agents for our customers. This is my third podcast on our channel. My previous episodes were focused on event monitoring and threat detection.   Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Let's talk about some of the stuff that you got to work on around the big football game that happens in February that Salesforce had an ad on.   Jagan Nathan: Yeah, sure. Very excited. This is our first ever online puzzle app, which was built entirely on our Salesforce platform.   Mike Gerholdt: So you got to be a part of that. I'd love to know from a Salesforce admin listening to this, we used the platform for the puzzle. Can you give me a little insight into that?   Jagan Nathan: Yeah, so let's unpack this. So what we did is we didn't just build a chatbot. We deployed our custom Slackbot, of course, powered by our Agentforce, which acted as a conversation gate for millions of participants grounded in real-time data. So we just collapsed a nine-month roadmap into just six weeks, which is 42 days. Within that, we designed iterator and we went live on day of February 8th.   Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Nine-month roadmap. Holy cow. That's insane. I mean, can you talk a little bit about the architecture problem solving and how you moved so fast so quickly?   Jagan Nathan: Yeah, sure. Of course, we are a customer zero company. So we leverage our internal tools and the external tools, what we have developed. So for this entire application, we use our Agentforce Vibes to accelerate the development. We quickly do a lot of wireframes and the prototypes, and then we figure out what sort of user experience and what sort of applications we need to build using the power of Agentforce Vibes that accelerated our development timeframe to start with.   Mike Gerholdt: Oh, that's nice. I mean, I've definitely seen Vibes do a lot of things. I'm assuming we really took it out for a test spin on this one.   Jagan Nathan: Yeah. So we use Agentforce Vibes to do this. And then we also leverage our scale testing product because this particular application, we anticipated there's going to be at least millions of users who is going to access this application concurrently. So performance is super important for this application. So we leverage scale testing product to identify quickly and resolve all the problem bottlenecks as well.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Wow. I've had some talks with PM for, was it Scale Center? Is that what you used?   Jagan Nathan: Yep. Yes.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And we've put out a couple of blog posts about those. So for admins that aren't familiar with what Scale Center is and what some scale testing helps them do, what did you use it for?   Jagan Nathan: Yeah, Scale Test is the performance evaluation tool. So that gives a lot of metrics. Before customers used to run some automated performance testing to figure out what sort of performance bottlenecks they have in the ACRM instance. But with the power of Scale Test, we can write a test plan creation. We can do a test environment set up. And we can also simulate all those real-time performance challenges, and then we can schedule those test trend to see where exactly fails and at what threshold it fails so that we can understand the spike and then we can fine tune our application.   Mike Gerholdt: Okay. That's super helpful. I mean, was there any surprises that happened in your testing?   Jagan Nathan: Oh, yeah. Since we anticipated there's going to be at least millions of concurrent users, there's going to be a lot of DB rights back and forth. And then we ran into a lot of issues. We were able to figure out with the help of scale testing, we figured out all those in the sandbox, and then we fine-tuned our code and the logic and everything to make sure it is scalable for concurrent users as well.   Mike Gerholdt: That sounds like a lot. Holy cow. I don't think I've ever built an application where I had to plan on a million people using it concurrently. So you talked about Agentforce Vibes. I'm sure we leaned into a lot of AI to build this. How did you decide really what AI should do versus what humans should still control during the project?   Jagan Nathan: Yeah, that's a great question. So of course we can use AI, but AI cannot help us solve all the architecture problems. One of the architecture problems, we have to use human in the loop. For an example, when we started designing this application, considering the scale of users, we thought just by writing a prompt, it's not going to solve the problems. Prompt is going to give, based on the request prompt is giving the response back, but that alone is not sufficient enough. So that's where we use humans power to understand and architect well for this [inaudible 00:06:50] game.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Wow. On top of that, you got to think of guardrails because I'm sure somebody was thinking, "Well, since Slackbot was in use, what if somebody just asked it, what's the answer?" That seems like the most obvious guardrail to put in place, but how did you sit down and think about some of the guardrails to put in place for an experience like that?   Jagan Nathan: Yeah. So there's an aha moment here. So when we built this custom Slackbot, we intentionally built in a such a way that this custom Slackbot doesn't know the puzzle answers. So even if someone tries to crack the puzzle Slackbot, they would not be able to get the answers out of it. So that is the first so that no one walks away with the puzzle answer, right?   Mike Gerholdt: Right.   Jagan Nathan: So that is the first thing what we did. And then the next thing what we did is automated toxicity detection at the hedge. So what we tried to do is we leveraged, of course, the power of Einstein Trust Layer and then it's not like a traditional AI chatbot. So we just built intentionally a custom Slackbot with all those automated toxicity detection so that if the Slackbot finds some harmful response or some sort of response which is not supposed to do it, if the user on the other side, if the user is a bad actor trying to do some prompt injections or whatnot, our platform is able to monitor and mitigate the risk immediately. It's being very proactive stage of monitoring.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, I guess I just thought the Slackbot would have access to the answer and you'd just have to guard it really well. But if you set it up and never give it access the answer, then it can't accidentally hallucinate and give the answer. So wow, that was probably a little bit of planning on your end. So looking at what you built and deployed, if a Salesforce admin wanted to recreate some of the best learnings that you had from this, what were some of the key takeaways that you had?   Jagan Nathan: Yeah. So I had that security mindset to start with. Let's say you are a bad actor or else you are trying to act the system, what sort of loopholes you might find in the system and then find all those security vulnerabilities, why you designed the application itself. It's like having a security mindset is super important. And that too for the scale of the cash prize is one million. So definitely there's going to be a lot of participants going to crack the Slackbot or else they try to trick the Slackbot and try to get the puzzle's data out of it. So I would say security mindset is super important. And then start with the understanding of, basic understanding of how prompts work and then try to build a Hello World app in Slack to start with.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Did you have a whole team of people that were just, I guess it's called negatively testing because there's always positive testing, which is test it to make sure it does what it's supposed to, but then there's negative testing, which is to make sure it doesn't do what it's not supposed to, right?   Jagan Nathan: Yes. So we did advisory testing as well. So of course, we used the power of AI. We built our own agents to try to craft this agent to see where it bakes. And then we try to enhance our prompts and all the safety guardrails to make sure. We did a ton of testing during our design and implementation phase just to make sure Slackbot is not supposed to provide any information which is not needed or which is kind of out of privacy zone.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Wow. So given the scale of everything that you did, what is something that you maybe hit a limit with AI that you didn't know would exist?   Jagan Nathan: What we felt down the road is like, AI cannot solve all the problems for sure. That too for the scale of millions of concurrent users trying to access the system. We thought there might be places in which there might be some timeouts happening, but knock on the wood, nothing happened. We were able to build a scalable application. Now, we don't rely 100% on AI. We also added a human in the loop, for example, some sort of puzzle answer validation, mainly the final puzzle answer validation. We don't just rely only on the AI. We use a human in the loop. So that we brought in experts on the puzzles who validated the answers and lot of stuff at the backend.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah, that's interesting. What was it like to have to translate a puzzle into a technical requirement? Because I feel like a lot of Salesforce admins often get business processes that can sound like a puzzle and they have to translate that into a technical requirement.   Jagan Nathan: Yeah. Great question. That was very interesting and challenging because not all of our teammates worked on the puzzles or solved the puzzles before. If you take me as an example, right? I haven't solved any puzzle in the past. I went through the basics of understanding what sort of puzzles exist in the real world. Some are logical puzzles, a lot more Sudoku puzzles, some are mathematical puzzles, some are geolocation puzzles. So for us, it took some time for us to understand the basics of what sort of puzzles we have. And then we had conversations with the puzzle masters and then who built this puzzle. We tried to understand from the puzzle master what sort of application they wanted to build because they know very much on the gaming side and we know very much from the technical side. It goes hand in hand. That was very interesting and challenging conversations we had to understand. It took some time for us to understand and translate the gaming mechanics into our application.   Mike Gerholdt: Wow. Okay. So be honest, how cool wouldn't it be to have a title named Puzzle Master? Right?   Jagan Nathan: Yes.   Mike Gerholdt: So one of the last questions, because I bet you use Slack a lot as the project team to get things done. I've noticed as I work at Salesforce and we use Slack in different channels, I've noticed changes in behavior, ways that we work faster with Slack. Was there something you left this project with where you're like, "Oh, I'm going to start posting this way in Slack or I'm going to start sharing information this way in Slack," because it was something that actually was a way that you worked in that team. For example, I've noticed that when we have really long threads rather than posting one big post that could take up a lot of screen, somebody will post a comment thread about a topic and then put all of that into the comments because then it keeps their feed kind of cleaner. Was there anything like that that you kind of learned as like, "Ooh, I'm going to start doing this more often now in Slack?"   Jagan Nathan: Well, yeah. So what we did is when we started working on this project, we had a 14 member team, few members were focusing on the technical side, few members were having conversations with the puzzle master. So we used Slack as a project management tool. So what we did is we created a Slack Canvas with a list of team members and then what sort of priority task we need to work on. And then we automated to the next level by adding a Slack list as well. We created a list, like what is the roles and responsibilities for each team member? And we started tracking the list. And then every week we were running the Slack workflows. We extensively used the Slack workflows. We created a ton of workflows, one workflows for summarizing the Slack channel so that what happened in this one week's ... Because see, we had at least six weeks to develop and build and deploy, right?   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah.   Jagan Nathan: So each week we were running the Slack summary workflows to understand what is the latest going on around them. And then we were extensively using Slack, mainly the Slack Canvas and then the Slack list to start with.   Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. Wow. I love building workflows. I tell you, they're really cool. I can almost build too many sometimes. Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing what you could about this. I think the amount of work that was completed for this project and in the amount of time is super incredible and I'm sure it was quite the learning for you. So it also teaches us that even the biggest projects we can still accomplish very quickly. So thanks for coming on the podcast.   Jagan Nathan: Thank you for having me, Mike.   Mike Gerholdt: So it was great of Jagan to come on and share his experience on that project. I think it's a good reminder that building on Salesforce today means thinking beyond automation. It's about really designing systems that are resilient, trustworthy, and ready for real world scale. From AI guardrails to perform testing to human in the loop decision-making, this is the work that the modern admin is balancing speed with responsibility. Now, if you found this episode helpful, share it with another Salesforce admin who's thinking bigger about the systems they run and making sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss what's next. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  
