Salesforce, the cloud computing leader, has been transforming its business with AI, and at a small event in San Francisco on Tuesday, CEO Marc Benioff and his team revealed the latest outcomes of those initiatives: a refreshed version of Slack, packed with a multitude of new AI functionalities. The standout feature is a major enhancement for its AI assistant, Slackbot.

The 30 new features, set to be rolled out in the upcoming months, follow a January upgrade that granted Slackbot agent-like abilities — such as drafting emails, scheduling meetings, and filtering through your inbox for specific details.

Perhaps the highlight feature introduced on Tuesday is what the company refers to as reusable AI-skills — enabling users to establish specific tasks for Slackbot that, once configured, can be utilized across various situations and contexts. Salesforce indicates that Slackbot includes a built-in library of AI-skills, while users can also create their own customized versions.

After these skills are established, they considerably lessen the workload an employee may face. For instance, a user can activate a skill through a simple command in Slack — like “create a budget” for an upcoming event — prompting Slackbot to gather all pertinent information from the company’s Slack channels and any connected apps or data sources, producing a workable plan. The bot will then autonomously arrange a meeting to discuss the plan, inviting relevant staff based on their positions.

Slackbot now additionally acts as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) client — signifying it can integrate with and collaborate with external services and tools. Among these is Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI agent development platform introduced in 2024. Through this connection, it can “route work or prompt queries to Agentforce or any agent or app in your enterprise,” according to the company, with the agent determining the most relevant and efficient pathway for the information, without any human involvement.

As stated by Rob Seaman, Slack’s interim CEO and former chief product officer, Slackbot is now also capable of transcribing meetings and summarizing them. If a participant in a meeting drifts off, thereby missing essential details, they can simply request Slackbot to provide a summary of the meeting, including any action items assigned to them.

The assistant can also now function outside of Slack and keep track of your desktop activities — Salesforce cites “your deals, your conversations, your calendar, and your habits” as data sources it utilizes. Based on that context, the bot will offer actionable suggestions or draft follow-ups for important tasks. Seaman has noted that privacy safeguards are incorporated into this design, allowing users to modify permissions as required.

In summary: Salesforce is evidently striving to elevate Slack beyond its original function as an enterprise communication tool and position it as a more adaptable platform capable of managing a broader range of business tasks. The aim appears to be that by integrating AI extensively, Slack can evolve into an essential component of enterprise users’ key business operations.

Benioff allowed his team to present the main features on Tuesday but noted in his keynote that the five years since Salesforce acquired Slack have been an “incredible journey,” one that has resulted in “two and a half times revenue growth.” He added: “We have approximately a million businesses operating on Slack. It’s been a significant growth narrative.”