There’s a habit the best Salesforce Admins develop early in their careers. Some call it SABWA or Salesforce Administration By Walking Around. The idea is simple: Block 15 minutes a day, grab a coffee, and go sit with your users. Not to fix a ticket. Not to answer a support email. Just to watch and listen.
When you do this consistently, you start hearing the same questions over and over — questions that never make it into a ticket because users assume the answer doesn’t exist, or they’ve already given up and built a workaround. “Where do I find the latest proposal template?” “Can the billing team see the contract updates I just made on this account, or do I need to manually email them a copy?” “Who owns this deal now that Sarah moved to a new team?”
These small, repeated friction points can quietly drain productivity across your entire organization. As an admin, you’re in a unique position to spot those patterns and give users a faster path to answers with Agentforce Coworker.
Agentforce Coworker is an AI teammate that helps users answer everyday questions using connected, permissioned context from the enterprise systems they already use. Think of it as a knowledgeable guide that thinks and reasons across connected sources to help users find trusted answers faster. And when a request requires more than an answer, Agentforce Coworker can execute the work by orchestrating across an existing Agentforce agent or a specialized agent you configure.
Agentforce Coworker is currently in beta for eligible Salesforce orgs, with additional surfaces such as Microsoft Teams, ChatGPT, Claude, desktop, and other experiences planned over time.
Think of Agentforce Coworker as the entry point or front door to your entire agent workforce. When your users need to perform specific cross-system tasks — like refreshing a live visualization or modifying an opportunity — this AI teammate helps orchestrate the request. It can route requests to the right agent so work can continue in the conversation flow.
But just because it’s easy to set up doesn’t mean there’s nothing for an admin to do. In fact, the most important work you can do right now happens before you ever open Setup.
Before you flip the switch to enable Agentforce Coworker, go back to your SABWA practice, or start one if you haven’t already. The goal is to understand exactly what questions your users are asking most frequently, because those questions will directly inform how you configure the tool and decide what data sources to add.
During your user visits, listen for questions that follow a pattern, such as:
Document what you hear. Group the questions by topic. You’re essentially building a map of the knowledge gaps in your organization and using it to guide every decision you make in the next steps.
Why does this matter? Because Agentforce Coworker is only as useful as the data it can search. A user asking about the latest pricing deck can only get a great answer if the pricing deck lives somewhere the agent can reach. If that content sits in a SharePoint folder that isn’t connected or in an email thread the system can’t access, the agent will come up empty. Knowing what your users need upfront helps you connect the right data sources and build the right agents from the start.
Agentforce Coworker is included in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Agentforce 1 Editions and available in Salesforce Foundations. Here’s how to get started.
You’ll need two things before you can configure anything.
Assign both of these to your admin user:
This is where your user research pays off. Agentforce Coworker can search Salesforce CRM data and authenticated Slack workspaces during the beta. For external sources like Google Drive or SharePoint, you’ll need to work with your Salesforce Account Executive to get access through a pilot program.
Under Manage Search Data, you can:
Start with the sources that map to the questions you heard most in your user visits. If account history questions are common, make sure your CRM data is fully connected. If questions about internal documents dominate, prioritize getting Google Drive or SharePoint into the pilot.
This makes the Agentforce Coworker interface visible in the global search bar for users you grant access to.
Each user will need:
To remove access later, you’ll need to remove both the permission set group and the permission set license from that user.
Once you’ve mapped common user questions to trusted knowledge sources, Agentforce Coworker can help users find better answers faster. But answers are only the beginning.
You can further empower Agentforce Coworker by giving it access to specialized agents that can manage work, take action, or hand-off tasks based on what the user needs. Agentforce Coworker becomes the entry point, helping route the request to the right source, workflow, or specialized agent in your org’s agent workforce.
As you review your question categories, separate what users need to know from what users need to do.
If the user needs an answer, start by connecting Agentforce Coworker to the right trusted data source. For example, HR policy questions may point to your employee handbook, internal knowledge articles, or benefits documentation.
If the user needs a specialized process, decision, or action, that may warrant a dedicated agent. These agents should do something beyond a general search-and-answer experience. They might apply business rules, update records, evaluate next steps, or hand work off to another team.
For example:
The key question is: Does this category only need trusted information, or does it need specialized action? Agentforce Coworker helps users find answers, but dedicated agents help Coworker move work forward.
For each agent, define the scope clearly: What questions should it answer, what data sources should it draw from, and what actions (if any) should it be able to take? The more specific you are, the more reliable the experience will be.
Agentforce Coworker respects the permissions and governance of the sources it can access. For Salesforce data, that means users only receive answers based on records and objects they already have permission to see. Agentforce Coworker enforces access controls for external sources directly, which means users only see content they’re permitted to access in the source system itself.
After you’ve rolled out access to your first group of users, return to your SABWA practice. Now you’re listening for a different signal: Are users getting the answers they need, or are there still gaps?
Watch for:
Agentforce Coworker is designed to scale as your agent workforce grows. Each new specialized agent you build makes the whole system more capable. Start narrow, learn from your users, and expand from there.
Agentforce Coworker gives admins more room to do the work that matters most: listening to users, understanding how work actually gets done, and building solutions that make Salesforce easier to use.
Every configuration decision you make, every agent you build, and every trusted data source you connect is a direct investment in your users’ productivity. The better you understand what your people need, the more useful Agentforce Coworker becomes.
The admin who walks around, listens carefully, and builds with intention will always deliver more value than the one who configures in isolation. Agentforce Coworker helps scale that approach, giving users faster answers and admins more insight into where the next improvement should happen.
Agentforce Coworker is currently in beta for Salesforce. Availability, usage, and credit consumption depend on your org’s edition, entitlements, and configuration. Review the latest billing considerations and Digital Wallet usage before rolling it out broadly.
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