Revolutionize Record Pages: AI-Powered Agent Shortcuts Are Here

Use cases for agent quick actions

So, what are some of the use cases for this feature? Think about your users’ interactions in the context of a record.

Here are a few example use cases, some using standard agent actions.

• Make recommendations: Offer actionable suggestions based on record data.
• Summarize record: Use utterances like “Summarize the case” to invoke the Summarize Record standard agent action.
• Perform calculations: Use utterances like “What is the average time of my closed cases for the past 3 months?” to invoke the Query Records with Aggregate standard agent action.
• Get a record’s activity timeline: Use utterances like “Give me a list of all recent activities for my account” to invoke the Get Activities Timeline standard agent action.
• Query records: Use utterances like “What are my top five opportunities closed this year?” to invoke the Query Records standard agent action.

Use case: Summarize and recommend

A great use case for an agent quick action is one that summarizes and makes recommendations, such as summarizing open cases for the contact and making recommendations on next steps to bring those cases to resolution for a sales rep to prepare for a client meeting.

In the example below, I’ve configured an employee agent with instructions and a custom prompt template agent action, Summarize Open Cases.

The custom Summarize Open Cases agent action is a prompt that uses a flex template, invoking a flow to perform more complex data gathering beyond the basic record merge fields.

I created a template-triggered prompt flow to further enrich the data in the flex prompt template. This prompt flow is pretty simple. We (1) get all the open cases for the contact where the status is not closed. (2) Each case found in the Get Records element goes through a Loop element. Finally, for each case record, (3) we are passing case details: case number, case subject, case status, case description, and case created date.

Once the agent action is available in the employee agent, I configured an agent quick action on the Contact object to summarize cases and make recommendations for next steps.

An Agent Quick Action is a new action type in your quick action if you have Einstein turned on in your org, an activated employee agent, and the associated agent action that the utterance invokes.

The key to this agent quick action is the user utterance, which is the prompt you provide the employee agent. In this case, each time the agent quick action is invoked, it passes the prompt “Summarize all the open cases associated with this contact and make note of any escalated cases” right into the agent panel. Think of this as an agent shortcut.

Add the agent quick action to the Lightning record page. You can tell a quick action is AI-powered by the sparkles icon, as noted in these two agent quick actions ‘Summarize Cases & Recommend Next Steps’ and ‘Recent Activities’.

When the quick action is clicked, the Agent panel is activated and the user utterance is passed behind the scenes to the employee agent, but you only see the name of the agent quick action in the panel.

Why use agent quick actions over field generation?

While field generation can auto-populate fields with AI-generated summaries using your Salesforce data, the data is static and lacks real-time updates. Agent quick actions, however, provide dynamic, up-to-date insights whenever invoked. If your use case requires real-time data, agent quick actions are the better choice.

For example:

• Field generation use case: Auto-generating a description of a real estate property
• Agent quick action use case: Summarizing open support cases with real-time data

Note: Once you configure and activate your field generation prompt template, assign the prompt template to the associated field in Lightning App Builder. If a field is AI-powered, it will be denoted by the orange Einstein icon.

Once field generation is enabled in a field, you’ll see a wand icon on the record page. Click on the icon, then click the sparkles icon to activate Einstein. You can ask Einstein to make additional changes to the description; otherwise, click the Use button to populate the information into the field.

Use case: Get Activities Timeline

In the first use case, my agent quick action used a custom prompt template agent action to summarize the open cases. But why build, if standard out-of-the-box agent actions will do? Here’s my approach. I’d first provide a prompt in Agent Builder and see if the agent can use a standard agent action. If I need the agent to do a bit more, I’ll build a custom agent action.

Let’s say a sales rep needs to get a list of the contact’s recent activities organized by upcoming and past. This is a perfect use case for an agent quick action.

The Recent Activities agent quick action on the contact page activates the agent panel and passes the user utterance behind the scenes for the user.

How did we know it used the Get Activities Timeline standard agent action? In Agent Builder, we provide the same utterance as the agent quick action into the Conversation Preview panel but note the contact’s name and record ID for context.

Show me the timeline of all CRM activities for Edward Stamos (003TC000003ViSuYAK). Separate them by past and upcoming activities with upcoming listed first, if there are both. You must not disclose email addresses.

We can see in the Planner that the agent used the Get Activities Timeline agent action.

Now, it’s your turn. Create AI-powered agent shortcuts today!

You can now bring the power of AI to your record pages and make it super easy for your users to interact with your agent and get consistent results with these powerful agent shortcuts. Talk to a few users to understand their top interactions with records and give these a whirl in your org today.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Add AI-Powered Quick Actions to Record Pages
• Trailhead: Quick Start: Build Your First Agent with Agentforce

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