Dreamforce 2023 live blog – all Salesforce news and updates from day one

Benioff is back to wrap things up, discuss all the major announcements from this morning and thank us all for coming.

And that’s the end of the opening keynote! We’re going to digest everything we heard, but will be back soon with the other key keynotes and sessions of the day. Thanks for joining us, and see you soon for more Dreamforce 2023 fun.

Canvas is also getting an upgrade, with the content generator service now able to pull all related sales information to help sellers, marketers and more – so they’re equipped with everything they need to succeed.

“This is the future of productivity,” she says.

New features include Slack Lists, a new way to track your work that puts collaboration at the heart.

Launching in pilot later this year, it can use generative AI to bring together the workflows of all your chats, meaning you hopefully won’t miss any important deadlines.

Slack Sales Elevate also promises to use AI to help users save time and increase efficiency – bringing together the power of Sales Cloud and Slack for maximum productivity.

The next step is productivity – and it’s Slack CEO Lidian Jones to talk about that.

She’s here to show off some new Salesforce integrations that will boast “a whole new user experience.”

The “new Slack” has a number of changes and tweaks, including some accessibility upgrades – all with AI at its core.

“This is a whole new way to build applications… you’re all Einsteins now,” concludes Stokes.

AI changes everything, including the way we build apps, Stokes notes, because an AI application offers a new way of thinking and developing.

Creating these new apps requires a new set of tools – and these new AI apps do too Einstein 1 Copilot Studio.

This helps you extend and customize exactly what Einstein needs to do within your business, connecting models and data from a wide variety of sources.

Stokes shows a demo where additional custom requests can be created and used quickly and easily, providing a richer customer experience all around.

Benioff now focuses on the future of AI – and how to make it successful within your business.

Patrick Stokes, from Salesforce Product and Industries Marketing, is here to tell us more.

Benioff just confirmed that his chic sneakers are made by Gucci, another Salesforce customer!

Benioff is back and talks with Williams-Sonoma CEO Laura Alvarez about how the company used Salesforce technology.

He also asks her about her dreams for AI, with Alvarez responding that gaining customers’ trust by adding value is crucial.

“The last thing you want is to hurt the customer experience,” she notes. “When it comes to customers, there should be nothing artificial about the experience… it should be completely authentic.”

Now it’s time for some customer stories, with retail giant Williams-Sonoma first. They use Salesforce across the board and create smarter and more engaging email marketing campaigns through CRM and Einstein Copilot.

Einstein 1 is also coming to Tableau, giving more data to more companies to help them make smarter and better decisions, Schmaier notes.

It’s also coming to Canvas, Slack, MuleSoft, and more – this could truly be a game-changer for Salesforce users everywhere.

David Schmaier, President and Chief Product Officer, is next and introduces the new Einstein 1 Copilot.

“This is a big problem: the data drives the AI, and the AI ​​drives your customer experience,” he notes.

The new tool can provide a huge range of services – from providing automatically generated leads to salespeople, to service agents with the latest customer and product information, to marketers with easily customizable campaigns – the possibilities seem endless.

Data Cloud is now free to get started, Harris notes, for all Enterprise, Unlimited and Unlimited Plus subscribers.

Now digging into Data Cloud a bit more, Harris notes that Salesforce works with almost all the major data lake providers to get your data, then harmonize it and process it in real time in Data Cloud.

In short, Salesforce wants to make it easier than ever to understand your data – and some demos show how simple bringing these different sources together can be – at least in theory.

“In a sense, this AI revolution is actually a data revolution,” Harris notes, “because the AI ​​revolution wouldn’t exist without the power of all that data.”

You need to bring these ‘islands of disconnected data’ together – and Einstein 1 Data Cloud can do this by connecting all your data within Salesforce and natively integrating with Salesforce metadata.

With that, Benioff hands over the microphone to Parker Harris, co-founder and CTO of Salesforce.

He starts by talking about how the company will keep your data safe, especially through the new Einstein trust layer.

Primarily this seeks to protect information from unscrupulous LLMs, but also to protect it from hallucinations or other toxicity.

The AI ​​revolution is a trust revolution, Benioff notes: “we have a very different story when it comes to AI – we are not afraid to say things that other companies are afraid to say.

“Your data is not our product – that’s not what we do here,” he claims, unlike many other companies.

“Transparency builds trust… We all know what can happen when AI goes wrong – let’s keep it moving in the right direction.”

Einstein 1 is open to the entire Salesforce family, as Benioff notes they are Trailblazers who will help lead the AI ​​revolution.

This includes big changes when it comes to skills training, and Salesforce is also investing $500 million in the Ventures fund for Einstein 1 innovators.

When it comes to the AI ​​capability, “there is no doubt that this AI capability is going to change everything…or anything,” Benioff notes.

But Benioff acknowledges that there is a trust gap in AI, noting that LLMs can become toxic very quickly. “We recognize that this is a phenomenal opportunity for the future, a place we all want to work toward.”

The solution – Einstein1. “We want to build the trusted AI platform for customer companies,” he notes. Integrated, intelligent, automated, Einstein 1 is low-code and no-code, built to be open.

“This is our life’s work – this is what we’ve been doing for 25 years,” Benioff notes.

Here we go: it’s time to talk about AI.

“We want to help our customers connect with their customers in a whole new way… but we recognize that technology is moving faster than ever… this data explosion, this burst of artificial intelligence – it’s like nothing that we’ve ever seen before,” notes Benioff.

“This AI revolution is going to change who we are… but it will bring us back to who we are.”

Einstein AI is already incredibly popular, he notes, because Salesforce is already the number one AI platform used around the world.

“Now we have to think about: what do we do with this technology?”

Benioff is wearing a pair of very funky cloud-themed sneakers (Converse?) – he just marched past us and reenacted a story from his school days…

Benioff notes that “we are inspired to see that business is the greatest platform for change” – with the company still donating 1% of its equity, volunteering 8.3 million hours and working with approximately 54,000 nonprofits .

The company is also donating another $20 million to public schools in San Francisco and Oakland.

Benioff says this is the most sustainable Dreamforce yet, with 74% of structures recycled or reused.

He adds that Salesforce is the third largest software company in the world, except in Japan, where it ranks second.

“We’re only going to have good times in the coming days,” says Benioff, thanking everyone with the traditional Mahalo.

“We’ve been on these stages for 25 years now… there are a lot of good days, and a lot of bad days… but we are extremely grateful to you,” he tells his employees.

After a brief introduction – and some music from none other than Dave Matthews, it’s time for the main event.

After an introductory video narrated by future Dreamfroce keynoter Matthew McConaghey, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff takes the stage to rapturous applause from an adoring audience.

As is tradition, we have the customary Hawaiian welcome – a very spiritual start to what will be a very technically demanding morning…

We’re seated and ready for the keynote, and it’s a typically Salesforce-y start to the date: ukulele music, Trailblazers in bright gold horns, and Disney-esque giant mascots welcoming people (Astro is always our favorite).

Another half hour…

Speaking of AI, we’ve already looked at the big news coming out of Dreamforce this morning: the company has released Einstein 1, a super-powerful AI platform that brings together data from all your different platforms to make intelligent and actionable suggestions.

You can read our full article above, but the launch is a key indicator that AI will be a major theme at Dreamforce this year.

Today’s opening speech starts at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST, and you can watch it live on the Dreamforce website here.

As usual, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff will lead the proceedings, but we expect a host of special guests and AI to play a central role.

Good morning and welcome to our live blog about Dreamforce 2023!

Salesforce’s annual conference is always a highlight of the B2B technology calendar, and we’re here in San Francisco to bring you all the news and updates.

So what do we expect this year? Short answer…AI, and lots of it. Salesforce has always been at the forefront of AI innovation, so we expect a whole lot of AI to help its customers around the world.