• 
  How Admins Can Get the Most Out of TDX 2026 09.04.2026 21min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Lee, Lead Admin Evangelist, and Eliza Riley, Content Manager for Admin Marketing at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about what's coming at TDX and how to get the most out of your visit. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Lee and Eliza Riley. Connect with product leaders at TDX TDX is around the corner, and I sat down with Eliza and Jen to talk about must-see content for admins and how to get the most out of your visit. One thing you won't want to miss out on this year is Sneak Peeks, a special experience in the theater where you'll be able to see new features in action. We'll be showcasing things like the new App Studio and Setup with Agentforce so you can get an idea of what's coming. There will also be a Q&A with the product teams so you can give feedback and better understand the roadmap. There will also be True to the Core Deep Dives covering flow and automation, reporting and analytics, Agentforce, and low-code and pro-code development. These extended Q&As offer you a chance to connect with product leaders and ask all of your burning questions. Finally, if you have a thorny problem that needs solving, you can sign up for a 1-on-1 Ask the Expert session with a Salesforce engineer or product leader.  See the sights We've been talking a lot on the pod about Agentforce Vibes, so maybe it's time to see it for yourself. In the Agentforce Vibes Zone, you'll be able to get hands-on with how you can build using natural language. There will be demos, a guided project, and sessions to help you get started. You'll also want to check out the Hackathon Showcase in the keynote room, where the three finalists will pitch their builds live to the judges. As Jen says, it's always interesting to see how different people solve problems and get some inspiration for what you're building in your org. If you're coming alone, make sure to stop by the Community Cove. It's the spot for networking with other admins and other folks in the ecosystem, and a great jumping-off point for exploring TDX. How to plan for TDX As you're getting ready for TDX, it's important to remember to balance planning with flexibility. "You're going to be connecting with people," Eliza says, "you might see a cool activation that catches your eye, or a robot you might want to stop and grab a picture with." Wear comfortable shoes, bring water and snacks, remember that some sessions require headphones, and make sure you have a swag bag. Most importantly, come find us and say hi. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more on what's coming at TDX. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: The Salesforce Admin's Guide to TDX 2026 Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: What Are True to the Core Deep Dives at TDX?   Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Jen on LinkedIn Eliza on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!   Full show transcript Mike: If you're heading into TDX thinking it's just another event, this episode might change how you show up entirely. Today, I'm joined by Jennifer and Eliza to break down how to actually get the most out of TDX26, not just attend it. We're going to talk about everything from Sneak Peeks and Ask the Expert zones to hands-on Agentforce experiences and so much more. Most importantly, how these moments are going to help you design better systems, not just learn new features, because this isn't about collecting swag or just session notes. It's about connecting with the people building the platform and shaping how your organization runs. So, if you're serious about evolving from admin to orchestrator, we got your game plan. So, let's get Jen and Eliza on the podcast. So, Jen, Eliza, welcome to the podcast. Jennifer: Thanks for having us. Eliza: Super happy to be here. Mike: It's going to be fun. So, Jen, you're a veteran of the podcast and in the community. Tell us a little bit about what you do at Salesforce, and then, we're going to get into what we do for TDX. Jennifer: Sure. I'm one of a few admin evangelists on the team. So, some of the things that I do on a daily basis is write blogs, create video content, and present to all of you admins out there. Mike: Just a few. Eliza, you're like our secret Alfred in the bat cave. I feel like all of us evangelists come back with torn suits, and our Batmobiles have a flat tire and you fix everything up. But you also did a whole bunch of stuff at TDX last year, but what do you do on the admin team? Eliza: Yeah, I know you guys are really on the front lines. So, I'm a content manager on admin relations, and I focus on creating resources and storytelling to help admins grow into more strategic roles. And I also lead our admin blog. So, really helping to translate just everything that's happening across Salesforce into what actually matters day-to-day. And that includes a lot of coverage on TDX, which I'm really excited about. Mike: Yeah, we have a lot planned. To be fair, you also did a showdown last year at TDX, if I recall. Isn't that right, Eliza? Eliza: Yes, we did. That was super fun. We had a few members of the community come and showcase their best Agentforce use cases. We had some prizes, and it was just a really great time. Mike: Right. It was. You had one vivacious MC. Should hire him back. Let's talk about this year though, because Eliza, you wrote a blog post to help admins get ready and write down their list of stuff they can't miss for TDX. And the first thing is the Sneak Peeks area, which you and Jennifer are working on. So, let's hear a little bit about that first. Eliza: Yeah. So, Sneak Peeks is this really special interactive theater experience. And these are really building on the success that we saw at Dreamforce. So, if any of you attended Dreamforce last year, Jen did an incredible job in the Admin Meadow creating this special exclusive look at what's coming next for Salesforce products. So, we're building on the success of that this year, and we're going to be showing you quick demos of all of our in-progress innovations, and then, opening it up for live Q&A with the product teams. And so, what's really cool about this for those of you attending in person is that you might be some of the first people to actually see these developments in action. And then, if you're not able to join us and you're watching from home or tuning in later, we'll be covering some of these on the admin blog as well. So, you definitely won't be missing out on any of the fun. Mike: Oh, nice. Jen, you got to peel back a layer. Tell me, give me something. Give me a sneak at the Sneak Peek. Jennifer: Well, first I want to say that as a former customer, when I went to TDX, one of the things that I look forward to was seeing the roadmap and interacting with the PMs. So, I'm really excited to be able to bring this to all our technical audiences. But a couple of things that you will be able to peek into, we'll be introducing the new App Studio. There's also Salesforce Release Manager. So, think of this as being able to say, for these releases, "I want to enable these things in my org." That's the idea behind that. And then, we're just bringing on a lot of... We have three sessions on flow, like thinking about new flow design or what's coming up with screen flows or how to manage your flows. We're also bringing in set up with Agentforce, not only in Salesforce itself, but also in Slack. So, there's just a lot of cool things, but I'm just going to tease a few. Mike: Yeah. No, thanks. You got to show up, but that's why it's called a sneak peek, right? I'm excited for this. I agree. When I was a customer, being able to just see what's new, take those notes, most of the time feel, like the plane ride home, you could be like, "Oh, cool. I don't have to build this because it's already going to come as a feature," is something that I always look forward to. Now, you mentioned we could do some Q&A with the product teams at your Sneak Peeks, but we also have something called Ask the Expert Zone. Can we talk a little bit about that? Jennifer: Yeah. So, we had that also in the Admin Meadow at Dreamforce, and it was a huge success. So, think of it as you come to TDX and you have this burning question in the back of your head or this problem that you're trying to solve for and you're just hitting a wall, you can come and talk to our experts. And the difference between what we did at Dreamforce and TDX is now, we have specific topics. So, instead of going to, let's say a generalist that's supposed to know all the platform, and who possibly can because Salesforce is so huge? There's no way. You're going to go and talk to a specialist. You have that burning of question about automation. You're going to talk to the flow expert. Or you need help with getting started with Agentforce. You're going to talk to the Agentforce expert. So, we have these various topics, six different topics, and you come during that scheduled time and you'll be able to have one-on-one discussions with those experts. Mike: I like that because we did a version of that, and I volunteered for it, and I think it was just about every other person, I could answer questions. Jennifer: Yeah, it's hard. Mike: I know. Man, I just felt bad, and I was like, "Well, I can't really answer your question, but do you want to work through the problem together and maybe we'll stumble across something?" One of the things that I think is important and along those same lines, at a surface level, it's like, "Oh, cool. So, I'm going to be able to talk to Data 360, or flow, or user access and governance." I see those as topics. Waiting until you're at the event, Jennifer, is not the best idea. If you were a customer today, you have 14 days to Dreamforce, oh my goodness, to TDX, what would you do as a customer to get ready for those Ask the Expert sessions? Jennifer: I would hone in on what are the top things that I want to know from that expert? Come up with some questions to bring to the table versus just showing up and coming up with questions off the top of your head. Or if you have a problem with the solution, bring your laptop and show the person, "Here's my problem. Can you show me where I'm going wrong?" That way, you're not generalizing it, and then, they could really help you because they're actually seeing the thing versus saying like, "Oh, well, I think it might be this," or, "Maybe it's this, but I don't know because I don't know the details of your problem." Mike: That's really good. And when we did that version of Ask the Experts, I had somebody print off their entire org schema and bring it. Jennifer: Wow. Eliza: Oh, wow. Mike: So, yeah, it was awesome and also kind of sad because I was like, "Man, it's a whole forest of trees you just killed, but I know exactly how your org's set up." It's wonderful. Speaking of experts, we have something new, and I know Kate's been on to talk about it, but Eliza, True to the Core Deep Dive, that sounds new. What's that? Eliza: Yes. This is one of our new activations or tracks that we're really excited about this year. So, True to the Core Deep Dive is essentially just an extension of the larger True to the Core keynote that we all know and love. So, it's going to give everybody the chance to just go a little bit deeper into specific topics. So, they're essentially extended breakout sessions letting you connect with the product leaders and ask your really specific questions. So, we will have breakouts on flow and automation, reporting and analytics, Agentforce, and low code and pro code development. And actually, a couple of these are going to be live on Salesforce Plus. So, it's a really great chance to connect with product leaders and just be able to attend that extended Q&A. Mike: Yeah. There's definitely a theme developing here across all three things that we talked about, which is access to the product leaders. Eliza: Definitely. I think that's a really key differentiator at TDX this year. I would say that there are just really more opportunities than ever for you to actually connect with the people building the features that you're working with every day. Mike: Now, one of the things is the virtual TDX Hackathon, which I know Josh on our team has been managing a lot. If you're not participating, that's something really cool to go see because I think we have... