Salesforce Platform For Slack Expands Developers’ Automation Capabilities

Apex SDK allows developers to create Block Kit, Slack's UI framework.
SIA Team
April 28, 2022

Salesforce and Slack have announced the Apex SDK, which makes it easier to create and automate actions and workflows. Developers can use the SDK to create custom Slack apps that pull Salesforce activities, workflows, and business insights into Slack. Developers may utilize this integration to build native Slack apps on the Salesforce Platform throughout the Customer 360 portfolio, according to Salesforce.

These announcements were made as part of TrailblazerDX ’22, which takes place on April 27 and 28. Developers, administrators, architects, entrepreneurs, and students are all invited to attend the event, which has both online and in-person components. Although in-person registration is now closed, the sessions are available for free on Salesforce+.

Developers can utilize Apex to develop reusable views, fetch Salesforce records, and route events between Salesforce and Slack. Developers may utilize the new SDK to create Apex code and have Block Kit, Slack’s UI framework for apps, generated automatically. Visual components that can be arranged to create app layouts are called blocks. Buttons, date pickers, checkboxes, pictures, a multi-select menu, and a radio button group are all examples of interactive items that can be placed in a block.

With Flow in Slack, Salesforce has also added new features to bring automation to any Slack Conversation. Flow is project management software that integrates with Slack channels to display activity updates such as task completion, due dates, task assignments, project timetable modifications, and task comments. Slack’s flow feature may be used to automate manual activities like creating Slack channels and delivering account status updates, as well as to create Salesforce-guided workflows that can be reused in Slack.

Salesforce also made this new Salesforce for Slack apps, which employ real-time data insights and provide other automation possibilities, available in beta:

Sales Cloud for Slack automates deal status updates to sales teams, keeps Salesforce records up to date for pipeline analytics, and allows teams to collaborate in real-time.

Service Cloud for Slack: Assigns service cases to team members automatically.

Marketing Cloud for Slack: This allows teams to collaborate on marketing campaigns and execute them.

According to a Salesforce study, 91 percent of businesses need tools to help developers automate essential activities so they can “do more with less,” and developer stress is rising as they learn technical software architecture and work on larger projects. 

According to the poll, higher workloads from other teams, the pressures of digital transformation, and learning skills to adopt new technologies are the top three reasons for burnout among software engineers. 600 CIOs and IT decision-makers participated in the study.