Salesforce announced New Low-code Developers tools to build Slack app on Salesforce

Along with the onset of the new age work culture where remote working isn’t an option but a necessity, many applications supporting remote work gained a lot of attention as being the platforms that provided solutions to the working professionals to connect remotely.

Slack is even such an application. We can consider the Slack app, as a one-stop solution to workspace needs as it provides individual to group collaborations within the organization along with supporting lots of third-party app integrations like Zapier, Heroku, IBM Bluemix, etc, which is not provided by a lot of other applications.

As the tagline of Slack goes “Make work-life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive” it acts as a solution for the future acting as a developing digital-first ecosystem for work which bought the interest of Salesforce to take it up under their shade thus Salesforce acquired Slack in July 2021. We all are aware of the “Customer 360” mentality of Salesforce and according to Marc Benioff; Slack is being an addition as a “Digital HQ” to the customer dedicated CRM tool. 

Even though Slack is a wholesome application in itself but to act and align with the idea of “Digital Headquarters” every day a new idea is ideated and developed to enhance the Slack app and make it seamless for every working professional. And this is the arena where the huge API integration options by Slack and developers come together to find out ways and features. Since there were less of options for Salesforce/Apex developers to directly develop without access to specific developing grounds for Slack it wasn’t easy for them but in TrailblazerDX’22 Salesforce launched “Salesforce Platform for Slack“; a low-code toolkit where Salesforce developers can build custom Slack apps aligning with specific business requirements or Slack specifications

The bonus of this toolkit is developers now won’t require specific Slack code platforms; rather they can directly develop from Salesforce into Slack enabling them to develop solutions connecting workspaces and professionals and contributing to the idea of Digital HQs.

Before we get into the features and specifics of the new tool kit let’s dive into the features the Slack app provided to businesses and developers before this and how this kit is going to make a difference now.

Slack app after the acquisition

The slack app has given us a new way to work by getting more into the Salesforce Slack conglomeration of Slack-first Customer 360 which allows companies to even follow up updates of their clients along with letting their colleagues with their teams at the same time, in the same app.

This magic is visible in Procore, a software stage for industries in construction. At Procore, the Sales team is clearing their prospects in a snap as they won’t have to toggle between Slack and Salesforce to find key information about their prospects. The account executives can share the account details from Salesforce to Slack directly on Slack Channels and even they can update the statuses of those prospects over Slack itself, so reps are spending more time selling this better returns!

Salesforce-Slack even launched Slack integrations across the products like Commerce Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Trailhead along with Mulesoft, and Quip and even has plans of launching Collaboration Cloud for better functioning of organizations dealing with sustainability, corporate and investment banking, healthcare, and life sciences, philanthropy, non-profit and education.

So by now, the audience must have understood that Salesforce and Slack together have a plethora of solutions for businesses and organizations to grow, work and function effortlessly and remotely as well. But definitely, by now you must have even understood the complexity of developers developing all these solutions.

Since Slack is constantly evolving for every functionality that can be imagined within Slack; be it standard or custom. Getting platforms to develop Slack apps and then switching it to Salesforce languages and integrating them with clouds; is too much of a tedious task for the developers and even Salesforce understood this and that is why they launched Salesforce Platform for Slack in the TrailblazerDX’22. 

Read Also: Salesforce Introduces Trailhead For Slack

Salesforce Platform for Slack provides developers with a bouquet of low-code tools to build customized applications over Slack that can accommodate Salesforce functionalities. This new component is a new key addition to Salesforce’s automation capabilities and thus helps design automation workflows for Slack directly on Salesforce contributing to the Customer 360 portfolio using the existing tools and coding languages.

Addition of new features to the Slack App

To allow the developers to develop Slack aligned solutions faster and contribute to their digital HQs easily Salesforce-Slack have bought some new features and they are as follows:

1. Collaborations are now easier since they can happen directly on chats and channels with sharing of Salesforce data and metadata in real-time. 
2. Salesforce is building multiple Slack apps as beta versions nailing on operation areas like target service, sales, and marketing areas
3. So now automation and access to key functions are simplified because of these beta apps. That means the Sales Teams and Support Teams can directly work on cases and new leads as soon as they get them on their database since they can get everything on their Slack Channels and won’t have to run marathons from communication apps to data portals. Thus huge savings on functional time and thus faster results.
4. Salesforce Platform for Slack contains tools for the developers as well. Adding to the automation options of Salesforce Platform this toolkit provides Apex and Flow for Slack as well. The Apex tool will enable a developer to develop customized apps by creating an amalgamation of Slack and Salesforce Data.
5. The Flow tool of the toolkit will help developers build automation by creating Slack-first workflows with complete presence and support for the data and actions infused.
6. It is to the invention of Flow in Slack that manual tasks like creating Slack Channels and updating accounts etc.; done over Slack will be now fully automated and that too using low-code tools. This will even result in reusing some automation for further jobs thus reducing development time in the future.
7. With the help of Apex SDK for Slack developers will be able to write code and integrate with Apex and generate Block Kit; a clean and consistent UI Framework for Slack apps. Thus easing out the work of developers as they won’t have to learn something complex since they’ll work on their familiar language; Apex.

Final Thoughts

In short, we can say that the Salesforce Platform for Slack is opening new avenues for better solutions and work processes for the users, organizations, and developers. As quoted by Rob Seaman, SVP (Product), Slack; “The Salesforce Platform for Slack makes every conversation more insightful, customer-centric and action-oriented. It empowers the developers to quickly contribute to their digital HQs using tools and languages they already know and love.”

The Salesforce Platform for Slack has customers dealing with different clouds and now with this launch, they even have beta apps for the same; Sales Cloud for Slack, Service Cloud for Slack, and Marketing Cloud for Slack. These apps will be available as general versions in June 2022. The Flow in Slack tool is foreseen to be available by June 2022 as a beta version and the general version will be present by October 2022. Similarly, Apex SDK is available in a pilot version from June 2022 and February 2023 will be the general availability time. With so much of tools to develop solutions for your requirements all a business now needs for seamless functioning is a Salesforce Developer to develop for your requirements and wouldn’t it be a fact of being in heaven if you hire a dedicated remote Salesforce developer as then there won’t be any constraint of where and when to work as they will be working from anywhere, anytime just like the future vision Digital HQs by Salesforce and Slack.