This week celebrated Dreamforce’s 20th year in San Francisco. With over 140 sponsors, 1000 sessions and 150,000 attendees (online and in person), it is truly a global event. Thanks to Salesforce+, many sessions are freely available online! Here are some of the key take-home messages.
Salesforce Genie
Salesforce Genie was the biggest announcement. Genie is an open and extensible platform built on top of Hyperforce. It allows businesses to harmonise data in real-time from different data streams. For example, multiple Salesforce clouds, mobile apps, data lakes, APIs, and legacy systems via MuleSoft etc. The premise of this is to provide your business with a ‘real-time CRM’.
Streaming in real-time provides immediate insights into customer needs. Specifically, by enabling real-time analysis, prediction, and actions. For example, a Service team could receive a notification of a fault in real-time. This allows agents to be proactive, taking the necessary remedial actions.
Learn more about Salesforce Genie:
- Salesforce: Salesforce Announces a Genie – a New Data Platform Powering the World’s First Real-Time CRM
- Salesforce: Salesforce and WhatsApp Partner to Transform How People and Businesses Engage Globally
- Salesforce: Turn your data into real-time customer magic
- Salesforce+: Genie Keynote: A Real-Time Platform for Customer Magic
- Trailhead: Salesforce Genie: Quick Look
Slack
As in Salesforce World Tour London, Slack featured prominently. Key features introduced were:
- Canvas (GA in 2023): Natively integrating Quip into Slack. Providing richer, persistent information in context
- Huddles: New Video, screen sharing and annotation features to allow for greater collaboration
- Integrations: 15 new integrations for Slack, ranging from Sales, Service, Flow etc
Clearly Salesforce is continuing to invest heavily into Slack, to make it the ‘Digital HQ’ of choice for businesses.
Learn more about Slack:
DevOps Center
There was an interesting session called ‘Make the Move from Change Sets to DevOps Center’. If you are still using Change Sets and want to learn about DevOps Center and its benefits, this is worth a watch. This overviews how DevOps Center works alongside SFDX. For example, how it can aid collaboration between technical and less-technical audiences, throughout the application lifecycle.
DevOps Center is currently in Public Beta and due to be Generally Available in December this year.
Salesforce Economy and being a Trailblazer
Dreamforce and World Tour events also showcase how large the Salesforce ecosystem has grown. For example, by 2026, it is estimated that there will be 9.3 million jobs in the Salesforce economy.
If you are new to the ecosystem, or wanting to understand the tools available to help you grow your career, check out Be a Trailblazer in the Salesforce Ecosystem. This session overviews tools and resources available to help you grow your career.
Within this, the new ‘Hire Me’ available on Trailblazer.me is covered.
True to the Core
True to the Core is always interesting to watch. If you are unfamiliar with this, these sessions are a live Q&A forum, where members of the Trailblazer committee get to ask questions to key members of the Salesforce Product Team. This can provide useful insights into the ecosystem and product roadmaps.
This year also highlighted several interesting topics such as:
- Depreciation of Salesforce Classic? No immediate retirement of Classic is currently planned
- An idea for an API only license for integrations. Hopefully this idea happens!
- Greater communication/transparency around IdeaExchange and how ideas will be picked up by product teams for development
- And much more
Net Zero Cloud & Sustainability
Earlier this year, Salesforce introduced a new core value: Sustainability. Dreamforce showcased how seriously this is being taken. Sustainability featured multiple times and there are many episodes to watch.
At Dreamforce, a Carbon Credit Marketplace was introduced. This will be available in October and more information is available here.
Summary
As with all Salesforce events (but particularly Dreamforce!), there is a lot to take in. This year, announcements around Genie, Slack, DevOps Center and Sustainability have featured prominently. However, this summary is by no means exhaustive. Be sure to check out Dreamforce 2022 on Salesforce+ and see the content which matters most to you, and your business.
Bonus Penguin Fact
In honour of San Francisco hosting another Dreamforce, it only seems right to have a Penguin fact related to San Francisco!
San Francisco Zoo & Gardens is home to a large colony of Magellanic Penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus). In the wild, Magellanic Penguins are categorised as ‘Near Threatened’. In their native habitat off the coasts of Argentina and Peru, they are under pressure from threats such as oil spills, declining fish stocks and guano mining. As such, the work of San Francisco Zoo with their successful breeding programme is essential in safeguarding the future of the species. Learn more about San Francisco Zoo’s Penguin Island here.
Lastly, do you know where the name Magellanic Penguin came from? They are named after an explorer Ferdinand Magellan. In 1520, Ferdinand and his crew spotted the Penguins, whilst sailing off the coast of South America.
Want More?
Found this article useful? Why not share!
Or check out some of our other articles: