Salesforce Platform for Slack increases automation options for developers

Software engineers can use Apex SDK to generate Block Kit, Slack’s UI framework.

Salesforce and Slack released the new Apex SDK designed to make it easier to build actions and workflows and to automate these tasks. Developers can use the SDK to build custom Slack apps that pull actions, workflows and business insights directly from Salesforce into Slack. According to Salesforce, developers can use this integration to build Slack apps natively on Salesforce Platform across the Customer 360 portfolio.

Developers can use automations built via Apex to fetch Salesforce records, create reusable views and route events between Salesforce and Slack. Developers can use the new SDK to write in Apex code and automatically generate Block Kit, Slack’s UI framework for apps. Blocks are visual components that can be arranged to create app layouts. Blocks can hold multiple interactive elements including buttons, date pickers, checkboxes, images, a multi-select menu and a radio button group.

Salesforce also released new features to bring automation to any Slack Conversation with Flow in Slack. Flow is project management software that links to Slack channels to see activity updates including task completions, due date changes, task assignments, project timeline changes and task notes. Flow in Slack can be used to automate manual tasks such as creating Slack channels and sending account status updates and to build guided workflows in Salesforce that can be reused within Slack.

These announcements were part of TrailblazerDX ‘22 which is taking place Wednesday, April 27 and Thursday, April 28. The event has online and in-person components that bring together developers, admins, architects, entrepreneurs and students. In-person registration is closed but there is a free stream of the sessions on Salesforce+.

Salesforce also announced beta availability of these new Salesforce for Slack apps that use real-time data insights and offer other automation options:

• Sales Cloud for Slack: Automates deal status updates to sales teams, maintains up-to-date records in Salesforce for pipeline analytics and makes it easy to collaborate in real time across teams.
• Service Cloud for Slack: Automatically assigns service cases to team members.
• Marketing Cloud for Slack: Enables teams to collaborate and execute on marketing campaigns.

Recent research from Salesforce suggests that automation can increase job satisfaction for developers with 91% of organizations saying that they need solutions that automate key processes for developers so they can “do more with less.” The survey also found that learning technical software architecture combined with increased workloads are increasing stress levels among developers. The top three drivers of burnout among software engineers are increased workloads from other teams, the pressures of digital transformation and learning skills to implement new technologies, according to the survey. The research included 600 CIOs and IT decision makers.