TrailblazerDX 2024 Unveiled: Salesforce’s AI Evolution and Data Cloud Frontier

Andy Engin Utkan March 11, 2024

6 43 3 minutes read

Salesforce delivered a two-day-long developer conference on March 6 and March 7 this past week: TrailblazerDX 2024. Focused on innovation and technical excellence, TrailblazerDX has positioned itself as a pivotal event for developers and IT professionals looking to delve into Salesforce’s latest advancements and collaborative ecosystem. I attended the conference, where AI and Data Cloud were covered extensively, and here are my insights.

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TrailblazerDX 2024 Unveiled: Salesforce's AI Evolution and Data Cloud Frontier

First, it is essential to note that this is my first TrailblazerDX conference.
TrailblazerDX is known to be the conference with less sales fluff compared to Dreamforce. It is less crowded and more condensed, which many developers and technical people in the ecosystem appreciate.

This TrailblazerDX came at an interesting junction. ChatGPT shook the world this past year, and as a response, Salesforce embraced this “AI + Data”-driven future and announced several AI products. For people like me who are close to the product teams, it is no surprise that Salesforce has been busy behind the scenes adding AI capabilities to the platform lately. I observed that the latest release was on the light side and assumed that the teams were busy working on the AI products that had not yet been released. What better time than TrailBlazerDX to release some of these products?

Three critical announcements came out of TrailblazerDX

1️⃣ Salesforce is doubling down on Data Cloud

Salesforce emphasizes that AI could be more useful with good data, and having meaningful and detailed interaction data can be achieved by implementing Data Cloud. The most significant announcement on Data Cloud is that now the objects of Data Cloud are accessible by Salesforce flows, and the Data Cloud changes can trigger Salesforce flow automation.

TrailblazerDX 2024 Unveiled: Salesforce's AI Evolution and Data Cloud Frontier - Data Cloud presentation

2️⃣ Prompt builder is GA

It took a long time, but now it is GA (generally available). You can create sales emails, generate summarized field values, and flex – easily modifiable – responses. Your prompt can access global variables, field values, the result of flows, and Apex classes built for this purpose. There are pretty good Trailhead modules in this area at this link. You can get your trial Org here to play with it.

3️⃣ Copilot builder is in beta

Copilot is a side panel that helps users complete their work more effectively. Copilot Builder helps every company configure and customize Einstein Copilot for their business. Salesforce admins and developers can use tools they already have, like Apex, Flow, and MuleSoft APIs, and new generative AI components like prompts to enable Einstein Copilot to complete tasks in the flow of work. Einstein Copilot can leverage these custom actions to complete tasks across any Salesforce application or external system.

📲 Product Innovations and Event Shortcomings

Salesforce did not surprise us; they dropped a last-minute bundling and renaming of the products. The prompt builder and copilot were combined with the model builder to create a product bundle named Einstein 1 Studio. Model builder is another GA product that helps you choose the underlying LLM model for all the AI functionalities in Salesforce. If we know Salesforce well, do not get emotionally attached to the name, it may change soon.

While Salesforce did a stellar job in many areas of the conference and demonstrated the new functionality quite well, many presentations felt fluffy – quite atypical for a TrailblazerDX conference – because these new functionalities were unavailable for many customers and early adopters. To counter this effect, Salesforce delivered hands-on workshops that were perceived positively.