Be an AI-Minded Salesforce Admin

As you dive into the world of artificial intelligence (AI), using your learner’s mindset to skill up, know that Salesforce is here to support you every step of the way. Start your journey to being an AI-minded Salesforce Admin by understanding how new platform innovations are building the foundation for delivering intelligent solutions with Salesforce. Then, learn the actions you can take today to prepare and get the most from AI.

Get to know the Einstein 1 Platform

At Dreamforce ’23, Salesforce announced the most recent iteration of our platform for custom cloud-based enterprise applications, the Einstein 1 Platform. A relaunch of the core CRM, integration, and automation functionality that has made Salesforce the #1 CRM platform for years, the Einstein 1 Platform adds an AI-centric mindset for admins to create even more advanced solutions with generative AI and leverage AI to supercharge their productivity.

AI features on the platform, collectively known as Einstein, will have an increasing impact on utilizing Salesforce in the future—especially for admins. Let’s walk through what Einstein means right now and where it’s headed soon!

Einstein and the Trust Layer

As we’ve discussed before, AI is as powerful as the data that drives it. Third-party solutions like ChatGPT and Bard utilize information from across the public internet to generate their responses. While this creates a deep well of information, it also creates valid concerns around privacy, safety, and security. These internet-spanning models might be able to suggest a solid chili recipe, but it should also be noted that the prompts given to them can be consumed by the AI for later training. This means that any confidential data fed into it may be visible to the parent company that owns it, a lesson Samsung learned the hard way.

The Einstein Trust Layer ensures that an Einstein model based on your data stays right within the safe confines of your Salesforce org. You can rely on an AI with a model that knows your business, connected via Data Cloud across your data lake, that will respect the privacy and confidentiality of your data. Einstein is also constantly being monitored and modified to respect ethical concepts and control any level of toxicity.

However, Salesforce understands that the future of AI is a rapidly changing landscape. If, in the future, your business wants to leverage an external AI model, we don’t want you to sacrifice that trust. Our bring your own model (BYOM) solution will include a gateway to filter out private information, leaving Salesforce to keep your privacy secure.

An admin’s role with Einstein

Here’s a series of recommendations to help prepare you in your admin role in the age of AI.

• Be the human in the loop: Recently, Salesforce wrote about how setting up humans versus AI is a false choice. Even the smartest AIs are capable of delivering deeply flawed solutions. Just ask the lawyer who submitted a legal brief with fake AI-generated citations. Now’s the time to understand prompt engineering and what it takes to put a careful editorial eye to what any AI, Einstein or otherwise, is offering.
• Train up on the current predictive solutions from Einstein: AI is nothing new to Salesforce or to admins. Are you streamlining and automating cases with Einstein Bots? Is your sales team empowered to offer AI-guided, personalized marketing with Einstein Next Best Action? Does Einstein Prediction Builder offer lead and opportunity scoring? These are all powerful AI tools ready for you and your users. And if you really want to challenge yourself, consider earning the AI Associate certification.
• Secure your organization: As AI becomes more common with your users, it’s good to think of it as another user they’re interacting with. Since AI will be leveraging the data used by your users, ensuring that principles like Least Privilege are being enforced and using tools like Health Check will be more important than ever. Check out Be a Security-Minded Admin for more.
• Spring clean your data: Consider the concept of garbage in, garbage out—and hook a super powerful conversational computer right in the middle—and it’s not hard to consider how bad data can impact the outcome of your AI solution. Have you revisited the Data Management Best Practice Guide recently? Never has there been a better time to do so.
• Be a leader in AI: Remember back when companies realized that their employees needed to know the do’s and don’ts of social media? Welcome back, only this time with AI. Your users will try out AI solutions, and they’re going to need to know what to do and what not to do. Here are some suggestions we’ve used internally at Salesforce.
  • Do not use the name, image, or likeness of anyone as an input or prompt.
  • Do not use content produced by someone else as an input or prompt.
  • Do not input any Salesforce proprietary, personal, or confidential information into third-party models.
  • Do not use any AI tool without checking the terms and conditions.
  • Do not rely on information from an AI tool without double-checking accuracy.
  • Do thoroughly review AI output before use and add your own modifications.
  • Do disclose the use of AI when necessary.
  • Do keep records of inputs and modifications, if possible.
• Learn Prompt Builder: Prompt Builder, with which you can use Einstein to generate emails and certain field values, is now in pilot. It’s a wonderful glimpse into the future of building generative applications on Einstein. Head on over to Trailhead to get to know it.

The future is bright

Soon, we’ll be able to show you Einstein Copilot, announced at Dreamforce ’23 and heading into pilot as soon as we can possibly open the doors for it. This conversational bot built into the Salesforce experience will offer brand new ways for you and your users to interact and engage with your data. As always, keep an eye on the Salesforce Admins site for more.

Keep the Learner’s Mindset

Here and on other Salesforce sites, we’ve been talking about the basics of AI, how it might help you navigate a spaceship, and more. Here’s a list of recent posts and resources to check out if you missed anything.

• Trailhead: Be an AI-Minded Admin
• Salesforce Admins Site: AI Page
• Salesforce Admins Blog: Understanding What Generative AI Means for Salesforce Admins
• Salesforce Admins Blog: How to Use Generative AI Tools to Write SOQL Queries
• Salesforce Admins Blog: Security + AI Basics for Salesforce Admins
• Salesforce Admins Blog: Introducing Prompt Builder: Supercharge Every Workflow with Trusted AI Prompts
• Salesforce Admins Blog: AI Prompt Writing for Salesforce Professionals
• Salesforce Admins Blog: Jumpstart Your Formulas with AI
• Salesforce Admins Podcast: Sarah Flamion on Generative AI

Note: This post was updated on November 6, 2023, with the latest information and resources.