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we have an actual kind of showcase where they're going to get up and pitch their hacks. Am I right, Eliza? Eliza: Yes. And it's not just a showcase. It's actually even bigger than we've done before. So, it's going to be live in the keynote room. So, really getting everybody up on that big stage. And the three finalists will actually be pitching their builds live in front of a panel of judges. Mike: Wow. No pressure there. Eliza: Yeah, seriously. Mike: But I think that's really cool. Jennifer, if you were a customer and you're like, "Well, I didn't participate in the Hackathon," sometimes going to see what other people are envisioning might actually spark an idea for something that you're trying to solve back at your org, right? Jennifer: Oh, exactly. At Dreamforce, we had the Hackathon and I attended that. And it's always interesting to see how people solve for things and you're like, "Huh, I didn't even think about that piece, and maybe I should consider that and go back and use that in your implementation." So, yeah, it does definitely inspire and get those creative juices going. Mike: Right. On top of just watching people try to pitch, I think that's really fun too because I always love to learn watching other people speak because I would envision, well, here's what it could be like if I had to pitch my app to a board of directors or a president of a company as we're really going enterprise-wide as an admin. The last thing that I see is Agentforce Vibes, which I've had people on vibe coding on the podcast, and I've seen some dry runs. I can't tell you the session because you need to go to them, but there are some presenters in the admin track that have some really cool use cases for vibe coding. And so, I think we have the Agentforce Vibes Zone. Eliza, do you know anything about that? Eliza: A little bit. Yeah. So, it's an immersive hands-on space. And I think what's really cool about the Agentforce Vibes Zone and what we've done a really good job with is just making sure that it's not just for developers. I think no matter your role, you can definitely benefit. And so, it's really just designed for anyone that's ready to expand on how they build using natural language. So, there will be a series of Agentforce Vibes demos, and then, I think they're doing a guided hands-on project so you can apply what you've learned because as you know, if you've come to a Salesforce event, it's all about getting hands-on. But there's a lot of great vibes content across the event from sessions to this specific zone. So, I think if you're an admin and you're just trying to dig in or get started, it's definitely a great place to do that. Mike: Yeah, I'm excited for it. Let's talk about conferences in general, because it's been a while since we've done Dreamforce, and we've had winter and a time change. Jennifer, if you were a customer today listening to this podcast and thinking, oh, I got to pack for TDX, what are some things that maybe you bring now that you wouldn't have brought five years ago? Jennifer: Unless you really need to use it, I leave my laptop in the hotel just because lugging that around all day isn't fun. Mike: They still haven't gotten any lighter, have they? Jennifer: No. Mike: They're still 10 pounds. Jennifer: No, they feel like a brick, ton of bricks. I would definitely bring your most comfortable walking shoes. Don't bring the pair that you just bought. No, that's not a thing. Bring your most comfortable shoes. Definitely bring a water bottle. Walking around, you want to stay hydrated. Bring some snacks in your backpack because sometimes you think you have time to run and grab something and you're running between sessions. Have that little candy bar or whatever it is, a pick-me-up. Yeah, that's helpful. And then, I also bring a bag just in case you pick up any swag along the way because they'll- Mike: Just in case, as if it's an option. Come on. Jennifer: But bring a thing where you could take notes. So, whether that's electronic, or a notebook, or old school, bring something that you can jot notes or take screenshots of things. There's also will be available in the app, PDFs afterwards, but I always like taking a screenshot, and then, writing notes afterwards. Mike: Yeah, I definitely... So, there will be AI-generated session summaries on all of the sessions in the app, but being there and taking notes is usually... The notes that I take always make more sense to me, which is exactly how it should be, I suppose. Eliza, is there any special prep you do to get ready for TDX? Eliza: Well, I would say definitely pack your headphones because we have some sessions where you'll want your headphones to catch that session audio. Mike: Oh, that's a good one. Eliza: Yeah, that's one that people forget. You don't think about it, but got to have those headphones. I think for me, with these conferences, it's so good to have a game plan. I think when you roll up first thing in the morning, you just have this whole day in front of you, and it can be hard to think about what you'd like to do. So, I'd highly recommend using Agenda Builder to really plan out your perfect schedule, but I think you should also leave room for spontaneity because you're going to be connecting with people. You might see a cool activation that catches your eye. Sometimes there are robots wandering around that you want to stop and grab a picture with. Jennifer: Or characters. Eliza: Or characters. Yep, absolutely. So, don't jam pack it, but it helps to come in with a little bit of a game plan. Mike: Yeah. Dreamforce had puppies for a little while too. I know. Eliza: I missed those. Mike: We probably won't [inaudible 00:16:32] puppies this year. I know. One thing that I think is different that I'd like both your perspectives on. So, travel budgets are tightening. Companies are sending you to... Sometimes you have to pick and choose, do I go to TDX or Dreamforce? And sometimes it's, well, we can only afford to send you. We can't afford to send the other three admins. And so, you're there flying solo. What would your advice be, Jennifer, on making friends at TDX and introducing yourself? Jennifer: Oh, Mike, you asked the introvert of the team. Mike: I know. All of us admin evangelists are really introverts. We just play extroverts [inaudible 00:17:21]. Jennifer: I know, right? I tend to look for a familiar face, but also for someone who might be by themselves, because if I'm by myself and they're by themselves, why not connect? And then, you could be a team, and then, figure out, hey, what sessions are you going to? Because maybe they might be going to sessions that you didn't even think of. But also if you're attending a conference and your teammates don't go, I would take copious notes so that then, when you go back to your company, you can then knowledge share, right? You weren't there, but here's the things that I learned and here's the PDF to that presentation, and give them a little walkthrough of what they missed, but also we're going to be recording a bunch of sessions this year, right? Mike: Oh man, we're recording so many sessions this year. It's insane. You have no idea. Eliza, how about you? How do you make friends at events or how would you advise admins to connect with each other? Eliza: Oh, I consider myself a little bit of an introvert as well. So, I think if I'm in a specific area or session that is really, really interesting to me, I would also probably look for somebody that's by themself or somebody that's taking a lot of notes or asking a lot of good questions at say, a demo booth and just strike up a conversation with them. If you hear them talk about a use case or something that they're experiencing in their org, I think being able to connect and have something that's relevant to share is a really good way to get your foot in the door. But I would also say there is Community Cove, which is a really, really cool place to go. And you can actually network with other admins. You can meet people of really all roles. And I know they have a really fun activation planned this time around. So, if you're by yourself, I would head to Community Cove first, and I think you can make some friends there for sure. Mike: Yeah. That's both very good advice. I always tend to look at the people taking the most notes in a session because then I could always walk up to them and ask them if we could compare notes. And then, that way, I'm not asking for anything that I'm not giving in return. Eliza: I love that. Mike: Yeah. All right. Well, Jen, Eliza, I feel like I know I got to get my comfortable shoes and couple hundred bottles of five-hour energy and some of those protein bars and leave my laptop at home, and I'll be set. So, I feel like we're pretty ready for TDX. Eliza: Yeah, sounds like you got it covered. Mike: I hope. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast. We'll have to connect after and see how everything turned out. Jennifer: Awesome. Mike: All right. There's your blueprint for showing up for TDX with intention, not just as an attendee, but as somebody that's ready to shape how systems, data, and AI really come together in your organization. Huge thanks to Jennifer and Eliza for helping us think bigger about what's possible when you connect directly with people building the platform. Now, if this episode helped you rethink how you approach events or your role as an admin, make sure you subscribe, share it with your team, and start planning how you'll bring these insights back into your business. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  What Is My Trust Center and How Does It Help Admins? 02.04.2026 22min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to John Maxey, Senior Product Manager at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how My Trust Center can help admins communicate incidents, plan releases, and operate with transparency. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with John Maxey. From static status pages to personalized trust When I was early in my admin career in 2008, keeping track of status updates was as simple as loading up Salesforce Trust. These days, with so many different products and services, it's gotten a lot more complicated. That's why I was so excited to sit down with John Maxey. He's working on My Trust Center, a personalized, authenticated experience that only shows you information that's relevant to your org. Reducing noise and creating clarity for admins With the new My Trust Center, you'll be able to get more specific information about upcoming maintenance and how it affects your org. Everything is tailored to what products and services you're actually using, instead of having to sift through unrelated incidents and interpret whether or not they apply to you. As John explains, Salesforce can be much more granular about any specific maintenance or updates and how they will affect you. And that makes it easier to make decisions like when to promote new features, when you need to do testing, or when there might be downtime. You can coordinate better with your team and avoid surprises. Greater transparency through targeted communication At its core, My Trust Center is about improving transparency both internally and externally. For admins, it will provide more visibility into what's going on when something doesn't work and when a particular service will be back online. If there's an incident, you won't need to ask your CSM or contact customer support to figure out what happened. RCAs will be attached to each incident, so the entire process is self-serve. And you can configure notifications via SMS, Slack, or email to keep your entire team up to speed. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from John about what's coming with My Trust Center. And make sure you're subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Jen's Top Spring '26 Features for Admins Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social John on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Love our podcasts? Subscribe today or review us on iTunes!   Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, I am joined by John Maxey to unpack the evolution of the Trust Center into something far more than a status page. That's right. It's becoming a personalized command center for how you run your org. I mean, let's be honest, it's not just about uptime anymore. It's about how you design systems that balance data, automation, and AI while keeping your stakeholders informed and confident. We're going to dig into what My Trust Center means for how you communicate incidences, plan releases, and operate with clarity across increasingly complex environments. So if you're the person everyone turns to when something breaks or when they just think something's broke, this episode's for you. Let's get John on the podcast. So John, welcome to the podcast. John Maxey: Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. Mike Gerholdt: Well, this is exciting. So I like it when I can have a podcast and a blog post on the same subject in the same day. And all of this stuff around trust and security, I feel like admins are right there, we're the Sentinels every day. But before we talk about some of the cool stuff that you're working on, let's learn a little bit about John Maxey. So John, how did you get to Salesforce and what is the cool thing that you oversee? John Maxey: Oh, well, thank you for that. So I came to Salesforce in late 2007. I joined as a customer support rep in CSG in our customer success group. I had just come from the FinTech, and if folks remembered, FinTech was kind of not doing well at that time in 2007. So it was an opportunity to switch industries and come to Salesforce. And that was pretty exciting being the ... At the time, our moniker was no software, sort of breaking the mold of traditional software and sort of moving to the cloud. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. We were talking before I hit record. I think if you do the math, our Salesforce experience is definitely in high school at some point. John Maxey: Seems that way. Mike Gerholdt: They graduated from high school, which is kind of scary at some point. John Maxey: I wish. