Saving AI prompts

I cannot remember the last business day that passed where I didn’t use AI.

Whether it’s to

  • Have it explain a complex topic in simple language
  • Vibe code my Salesforce app
  • Clean or reformat data
  • Research a topic
  • Create images

It’s part of my daily toolkit.… Read the rest

Using AI to cleanup addresses

This week, I used AI to perform some address cleanup. Cities are notoriously known for being spelled incorrectly.

In the province of Quebec, things can get particularly interesting. For example, the following are actually all the same city:

  • Saint Jerome
  • Saint Jérôme
  • St-Jérome
  • St-Jérôme

I attached an .csv… Read the rest

The potentially darker side of AI

This weekend, I visited my friends at their home north of the city. Being in the countryside is wonderful for the soul and I was happy to see them and break bread with them.

At one point, I showed their young daughter how easy it is to take a picture of something and have AI generate another picture from it.… Read the rest

Inside Salesforce’s big bet on AI

A recent article on Business Insider confirms something we already had a feeling about.

Salesforce is a marketing company. It’s not a tech company, an AI company, or a family. And it does marketing really well.

Agentforce was announced at last year’s Dreamforce by showing how it was being used by retailer Saks Fifth Avenue (SFA).… Read the rest

Using AI to help analyze tech debt

In case you’re not overly techie, I’ll start from the beginning.

Salesforce is mostly built from .xml files. These are structured text files that tell SF what to do. Every field, object, flow, apex, etc. is composed of .xml files that are executed almost instantly when you use SF.… Read the rest

Agentforce everything

In an email last week, I wrote, “Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if Salesforce changes all of their products to include “Agentforce” (“Agentforce Sales Cloud”, “Agentforce Slack”, etc.)”

Well, this is actually happening!

Although there wasn’t an official announcement, Salesforce has quietly renamed their cloud products to include the word Agentforce.… Read the rest

Agent-powered Agentforce for Agents

Yesterday, Salesforce announced Agentforce 360. It’s the fourth iteration of Agentforce, and rather than simply call it Agentforce 4, they went with the word “360”.

It’s a huge announcement, and you can read more about it in Salesforce’s Ben article.

There are now some new features that include the word “360”.… Read the rest

What should I do about AGI?

If the soon and inevitable arrival of AGI causes an existential threat, congratulations, you’re human.

You’re probably asking tons of questions, including

  • Should I be worried?
  • Is there anything I should do to prepare?
  • What about my job and sense of purpose?
Read the rest

AGI and the future of work

There was a big ruckus recently about Marc Benoiff’s comment about using Agentforce to reduce headcount.

He’s quoted as saying, “I’ve reduced it [company headcount] from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads”.

Some are interpreting this as he fired 4000 people.… Read the rest

Should you vibe code a project or package?

As AI becomes more and more adept at writing code (I’m looking at you, Claude Code), it begs the question: can it be used for more than just proof of concepts?

Taking this idea to the extreme, a non-developer can prompt their way and build a project.… Read the rest

What AI should NOT replace, at least not yet

With each passing week, AI gets smarter and smarter.

Apex coding, formula building, general searching, and troubleshooting are currently well positioned to be completely superseded by AI.

However there’s one important thing that hasn’t been replaced just yet; your humanity.

As a Salesforce consultant, your career isn’t completely technical.… Read the rest

A more integrated case for AI and Salesforce

The recent examples provided on using AI and Salesforce are disconnected.

That is, you need to do something in Salesforce, so you provide all relevant information to an AI. It gives you an answer, and you implement it. But the AI doesn’t “see” your Salesforce instance and understand the entire context.… Read the rest

Another everyday use case for AI: search

Years ago, Google became a household name. It started as a noun and turned into a verb. You “googled” something when you wanted to search for it on the internet.

Fun fact #1: Google’s name comes from the word “googol”, which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros
Fun fact #2: I used AI for this fact, not Google

Today, AI is overtaking, or already has overtaken, google searches.… Read the rest

Common, everyday use cases for AI

Aside from writing apex code, AI can be a helpful tool for Salesforce consultants.

Here are a few for your consideration:

Field labels
If you’re ever struggling to come up with a concise name for a field, AI can help.

For example, in a current project in which users complete a form, the answers need to be saved in fields.… Read the rest

Using AI for first drafts

While AI may not be a full replacement of a good developer, it can still help in some instances.

Using the prompt, “Write a Salesforce LWC that allows users to edit a field”, Gemini Pro actually built a working lightning web component (LWC).… Read the rest

Using AI as an apex developer

You may not have known this, but in a previous life, I was a software developer.

It’s been years since I’ve developed, so I’m not an expert in apex. There are far too many awesome developers out there, and I lean on them for help.… Read the rest

AI-first products?

While at DreamOle last week, a term was used that I’ve never heard before. To paraphrase, the person said, “Product owners want AI-first products”.

There are several prominent “first” terms.

For example, the term “mobile-first products” is familiar to most. If not, at a certain moment in the past, there was a big shift to ensure all new websites and applications were responsive.… Read the rest

When will AI replace developers?

There’s more and more chatter about AI replacing developers. Mark Zuckerberg talks about it often these days, and even Marc Benioff has made more than a few comments about it.

While it’s hard to predict the near future, I’m pretty sure about the state of AI today.… Read the rest

Salesforce as an AI company

If you haven’t already noticed, Salesforce is really pushing their AI advancements.

Like really pushing.

I believe they started labelling last year’s Dreamforce (their annual conference in San Francisco) as the “largest AI event in the world”. This year was no different.… Read the rest

Are you concerned about AI?

AI has become a daily part of our lives. It’s hard not to hear about it everyday. From next generation text responses to new video capabilities.

People also keep talking about the jobs it’ll take from us. When we initially thought about advances in technology, we imagined the blue-collared jobs would fall first.… Read the rest

Salesforce’s Einstein GPT – Put the AI to work

By now, most of you are aware that TrailblazerDX 2023 is currently underway. This three day conference focuses on Salesforce technical developments. The target audience are developers and architects, although all disciplines can benefit from learning what the “shiny new tools” look like.… Read the rest