Salesforce has released a completely overhauled version of Slackbot, transforming the workplace assistant from a basic notification tool into a sophisticated AI agent that can search enterprise data, draft documents, and act on employees' behalf. The new Slackbot, now generally available for Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, represents Salesforce's most aggressive move to position Slack at the center of the 'agentic AI' movement—where software agents autonomously complete complex tasks.
Parker Harris, Salesforce co-founder and Slack's chief technology officer, described the upgrade as a leap from a 'little tricycle to a Porsche.' The original Slackbot performed simple algorithmic tasks like reminders and channel suggestions, while the new version runs on a large language model with advanced search capabilities that can access Salesforce records, Google Drive files, calendar data, and years of Slack conversations.
Currently powered by Anthropic's Claude model due to compliance requirements for federal customers, Slackbot will soon support additional providers. 'We are, this year, going to support additional providers,' Harris said. 'We have a great relationship with Google. Gemini is incredible—performance is great, cost is great. So we're going to use Gemini for some things.' OpenAI remains a possibility as well.
Salesforce has been testing the new Slackbot internally with all 80,000 employees, calling it the fastest-adopted product in company history. Internal data shows two-thirds of employees tried it, 80% of those continue to use it regularly, and satisfaction rates hit 96%. Employees report saving between two and 20 hours per week. Notably, 73% of internal adoption came from social sharing rather than top-down mandates.
In a demonstration, Slackbot synthesized customer feedback from a pilot program, analyzed an uploaded usage dashboard image, correlated qualitative and quantitative data, and queried Salesforce to find potential early-access candidates. It then generated a collaborative Canvas document and scheduled a review meeting by checking stakeholder calendars.
Pilot customers like Beast Industries, parent company of YouTube star MrBeast, reported employees saving about 90 minutes per day with the assistant. The launch positions Slackbot as a direct competitor to Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini across the enterprise productivity landscape.