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Well, it's about to head off to college and make questionable decisions and maybe be a paleontology as a major. Who knows? But we're going to talk about ... So the blog post that went up today on admin.salesforce.com is the same topic as this podcast, which is My Trust Center, which I can't tell you how excited I am for this. Because I remember back to my days early admin, like '08, just going to having to pay. It never dawned on me until one of my users couldn't log into Salesforce a long, long, long, long time ago. And I was like, oh, I wonder why that is. But I never thought about like, oh, cloud services can go offline. I need to pay attention to this. And at the time, trust.salesforce.com was literally just like a handful of blinky lights. That's all it was because there was a handful of pods that you paid attention to and you just checked to see if yours was up and that was it. And then over the years, I mean, there's so much more to pay attention to. Everything that goes into trust.salesforce.com. So can you kind of take us on that journey of like Mike from 2008, just having to remember if NA1 is up to everything that the new My Trust Center is going to give us? John Maxey: Sure. Yeah. I remember using the Trust site when I first joined Salesforce as well way back in 2007, and it has changed a lot. So if you think about it, in 2007, Salesforce was really sort of selling one product, CRM, Salesforce automation. We had, like you say, we had just a handful of instances where we had customer installations. So even the field of boxes that we had there was small enough for folks to be able to find out what was going on with their stuff. And even in the URL of their application, it would say which instance you were on. So fast-forward 18 years and we've acquired companies, we've developed new technologies and new products. Some of them are on the platform and others are what we call off core or they're not directly in our application. They're separate different types of architecture. And then we've also moved into the public cloud. We've also been selling to enterprise customers and we think about an enterprise customer and their implementations are far more complicated, multi-cloud. So they may have marketing and commerce, as well as sales and service. And then we have all our industries. So in talking to customers when I became the product manager of the trust site in 2018, just sort of realized that their experience, especially for our larger customers was harder to deal with. When you look at, I mean, I think we have 950 some odd instances in our sales service industry, we have over a thousand DBs in marketing cloud engagement. It's just kind of daunting to try and figure out where you are. And so at the time we were figuring out tools to make it easier to find that. But really the answer was to get personal and to create an authenticated site. So then we know our customers. I believe that's like CRM 101, know your customer. And then when we know who they are, when you log in, we can present you with what you have with the things you already purchased, the products and services. So in this first release, we're starting that path, that journey to true personalization. And so there's still some gaps here and there, but one of them is the support for all our products. So we have requests out to all of our different products like MuleSoft and Tableau to do a little bit of work to get them ready for the My Trust Center. But yeah, so that's, I mean, it's just grown and this My Trust Center really just has come out of customer feedback and wanting a better experience. And the other thing about the personal, I know a lot of folks are going to probably jostle a little bit at the move away from a purely public site to the authenticated site. But there's an opportunity there to not only provide the personalization, but also be able to expand the types of services we can provide, product communications, things like that, that we may do via email today, but we can provide an experience to consolidate all that into one single spot, seeing as we will know who those customers are, being able to target the communications. As if we did it today and it was public, it would just be too much. It would be information overload. And so being able to segment that because we know who you are is really a powerful driver for that. Mike Gerholdt: Well, if you think about it, so I remember going to a user group, this'll totally date me. But they were like, "Well, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for your server status." And that was it for me. I was like, "Dude, I'm set. This is great. And I'm going to get the emails. It's perfect." And then you kind of don't know what you're missing until you don't know what you're missing. And there was rarely a case, but this also speaks to why My Trust Center makes so much more sense. If I were to go there, "Oh, my instance is down, but these three instances aren't." Well, it's not like I could do anything. It's not like if my lights are out in the neighborhood, but my neighbor's lights are on, I can grab my dog and I can put my slippers on and walk across the street and be like, "Hey, can we sit at your house until our lights come on?" It never dawned on me when I would go to trust.salesforce.com and see, "Oh, well, everyone else is online, just this one pod is off." Okay, cool. Next. Right? And that matters now because now if you think about it from what admins, developers, architects, they have so much to pay attention to. And all of a sudden, especially in a highly regulated industry, you talked about being in Finserv, why is this down? And you can feel that user looking over your shoulder and then you having to sift through a trust site, multi-layers, multi-things, and kind of give them an answer. This is, why can't you just present me with the dashboard that makes sense? I mean, the dashboard in my car only tells me about my car. It doesn't tell me about every other car on the road. So it kind of feels like a natural evolution. John Maxey: Yeah. And that was definitely part of it as well. The information overload as part of a growth and when you have a company that sells many more products than you started with. And then also we find that sometimes somebody will see an issue and then they go into the trust site and they see another issue going on and maybe they attach themselves to that. And so that can kind of confuse things when they reach out and report that. If there is an issue, we'll have ways to report that. But you shouldn't just assume that because somebody else is having an issue that it's the same issue that you're having. So yeah, definitely making sure that we're giving you the information. And then also being able to expand on it more. Like I mentioned, the public nature of that, we've got press watching it, we've got competitors and things like that. And sometimes we just don't want ... We don't have to be guarded with what we say because of how that could be used. When we know we're talking to customers, we can be a lot more open, even drafty as they might say. We know that something's going on. Maybe we don't know exactly what it is. And that's not really necessarily appropriate when you're speaking to a public audience. But when you're talking to customers and they just want to know that you know that there's a problem and that Salesforce is working on it. Like your analogy, when the power goes out, typically the customers don't need to know when the application is having an issue. They know that the application's that. They want to know that Salesforce knows that there's an issue and what are we doing to fix it? Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. I mean, ironically, it's just like the power company. John Maxey: It's just like the power company. Mike Gerholdt: So I'm looking at the screenshot and the other thing I noticed that I think is really neat that before back in the days of the blinky lights, it was like, it's on or it's off. Cool. And then we would pay attention to releases and you always got like a release date window. This shows a tab upcoming maintenance for the next 90 days. Tell me more about some of the thought that went into that. John Maxey: Yeah. So we look at the different personas that we want to support on the trust side, on My Trust, and we think about the jobs that they need to do. And so you have an admin. Admin is obviously concerned about any incidents going on to make sure they can communicate with their user base. But they're also working on developing new functionality for their user base. And so they want to know what's coming up, what would impact them. And in the past, it would have been as much of how much downtime would there be, but that's almost a thing of the past. But really it's more about when will my features? Maybe I've been working on those in Sandbox and I'm ready to promote them. When do I know to promote them? If we're talking about an operations persona, they need to know when there need to be a little more diligent because there's a release going on. Some of our customers do testing after we do a release to make sure that there's no conflicts or anything. Obviously as people customize their orgs, we do our best at Salesforce to make sure that there's no conflicts in the code that we release, but there's always, folks are very inventive in the way they do their solutions. And so there could be a conflict. A lot of customers like to test that, they want to know when. Especially if you have a large application, a lot of people in to test, you want to know the best use of their time because it's usually on a weekend. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Yeah. And I mean, even scrolling down, we could talk more about this too. I'm looking at a maintenance window of four hours. I remember before we would get a release as an admin, I'd always tell my users, every now and then that scheduled maintenance window would come up when you'd log in and be like, "Okay, well, just don't log in this weekend." And it's kind of like it's fun to think of the days when companies would only work Monday through Friday. Please salespeople just ... I know you're not working on Saturday, right? Wink, wink. John Maxey: Right. Well, a lot of the ... The major releases now, especially in Hyperforce are zero downtime. It's just really, it's more of a notification, "Hey, this is when your features would be ready," as opposed to it actually being downtime. The first party, it does have a little bit more. But I think we've got most customers off of first party now. And then we have some others that we're still working with to get their messaging better and because now we can target. So those timeframes, those windows will start to shrink because we'll be able to target folks at a better granularity and make sure they know exactly when they're going as opposed to a more generic sort of announcement, "Hey, we're doing a bunch of work. You may or may not be impacted in this time." We'll get it down to, we know when you're going to be deployed and exactly when the impact may happen. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. And this is also going to help our inboxes because they're not full enough. John Maxey: I hope so. Mike Gerholdt: I know. Man, I'm telling you. The one line, say goodbye to instance wide email blast. Well, those were just fun. Okay, I think it ... Does it mean us or not? But still, one of the features is you can still subscribe to notifications, right? John Maxey: Yep, exactly. Yeah. Today we support email. We're looking to expand that in the near future to support SMS like we do in the legacy status site. And looking to add some more as well. I mean, obviously Slack is top on our list to investigate how to do that in a meaningful way so folks can subscribe to their notifications. Mike Gerholdt: Oh, like a Slack notification? John Maxey: Yeah, exactly. Like a Slack channel you subscribe to and get your notifications right in Slack. I mean, another one of our goals in our group in general is to try and push our information into the workplaces where folks are working. So if you spend your time in Slack, why not get that stuff in Slack? And then it's more meaningful and you don't have to switch to a different application. I mean, I love developing the trust site and the portal. But the main goal is to make sure folks are informed and get what they need. Mike Gerholdt: Well, so that was exactly ... I mean, to kind of ask you a best practices question, it could be, and in my case, I was the only admin, so it was easy for me to subscribe to everything. But there are a lot of companies that have teams, right? There's admins, developers. So putting it to Slack, obviously then it's anybody can join that Slack channel and get the status update. And if you need to know that, then join that channel, that makes sense. In the interim, how do you address that as a best practice for organizations with maybe multiple admins or multiple developers? John Maxey: Sure. That is a challenge. I mean, the quick and easy answer is we use Trailblazer ID, which is the same authentication method for Trailhead or for help, for AppExchange, all of our external facing portals. So there's a good, better experience there and one authentication through all those portals. But then because Trailblazer ID just takes an email address, you could use your group email to sign up for a Trailblazer ID. And then that ID, that email address, would have to be attached to a license in the orgs you want to see. So that's the way to do that. Today, we understand it's a challenge. Not everybody has a bunch of extra licenses to use for this type of purpose for folks who are monitoring. So we are working on a solution for a license that would have very limited or maybe no access to the org at all. But you could attach it to say a group email and then be able to get all the monitoring information you needed from that. Mike Gerholdt: I like that. John Maxey: Yeah. Mike Gerholdt: That's awesome. It says one of the plans is to have major release notes and root cause analysis for eligible incidents. How is that beneficial? Like what were customers asking for that we weren't providing root cause analysis on? John Maxey: As much of anything, it's a delivery mechanism. So if a customer is impacted by an issue, they may have to engage with their CSM or go to customer support and say, "I need an RCA." And so instead of that, we have certain criteria on incidents when an RCA is going to automatically be provided. So our first iteration would be that when that RCA is provided, we would attach it directly to the incident and you would get a notification that it's been attached. And so you could then go reference it. No need to ask anybody. In the future, we're thinking about ways maybe we could provide some visualization to say that it's in process and maybe how far in the process. I mean, the more we can self-serve, the better. And then we'll look at other ways of being able to surface that type of information and similar type of communications directly in the portal and through notifications and all of that. Mike Gerholdt: Before we press record, you said some customers already have their hands on it. What was some of the feedback they gave you? John Maxey: Oh, we were in Pilot for about a year with a handful of customers, and then we were in beta for ... Our open beta for almost a year as well, nine months. Lots of different types of feedback. I mean, in small things is accessibility, making sure that we're accessible to finding out about the need for the license solution so that folks can see this. Whether we have big companies that outsource or have operations teams that manage all of that for the whole company. And Salesforce is just a piece of that. We also have a gap of getting an API that matches our UI, so it'll be personalized. And if you use a monitoring application, you can just feed the signals right into that so you can have a single place to monitor all of your operations across your whole company. So those are the types of things that we got in formatting. And actually the initial iteration of the 90 days upcoming maintenance and releases was originally 30 days and people were like, "But you only do a major release every 90 days. You can't see enough." And so we expanded that. And I think we need to add a little more navigation capabilities because some of that ... Sometimes like for me, I have a bunch of instances that I have orgs on. So I get a bunch, a bunch of those and it's just hard to deal with. So we're still improving. We have a feedback farmer. We're always looking at that feedback to see if there's an opportunity to improve what we have. Mike Gerholdt: Wow. This is so cool. I can think back to only how many times I wish I would've had this as an admin. I mean, I was glad for what we had, but always getting that personalized feel is super helpful. John, I'd be curious, in the past I've asked people, when we work in tech, often our hobbies or the things that we love to do are a little more tactile because like I told a friend of mine, I said, "Well, when the power goes out, you can't ever see what I built." And he was like, "Wow, that's super powerful." And I was like, "I know, right? It's kind of crazy." But I'd be curious, outside of security and building the My Trust Center, is there something fun that you like to do on the side? John Maxey: Well, I like to visit my kids. My youngest just started college, so we're second semester empty nesters. Mike Gerholdt: Oh boy. John Maxey: We love to travel and see ... Especially internationally and see new countries and experience new sights and smells. And like you say, very tactile, sort of getting out and about, getting away from the computer a bit and enjoying the world, going hikes in different countries and meet different people and whatnot. Mike Gerholdt: Yeah. No, I completely understand because I get into yard work over the summer. John Maxey: Oh, yeah. My wife loves to garden. Mike Gerholdt: Very gratifying. John Maxey: My wife loves to garden, so I spend a lot of time supporting that as well. Mike Gerholdt: See, that's always ... And then the first time you get to make something with your vegetables, that's always the best. That's the most rewarding. John, thanks for coming on to talk about this, I'm sure. Well, I know for certain, when you have stuff to talk about, you're going to come back. Because this is so, so incredibly useful for admins and it really helps us kind of understand the whole state of everything that's going on with our orgs so that we can communicate that internally to our stakeholders, which keeps the wheels running. So I appreciate you filling in all of the dots and keeping our status green for us. John Maxey: Oh, and thank you so much, Mike, for having me. My whole life at Salesforce has been supporting mostly admins, making sure that they have the best experience that I can provide is one of my goals. So it's really exciting and it's great to see people start to use it and play with it and maybe find some things we missed. So definitely have a lot to add and would love to come back and talk about some of the new features that we implement in the next little while. Mike Gerholdt: I want to thank John Maxey for walking us through how My Trust Center is reshaping the way admins manage trust, not as a reactive task, but as a core part of running a system. If you take one thing away, it's this, visibility drives confidence, period. And when you connect incidents, releases, and communication into one clear view, you're not just supporting the business, you're leading it. So give this episode a share with somebody on your team who's always there and trying to answer, "Is Salesforce down?" And make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you don't miss what's next. Until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.
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  How Salesforce Admins Are Evolving to Run the Agentic Enterprise 26.03.2026 27min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rebecca Saar, Senior Director of Admin Relations at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about governance, productivity, and why Salesforce Admins are more essential than ever in the agentic enterprise. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rebecca Saar. Admins are becoming the guardians of trust As AI becomes an ever bigger part of our day-to-day lives, I wanted to bring Rebecca Saar on the pod to talk about what changes and what stays the same. One thing she emphasizes is that admins are here to look at the big picture for their organizations. While it might be easier to build the solution, you still need to figure out what to build in the first place. "It's a shift in mindset and understanding where the work is happening," Rebecca says, "because we now can leverage these super powerful tools." Skills like gathering requirements, talking with stakeholders, and bridging the gap between departments are only going to be amplified by AI—not replaced. Admins act as translators across systems and teams Admins are a crucial intermediary for their organization, connecting the dots between multiple departments to understand what's really going on with a business process. In other words, admins are the ones who understand who to talk to in order to get something done. In my experience as an admin, each business unit only knows their own siloed data. They know where it comes from and who they ship it off to, but they don't know if there are better options, or where there might be a snag in the process. That's where admins need to step in and find a solution that individual business units might not be able to figure out on their own. Strong foundations still matter in an AI world Despite new tools, core admin skills remain essential. In a way, we've moved from problem solver to sense maker. You might not have to spend as much time figuring out who has what permissions, but you'll still be called on to have a conversation about how it should be handled. Just like with everything else, AI can save time on the busywork so you can focus on what matters. At the end of the day, it's even more important to lean into the foundational admin skills to find solutions that work for everyone in your organization. Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Rebecca Saar about what's coming at TDX, and don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: How the Salesforce Administrator Role Is Evolving in the Agentic AI Era Salesforce Admins Blog Post: The Next-Gen Admin: In Conversation With Ishrat Bhatti Salesforce Admins Blog Post: The Next-Gen Admin: In Conversation With Tony Nguyen Salesforce Admins Podcast Episode: Why Agentforce Is a Game Changer for Small Businesses Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Rebecca on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, I sit down with Rebecca Saar, the Senior Director of Admin Relations for Salesforce, to talk about how the admin role is changing as AI and agents become really part of our everyday life. Now, we're going to dig into why Salesforce admins are becoming the guardians of trust, how strong fundamentals still matter, and where human judgment fits in when automation gets smarter. I like to think this is a very thoughtful conversation about governance, productivity, and why Salesforce admins are more essential than ever. So with that, let's get Rebecca on the podcast. So Rebecca, welcome to the podcast. Rebecca: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Mike: It's been a while. Last time you were on, we did an entire episode in German because international podcasts are fun. Rebecca: Yeah. What a ride. How many years ago was that? Mike: Just a few. It's like one or two in Salesforce admin years, which translate differently to the rest of the world. Rebecca: Right. And then I also say we've had a pandemic in between, so that has made time fly. Mike: Yep. Rebecca: And I think that was a pre-pandemic thing. Mike: It was. 100% pre-pandemic. Yep, absolutely. And then since then, you've been on stage quite a few times for the admin keynote. And doing a whole bunch of stuff with the admin relations team. You and I have both been on stage too. Rebecca: I know. Yes, we have been championing admins since 2014? Mike: Since forever. Rebecca: Yes. Dedicating over a decade and celebrating that big decade 10-year anniversary was a couple of years ago. And that was a big highlight for me, being able to share that with everyone on stage at Dreamforce. But yeah, since last time I was on the pod, I have now become the lead of admin relations and kind of leading this amazing team of evangelists and marketers on our mission to enable and empower and inspire all of our Salesforce admins out there. Mike: And we're doing that as a transition to talk about... Literally right before I pressed record on this podcast, I was listening to NPR talk through AI and how AI is affecting something. They quoted 60 to 80% of the people in the workplace now use AI for some sort of task. And it kind of flashed back to me because it was interesting listening to them talk. They were describing, so when you tell AI to do something, that's a prompt. And listening to people walk through the understanding that I think a lot of Salesforce admins went through two or three years ago, I remember having people on the podcast to talk about prompt engineering, and I'm listening to them now, I'm like, "How do you not know this already? What world are you living in? You should already know about prompts and prompt engineering." But leading admins now as we're not just working with AI, but AI's working with us, right? Rebecca: Yeah. AI is everywhere. I think just in the last few years, it's accelerated so, so much. Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because not only are our admins and our whole Trailblazer community thinking about the impact of AI. But it really is across at least tech industry, but corporate world where everyone is kind of thinking about how are we incorporating AI into our workplace. Mike: So I was thinking of the article that you published, How the Salesforce Administrator Role is Evolving in the Agentic Era. And the first kind of big bullet point or the first subhead under there is The New Mandate, The Guardian of Trust. And working on that article with you, I happened to think of the very first thing that I did when I was a Salesforce administrator. Well, the second thing I did. The first thing I did was I updated my profile. The second thing I did was I got certified and I was one of the first 500 Salesforce admins certified. And I remember posting that to... We had a local kind of intranet at the company that I was at. And I remember posting that just out of pride for myself that I had passed, but also really wanting my users and my executives to know like, "Hey, when I suggest something, it's because I'm knowledgeable about it, so you should trust me." And I think it's interesting that almost 15 years later, when AI comes around, this is the very first thing that we're talking about with admins as being the guardians of trust. Rebecca: Yeah. Trust, it's our number one value. And it's, I think, the most important thing our admins can do for their company and their users. You manage the data, you manage security, you manage automation. And these are the pieces of the system that need to come together in a trusted way. It makes the admin critical to the success. Mike: A lot of it is also helping our users and ensuring that when we implement Agentforce for a specific process like in sales or in service, that it's really something to aid them. I think of a lot of people, the discussion on NPR was, "Well, I don't know what to ask or I don't know what to do." And of course, as an admin, when you're demoing something for Agentforce, you want to show, here's the words you type in. And you'd like to think in a perfect world, all of your users are going to use that exact perfect prompt when in reality they're not. People forget prompts, people forget what they're trying to do, and then they can easily get frustrated. I think part of that guardian of trust that we're doing is, let's put it in places where it can benefit our users the most in terms of productivity that might be easy to just farm out so that really we're bringing the best out of that person. I think of now when I was deploying a contract object a long, long time ago, the people that worked in contracts, the value of them wasn't the fact that they knew how to open an envelope or read through a paper contract or photocopy it. And I say that because at the time we did all of that, it was all physical contracts. That's not what they were getting paid for. They're getting paid for their knowledge of being able to digest that information of the contract. And I think of kind of the same value for the admin. It's not the buttons they click that make it important. It's how do they implement the agent and then how do they use their judgment to say, "Let's put this agent here at this point in the process to make all of our users really use the skill that they're being hired for." Rebecca: Yeah, 100% percent. I really feel that these tools are coming to help us be more productive. We keep kind of hearing this narrative around with AI that we're replacing roles, we need less people, and does that mean there's room for my role? And I think that's really missing the big kind of upside of all of this is that there is so much work to be done. Especially when I talk to admins, they're wearing multiple hats. They've got cues and cases that they're trying to get through. And think about all the ways that AI can then help you as an admin be more productive and get more work done, which ultimately means you can serve more of your users and the company. Mike: Yeah. I think of it as... So I was trying to think of other industries that we've seen major shifts in, I think AI is really close to automation. And if you look at how auto manufacturing has evolved from the moving assembly line of the 1930s and '40s with Henry Ford up until a current day, I want to say, and I've watched a couple of YouTube videos because I think it's fascinating, but realistically a car when it's being built isn't touched by a human for the first something like 10 hours of it being built. And it only takes like 30 hours to build a car, which first of all is kind of insane when you consider how much there is that goes into it. But even if you look at stuff that would be highly profitable to be fully automated, we still haven't fully automated anything because I think even as humans, it's that level of control that we need over things to make sure. But the parts that like for the car being built, for example, we're automating is, okay, well, we can do this repetitiously. And it's a very low level skill as opposed to really hiring people. There's still people you think of 100 years later that build cars in a car manufacturing plant, robots never took over. It's just the part that they get hired to do is the very highly specialized part. And I think of that with AI where it's not going to replace Salesforce admins. It's the admins that know how to use it are going to be the hyper productive built out systems because they know when to have AI built for them and when they need to jump in. Rebecca: Yeah, exactly. I think the work shifts from the building piece more to the before planning and preparing, and all that work admins do talking with stakeholders, gathering the requirements, really getting precise on the solution. And then the work after the building where we're monitoring the agents and assessing how they are performing. It's just a shift in mindset and where the work is happening because we now can leverage these super powerful tools. Mike: Right. There's parts now, and we've even seen this. I've had Cheryl Feldman on the podcast to talk about how setup is getting better. And if you're watching any, I think this last... Well, when I recorded this is in March, I just watched Mo do the Agentforce Now tour virtual workshop and walking through agents. And there's still parts of it where the admin needs to understand what the part of the business is that I need to go to talk to, because a casual user probably doesn't know that. And then also, how is this stitching all of the data together? Because as I found when I was an admin for eight years, everybody in an organization only knows their own siloed data. And they only know where it comes from and who they ship it off to, but rarely do they know if either of those are exactly the forms of data that they need. And so for example, like when I was doing a sales implementation, the information that would come in from the opportunity, the finance team was like, "This is of no use to us. Somebody else needs this. Here's what we need." And that's the part where actually sitting down and making those judgment calls as a Salesforce admin is, "Okay, here's how the agent can help do that." The two operating divisions might never come to that conclusion on their own. Rebecca: Yeah. It's really the admin running the system. There are different departments, there's different tools we're using, there's data in different places. So how does it all come together and how are we looking at the day-to-day operations of these systems and maintaining them and scaling them? Mike: Now, I think what's interesting, Rebecca, so that article was super fun to help write and get out. This was the beginning of a journey, and I'll link to it in the show notes. You also spoke with a couple of next gen admins, we'll call them that, with Tony and Ishrat. I think so looking through those blog posts as well, what were some of the things that kind of stood out to you? Rebecca: Yeah. First of all, I'm so grateful to all of the admins I've been talking to in the last couple of months. Through those conversations, it really helped define that blog, Mike, that we wrote together, because there's so many insights that kind of came to light and a lot of grounding and agreeing on areas where it's important to have focus. I think one thing that really came to light in Ishrat's was talking around governance. And really kind of thinking about the admin as going from problem solver to sense maker, which I thought was an interesting phrase. But as the admin, you are kind of the translator of your org. You understand or need to understand what all these pieces are and how they work and why an agent is doing what it's doing, because you kind of helped bring it to life in the beginning. So that was kind of an outstanding insight there. And then from Tony, I had some great conversations around, I think a highlight for me was just thinking about the importance of the foundations and knowing the kind of foundational skills of an admin. And not losing sight of that as we leverage and use more and more AI. Still knowing what a data model is, knowing how to set up a flow, how these core kind of building blocks work well so that you can be the sense maker and understand eventually what an AI is doing and automating for you. Mike: Yeah. I think looking through both those, I love the way they ended. Tony kind of sums up, "I'm going to give you what you need, not just what you want." And essentially Ishrat says the same thing of the person who connects business intent to data quality. And I think that's always the thing. There's always the... And I used to explain this a lot when I would do training, you run the report and you think you know what it's going to say. And then the data comes back with something different. And nine times out of 10, the user would be like, "Well, the report's wrong." Not that you put the data in wrong, the data is telling you something different than what you thought. And I think with both of them, that's the role that the Salesforce admin plays so critical is, "Well, here's the intent of what we're trying to capture and here's the agent capturing it and spelling it out for us. Now, here's actually what the outcome is and maybe the business process that we need to change as a result of it, as opposed to what we were focused on. Rebecca: Yeah, love a good reporting situation. How can we change this report? Because it's not the outcome I was looking for. Mike: Right, exactly. I need more pie charts. That's always the end result is the pie charts. But this is really cool. I think right now all of the roles are really sitting back and trying to understand how they fully utilize this new tool, because I think of it like how Steve Jobs explained the bicycle of humans can move, they can put one foot in front of the other, but the bicycle makes us infinitely so much more productive. And I look at how AI is doing the same thing for Salesforce admins in terms of just allowing us to... Some of the work that Cheryl's doing was set up, asking query who has the right permissions, as opposed to spending that time trying to run reports or comparative reports, having it do that work for us so that we can sit down and have those really targeted conversations about who should have the right profiles and permission sets, as opposed to spending that time just looking through thousands of reports. Rebecca: Exactly. It's an exciting time. I really think obviously we sit in the bubble here and we see all the innovation firsthand. But it does feel like a very exciting time in our industry and for Salesforce and for the Salesforce ecosystem. There's so much opportunity for those that are excited and willing to kind of embrace this and bring this to their companies. Mike, I was curious how you're feeling. We see this incredible opportunity and the value the admin brings having talked to admins out in the community, is that resonating? Are people- Mike: I remember sitting down at Florida dreaming not too long ago, and listening to all of the Salesforce admins that were not only paying attention to what Agentforce could do, but what other AIs can do for them. I think you mentioned we live in a bubble and I think in terms of my friends, because I work in tech, I definitely know more about AI than most of them. But I would consider myself medium level intelligence of AI in the tech world. It's really, this is another tool, how do I be productive with it? And they're not looking at it as, "Oh, this is something scary." They're looking at as, how do I embrace this? And I think it's the same way that we look at how computers came about. Once upon a time, as I've seen on watching Mad Men on AMC, people typed. There was huge steno pools. If you needed a copy made, somebody literally had to type copies of that. And then the copy machine happened. Well, the copy machine didn't put people out of work. It just made people more efficient. And so companies were able to move those individuals around into places that could make them more efficient. And admins now have a tool that just kind of, it's like literally going from walking to riding a bicycle. And of course, there's lots of different bicycles and everybody has their own preference. Rebecca: Exactly. I feel like the admins who lean into this won't just be staying relevant. They're going to be the most important people at their company. Mike: Well, and as I was having the conversation with Daniel Peters talking about small business, if you think of, "Well, I'm just a Salesforce admin at a small business, what can I do?" He actually brings a point up of, if you built an agent that would literally just help the person answer questions while they're filling out a form or while they're creating a record in Salesforce, you would have so much better data. And his example was when they would take orders for cheese over the phone, there was insane amount of information that you had to know. This certain cheese could only be sold in these sizes and this certain cheese could only be sold during these months. And for the person, the on-ramp, you think of that person, "Okay, well, I answer a phone and I write an order form for cheese. How hard could that be?" Really hard when you have 30 different cheeses and umpteen number of different ways that that cheese could be sold, you think, "Well, I'm a Salesforce admin at a 20 licensed company that sells cheese. What could I do?" Wow. You could create an agent that helps the person who takes phone orders, answer questions super reliably. And that makes your onboarding so much faster for that person, and your orders more correct because a small business is going to live and die by five orders, whereas a really giant company five orders might not be that much. But if you think of the impact just at that level, that's huge. Just at a 20 license company, now you go up to a 2000 or a 20,000 license company and you think of the same impact. It's so much, you can have just that little bit of knowledge that enables the person on the phone to show up at work and feel confident about what they're doing. That's usually the end of the day where you go home and give yourself a high five as an admin because you made somebody's day better. Rebecca: Yeah, that's huge. And I love that we're talking food again. Mike: Right. It always comes back to food. We have an event in San Francisco, speaking of food, in a couple of weeks from this, which is TDX. And I think there's going to be quite a few Agentforce stuff and flow and set up and holy cow, there's a lot of things going on, isn't there? Rebecca: Yes. So much going on for TDX. We're really excited. The whole team's been working on this and we're super excited to welcome everyone to San Francisco. Mike, you've been working on the admin track, which is going to be stellar. We have also the hackathon coming back in a different form than last TDX. It's hybrid and we're going to be showcasing the top three finalists at the hackathon showdown, which is exciting because this time it's in the main keynote. It's going to be the big stage. So it's going to be a really exciting moment. We're also bringing things like True to the Core Deep Dive to TDX for the first time. So there's a whole track that we are managing to bring that great experience that we know our admins and the rest of our Trailblazers really love to TDX as well. I know I'm missing things. There are so many cool things in the zone to get hands-on, to have more opportunities, to talk to product managers, to see roadmap, to get your questions answered. Mike, jump in. What else? Mike: Oh, there's a lot. And I would say, if you haven't already, go online and start sketching out your schedule now because there's a lot of great sessions. And there's also a lot of great opportunities to get what I call fingers on keyboards right at the event and talk with individuals. And there will be some content, a lot of admin content and developer and architect that'll be available on demand after the event as well. So try and pick and choose where you spend your time wisely, because some of it you can always watch later too. Rebecca: Yes. Sound advice. Plan your agenda ahead of time. Mike: Exactly. And over plan. I think to wrap up, Rebecca, you're a San Francisco native with all these people coming to town. Do you have a suggestion on a favorite place to eat? Rebecca: Wow. Putting me on the spot. Mike: Yep. Not Super Duper because that's right around the corner from Moscone West and always full. Rebecca: [inaudible 00:25:26] all around close by. Well, can I share where a favorite of the admin relations team? Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Rebecca: Yeah. Ideale? No, I'm not sure. Mike: I don't know. I think it's... Is it Ideal? Rebecca: Ideal? Mike: I don't know. Rebecca: So I was trying to go Italiano. The Italian place in North Beach. It's going to be really yummy. Mike: Yeah. So that's really cool. I'll put a link in the show notes. We've had some really good pasta there and it's a nice little restaurant, little... Definitely a Waymo if you want to take a Waymo ride from downtown, but nice little street and kind of gets you out of the conference hustle and bustle. Rebecca: Yeah. I will say we've had really nice weather, so anywhere along the Embarcadero is going to be really nice if this weather holds up. Mike: Knock on wood, it does, hopefully. Well, Rebecca, thanks for coming on. I'm sure people will be looking for us at TDX and we are happy to talk about more, or of course look for more admins to interview to get your voices out there about the Next Gen blog series that we're writing. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Rebecca: Thank you, Mike. Mike: So thanks again to Rebecca for coming on the podcast and sharing why the future of admin work is really less about losing ground to AI and more about gaining leverage with it. I think when admins lead with trust, we understand the business and keep the foundation strong, that puts us in a powerful position to guide how agents are actually going to help make all of our users so much better. So thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. Be sure to listen, subscribe, share this episode with somebody that is looking to become a Salesforce admin. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.  
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  How Can Agentforce Help Manage a Salesforce Backlog? 19.03.2026 27min

  Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Neil Foglio, Solution Architect at Arkus. Join us as we chat about how to use a backlog to prioritize requests in your Salesforce org, and how Agentforce can help improve transparency and trust. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Neil Foglio. Why Salesforce Admins need a backlog We talk a lot about forward-looking statements on this podcast, but what about that thing trailing along behind you? That's right, it's your technical debt. If you're facing a mountain of requests, this episode is for you. That's why I sat down with Neil Foglio. He explains how your backlog can be a tool to streamline your Salesforce org and help it evolve with your business. "It's not a to-do list and it's not a task list," Neil says, "it's a commitment that something will be prioritized amongst everything else that you have on your plate." It's a central place to capture all requests, improvements, and ideas, and then evaluate them so you can figure out what to work on and when. Writing better backlog items For Neil, the key to making a backlog that works for you is to write better action items. Make sure that every item starts with an action verb. Instead of "create a new fundraising homepage," be more specific: "design a new Lightning page so gift officers can see donation history." The other key step is to evaluate and prioritize your action items. There are several different systems you can use, but you're generally looking at value, effort, and risk. How much impact will making this change have? What resources will you need to get it done? And finally, what data do you have to support what you believe? For many organizations, there will also be custom dimensions that have their own score. For example, an educational institution may evaluate everything in terms of how it improves student learning. What's important is to establish a clear process and get buy-in from leadership over how things are prioritized. How Agentforce can help with backlogs Managing your Salesforce backlog is even easier with Agentforce. As Neil explains, getting a clear and specific user story is crucial to creating useful action items. You can set up an agent to take requests, and go through the granular details with the user of every action they're taking in a business process so you can get to the why behind their request. Agentforce can also help you improve transparency by explaining the why behind your prioritization decisions. You can have a helper explain what you're working on and when you expect to deliver it. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from Neil and hear his upright bass playing. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday. Podcast swag Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store Learn more Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Why Every Admin Needs a Backlog (and How To Use One) Admin Trailblazers Group Admin Trailblazers Community Group Social Neil on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn Salesforce Admins on X Mike on Bluesky social Mike on Threads Mike on X Full show transcript Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins podcast. And hey, you know what? That intro music you hear today, that's actually our guest, Neil Foglio, playing the upright bass. Neil is a solution architect at Arkus. And in this episode, we're talking about something every admin eventually runs into the backlog. Neil shares how thinking about your Salesforce org, more like a product than a project, can change how you manage requests, prioritize improvements, and make sure the right work gets done at the right time. We also dig into practical ways admins can evaluate ideas using simple frameworks like RICE so decisions feel fair and transparent. If you've ever wondered how to handle the constant flow of, "Hey, could we add this request?" This conversation's going to help. So with that, let's get Neil on the podcast. So Neil, welcome to the podcast. Neil Foglio: Hey, Mike, thanks for having me. Mike: I'm excited to talk about this because a lot of things on the podcast we always talk about are future-facing. And I feel like this topic is kind of future-facing, but it's also managing, well, I don't know how best to put it, the burden of debt that we somehow get ourselves into. And in that, it's backlogs, which doesn't sound interesting, but I promise you, you're going to be excited by the end of this podcast. So Neil, let's start off with introducing you to the world and kind of let people know what you do and how you got into the Salesforce ecosystem. Neil Foglio: Yeah, of course. Hello, everyone listening. My name is Neil and I'm a solution architect at Arcus, Inc, where I work with both nonprofits and enterprises implementing Salesforce. Most of my work lately has been helping organizations treat their CRM more like a product than a project, and to rethink how they steer their Salesforce org with their evolving businesses, where governance kind of comes into the picture, and that's where this topic of the backlog fits in. Mike: Yeah. Wow. That's interesting because I'm looking at the core responsibilities we have for admins, and project and product management are both core responsibilities. Neil Foglio: Yeah. I feel like a lot of admins now are really acting more like product managers, steering their Salesforce org, figuring out what elements have the most value and where you can produce the most ROI. And this is where you want to have systems that prioritize those things, and that's exactly what the backlog is. Mike: Okay. So I will confess this, that when I started as an admin a long time ago before the iPhone, we'll just say that as a date, I had no concept of some of the technical things that my developer friends knew. I didn't know about change management. I didn't know about backlogs or managing technical debt. For newer admins that are just getting started in the ecosystem and at their organizations, how do you define what a backlog is and how do you define what gets on a backlog? Neil Foglio: Yeah, absolutely. And I was in that same boat. So I started my tech career coming from healthcare. And so the first time I heard the word backlog, I thought it was a terrible thing, that something wasn't happening, work wasn't getting done, patients weren't being cared for. But when we think back to starting in a Salesforce org, you might have been in a position where you inherit an org or your company gets some new leadership that wants to make a bunch of improvements to the org and you find yourself questioning, "Well, where do I start and how do I prioritize all of these questions and features coming at me?" Without a system to rate them all, the things that typically will get done are those asked by the person with the most seniority in the room or the person that's emailing you three times a week. Mike: Right. Sometimes it's the same person. Neil Foglio: Could be. And sometimes it is especially when there is new leadership or a disruptive factor happens in the business that we need to respond to. And what the backlog is it's a tool that creates a level playing field for all of these ideas and their stakeholders. So it's a central place to do two things. Number one, to capture all of these requests and improvements and ideas, and number two, to rate them against each other using the same evaluative criteria so you can figure out which ones have the most value at this moment when you have capacity to build something new. Mike: That makes sense. I mean, to be fair, when I first started, the requests would... I would manage them basically in the order that they were received. And I very quickly had to learn, "Oh wait, creating a list view is way less effort than creating a contract management application," for example. And just because the list view is the third one down doesn't mean I can't just bump it up and knock out a whole bunch of half hour jobs as opposed to, "Well, it's going to have to wait until I get this monster of a contract application created." Neil Foglio: I mean, those little things tend to add up too, right? So if you're spending a lot of your time in a reactive mode and you're doing these requests as they're coming in, you might not really have a lot to show for it at the end of the day. Mike: You can. Yeah, absolutely. I had to learn how to manage my backlog. And I will say this, your backlog isn't your email inbox, right? Neil Foglio: No. It's not a to do list and it's not a task list. It's more of a commitment that something will be prioritized amongst everything else that you have on your plate. Mike: Sure. How do you suggest admins manage their backlog? Neil Foglio: Yeah. So if you were to Google this online, you'd see there are a bunch of different prioritization techniques. So before we get to prioritizing the items on the backlog, we should talk about what makes a good backlog item because those vague items like creating a new fundraising homepage are not something that can be easily estimated, right? So the idea here is that if you have enough detail in your backlog items, you can figure out how much time it will take, how many users it impacts, how much confidence you have that it's actually a problem that can be solved, and how much effort in terms of time, hours, or people will take to get it done. So the first kind of step is making sure that all of your backlog items start with an action verb. So using that fundraising homepage as an example, we can reframe that to say something like, "Design a new lightning page so gift officers can see donation history." In that one sentence now, we have exactly what we want to make. Maybe there's some reporting or dashboards in there too, who it's for, and what the impact would be for the organization. Mike: I like that. I think writing titles out and using different words or verbs or tenses is so my jam because when I was in sales, I would always write all my to do lists in the third person. So it was like future Mike telling present Mike what to do. And I remember all of the salespeople would make fun of me. I was like, "Yeah, but when I go to pull up my to do list, it literally tells me what I need to do right now and I don't have to decode what I was writing my notes on." So I like that you start everything with a verb. Neil Foglio: Yeah. Bring it into that trusted system, right? Mike: I mean, the backlog's there, the second you get 10 requests and you fulfill six of them, well, now you have a backlog of four, and then tomorrow you get 10 more requests. How do you balance between the two in terms of managing new requests versus shoveling all of the new stuff into the backlog? Neil Foglio: This is where the prioritization comes through. And so if we were to Google backlog prioritization techniques, you'll see a whole bunch of different methods, but what they all kind of have in common is that they convert three things: value, effort, and risk into a numerical score. So teams can compare those ideas more objectively. In doing that, you're not trying to get to an absolute value. Precision isn't really the goal, but again, we're comparing the relative priority. So what you'll see is a really common prioritization technique has the acronym RICE, where the R stands for reach. Think number of users. Let's say you have a defect and it affects a hundred users or a thousand external stakeholders who get a specific document generated. I is impact, which is usually a scale where higher numbers have more impact. The C is for confidence, which accounts for how well you have data to back up what you're saying. And this is typically given as a percentage. And E is the effort, and that is measured in time or resources. But whatever the technique, the most important thing is that this process of entering things into the backlog and revisiting the backlog happens on a regular cadence. So maybe it's appropriate if you have a pretty heavy backlog that it happens twice a month or once a month if there's not too much on it. But this consistent way to evaluate requests lets the prioritization process feel fair and transparent. And you can't put a price on that kind of trust, right? Mike: Yeah. No, that's good. So from a technology standpoint, how have you managed your backlog? Do you use cases in service or built a custom object or managed it outside of Salesforce? Neil Foglio: Well, I think I have to say that everything should be in Salesforce, right? Mike: Yes. Neil Foglio: Even if it wasn't on your podcast [inaudible 00:11:45]. Mike: If it's not in Salesforce, it doesn't count. Neil Foglio: Right. Exactly. But if you're a new admin that's starting out trying to figure out what needs to happen in your Salesforce org, you can design a custom object that has some picklist values, new in progress. You can create the custom dimensions you want to rate your backlog items on. So by custom dimensions, we just talked about reach, impact, confidence, and effort, but some sectors will have more tailored solutions. So for example, healthcare usually has a score that has something to do with patients, like risk of patient harm or impact to care coordination. Finance orgs are probably interested in reducing the likelihood of fraud or improving regulatory compliance. And I'm working with an educational institution right now, you'll think you'll find this interesting, that's evaluating every Salesforce idea on how well that idea improves student learning. Mike: Ooh. Neil Foglio: And we think about putting that all in a Salesforce object, you can have all those ratings right there as your picklist values so you can easily calculate a formula to say, "Here is the score of this backlog item, and here's how that compares to everything else that's currently in flux." Mike: Wow, that's really cool. I like that. How much... We've kind of skipped over just the request part of building a backlog. But when I was an admin, I think I always struggled with the ticketing system that I created, not in managing it, but in how many questions and how many fields do I have users fill out for a certain request? Because there's always that like, "I need a lot." And I remember a long time ago, Gary Palmatier told me, "Always ask people to tell it to you in plain English, not in Salesforce speak." Right? Neil Foglio: Right. Mike: And by that he meant, "I need to manage my incoming leads so that I ensure everybody gets called back 24 hours after a trade show and I send them a brochure." Not, "I need to manage new lead records and have your users describe what's going on in Salesforce." Where do you find there's kind of a sweet spot in terms of getting that information from users or managing that so that you can adequately decide, "Here's how much effort this one's going to take versus this one, which I'm going to put in the backlog"? Neil Foglio: That level of detail is really important because that allows you to estimate the effort. We wouldn't ask our users to tell us how long it would take us to implement a feature. And I think you're absolutely right that giving it in plain English lets you figure out what that user story is, and then maybe also lets you connect with people who can give you more guidance as to what it would take to bring that element to fruition, right? So I think getting that user story and that journey down from the person that's submitting the backlog request is probably what's most important because you'd want to know how do you replicate this? If it's a defect, what do I have to do to find this defect and resolve it? If it's a journey, if it's creating a document or sending out tax letters for donors, you want to know what those steps are so you can properly estimate it. And sometimes that comes just from doing and having your users tell you exactly what it is they are doing and what they'd want to do. Mike: Right. No, it's good. So Agentforce. Neil Foglio: Agentforce. Mike: Agentforce can help us do a lot of things. What do you see as use cases? Because this is also a great area for admins to build agents to help them manage their implementation. What do you see as use cases for admins to build agents to help with a backlog or with feature requests? Neil Foglio: Maybe the first question is, is building the agent on your backlog? Mike: Ooh, look at you going Meta. So is it people? There's the question for you. Neil Foglio: So is it? Well, I think when we think about what the agent's capabilities are, if you're already managing your backlog in Salesforce and not an external ticketing system or an Excel sheet, you can have your agent answer questions as to what similar backlog items have happened in the past because that's probably a really good use case because what happens over time with these backlogs is that they become this form of organizational memory. When you complete a backlog, you're not going to delete it from your backlog, it would be archived and completed. And that's when you start to see patterns in the requests that people make. And that's where AI is really useful in telling us what those patterns are. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I was also thinking too, boy, you could... There's a lot of... I don't know. Sometimes I have too many ideas and my mouth is going like, "What if it asks you had a question agent before they put in their request like, 'I'd really like to do this blah, blah, blah report'." And instead of just submitting the ticket, the agent's like, "Oh, well, that report already exists." And then it shows you the report and then it's like, "Yay, this agent saved me 18 tickets this week or something." Neil Foglio: Yeah. Or, "We're already working on this report for you and we expect to have it delivered in this quarter." Mike: Yeah. I mean, the agent could immediately look at the backlog and say, "Well, actually a similar ticket has been submitted and its status is X. So do you want to submit another one?" I think that was always something that I ran into, was one person have a good idea and then somebody in another department would have the same idea, but they think they're both the first person to have that idea. And so then you'd end up getting two or three tickets that it's like, "Well, these are all the same ticket," you know? Neil Foglio: That's where the backlog also is this collaborative tool, which if done really well, fosters this incredible sense of trust across the organization because you want to share those things with people who are interested in them. Mike: Yep. So let's talk about sharing. I created a dashboard that everybody in my org had access to. So they could see the number of tickets, they could see the status of tickets. And I felt like for me, the transparency kept everything honest. Somebody never said, "Well, it's just submitting it to a black hole." It's like, "No. When you submit it, look, the dashboard changed. Here's your ticket." What level of transparency do you suggest for admins in terms of sharing their backlog with their users? Because I think it can be tough sometimes when you have to make that decision of, "I need to pause on this because I can create these four list views and knock four tickets off my backlog as opposed to spending the next four and a half hours and creating this app or something because it can feel sometimes like favoritism." Neil Foglio: Oh, absolutely. And I think that's where backlog management isn't really a single person's job. I think the most effective teams usually have a committee, like a steering committee, that will review the backlog on a regular cadence together, which pulls in the executive sponsors of certain departments to make sure that the prioritization is happening in a fair and transparent way. And that level of commitment from leadership is pretty important for an initiative like this in large and small organizations because the backlog is your holding place, but it's also your prioritization space. And so a lot of people tend to get involved. Everyone wants to push their items up on the backlog -- Mike: Oh, yeah. Neil Foglio: ... unless their stuff done. Mike: Everybody wants to be platinum status. Neil Foglio: Right. Right. And that's where when you have this objective tool, you can explain why things are not happening in the order that maybe somebody wants them to. And then having that backup from your leadership or from your manager to agree with you is just as equally powerful. Mike: Yeah. That's always one important part that admins play is the governance of everything, making sure that all the departments and all the stakeholders really have visibility into things because it's always surprising how organizations think they talk a lot, but in realistic terms, they change processes within their own department and then sometimes they forget the downstream or upstream effects of those process changes. Neil Foglio: Right. Or other departments are missing out on the efficiencies they just created because they don't know. Mike: Oh, absolutely. All the time. Neil Foglio: Right. Mike: All the time. Neil, one of the things that's kind of fun about working in tech is I think people have interesting hobbies. I know I spoke to product managers that were into puzzles and games. I had a product manager on once that was into smelting pewter and little pewter figurines. Neil Foglio: Oh, wow. Mike: I was like, that's commitment, because those furnaces get up to like 2,200 degrees. You're not going to burn your house down. There's going to be nothing left. Neil Foglio: I wouldn't do that in my house. Mike: He did it in his garage, but still. Maybe I've watched too many YouTube videos of frying turkeys on Thanksgiving and I just envision that would be the same thing. But I'm curious, what do you do outside of managing backlogs and building agents to manage backlogs and thinking about building agents to do other things? Neil Foglio: Yeah. So I'm a practitioner of Engrosser's Script, which is a style of American calligraphy developed in the late 19th century. And I'm also a upright bass player, little bit of jazz, but mostly classical. Mike: Okay. So this is the one part where I wish we had video. Tell me more about the calligraphy stuff because that... I mean, I got to tell you, beautiful handwriting, that's a lost art. Neil Foglio: It's always been important to me. I think this started for me in seventh grade when I started getting interested in calligraphy. And more recently, I find it more meditative because when you're creating a letter form, you're really doing several strokes. It's not all one consistent stroke. You're picking up the pen several times. So sometimes to create one word, you're spending 15 minutes. Mike: Wow. Neil Foglio: And you can only be in that zone doing that process. Mike: Wow. I mean, with everything technology, that lost art of handwriting and beautiful handwriting is... I always look back at... It's not the same, but I have a whole box of my grandma's recipe cards. And she just had very beautiful cursive and they just took time. And that calligraphy is just... That's something I think now maybe with how fast you can change fonts on a screen you forget about. Neil Foglio: Yeah. They even make robots who will do the calligraphy for you using real ink and paper. Mike: Oh. Neil Foglio: Isn't that sad? Mike: I don't know. That's kind of cool though, because man. Oh, okay. And then you mentioned upright bass player. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to play something because you would be the first musician on the podcast. So can I talk you into playing something cool? Neil Foglio: Oh, absolutely. I may have learned a little jingle specific for your podcast, Mike. Mike: Sweet. Neil Foglio: I think that's your podcast jingle. Yeah. Mike: Yeah. That's pretty much it right there. Wow. That's awesome. That is really cool. Neil Foglio: Thank you. Mike: Well, Neil, thanks so much for coming on and riffing with us. I think... Did you ever watch Ted Lasso? Neil Foglio: No, I haven't. Mike: Okay. I think there's an upright bass player on Ted Lasso too. So it's worth a watch, worth a watch for sure. But that was cool. Thanks for playing that little riff and sharing with us about backlogs. And I think you've ideated more than a few people to create some agents to manage backlogs. Neil Foglio: Yeah, I hope so. Thanks so much for having me. Mike: Huge thanks to Neil for joining me on the podcast and sharing how admins can turn their backlog into a real decision-making tool. From writing clearer backlog items to comparing ideas using impact, effort, and reach, Neil offered some practical approaches any admin can start using right away. And of course, a big thanks for playing the upright bass intro music. I don't know that I get live podcast themes with every guest, so that was an extra fun treat. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a fellow Salesforce admin or someone on your team who can help you prioritize Salesforce work. And until next time, we'll see you in the cloud.