Slack now lets users add AI agents from Asana, Cohere, Adobe, Workday, and more

Workplace messaging app Slack wants to make it easier for customers to create and connect AI agents.

A new feature called Agent for Slack is available to paying users. It will bring Salesforce’s AI agents, third-party agents from partners, and Slack customers’ own agents to the chat platform.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Rob Seaman, Slack’s chief product officer, said desk workers increasingly want to consolidate their workflows in one place so they don’t have to search for information.

“We’re finding that desk workers spend a third of their day on tasks they consider low value, and half of the people we talk to can’t find the information they need to do their jobs,” Seaman said. “We think it’s because there are so many apps and services they use every day that it’s hard to keep track.”

Although Slack doesn’t necessarily have its own agents, it provides agents from the platforms its customers use. With Salesforce’s new suite of artificial intelligence agents, AgentForce lets people “talk” to their data in Salesforce and take action on tasks. People can type questions or instructions into Agentforce, Seaman said, “so your answers are based on the data in your CRM and the conversation and context in Slack.”

Slack also integrates with out-of-the-box AI agents built by Asana, Cohere, Adobe Express, Workday, and Writer. Actions taken by these agents depend on the programming set up by the partners. Customers who have built their own AI agents can also integrate these into Slack.

The continued development of AI agents, but convincing users to use them, is another story

Bringing AI agents into Slack means users can invoke AgentForce from a dedicated interface within Slack. It comes with an AI agent that the user can ask questions that are usually stored in the customer relationship management system in the Slack window. Agents can suggest next steps or draft emails on behalf of users.

However, Slack insists that agents only have limited access to customer information. “We created a new API specifically for agents, where data cannot be exported, stored or used for LLM training,” Seeman said. Agents created by Slack customers can still be trained on their data. Seeman said to think of the AI ​​agents in Slack as more powerful versions of apps that already integrate with a chat service like Google Calendar or Zoom.

Slack is one of the first companies to add access to AI agents, but it’s also one of the largest workplace productivity companies offering to customers. Agents are fast becoming one of the biggest trends for companies. Recently, other providers such as ServiceNow announced AI agent capabilities for users.

However, some agents have been in use for a very long time, so employees have little experience using them. We are still developing autonomous agents.

Slack and other companies are adding access to AI agents, especially since AI adoption is not yet 100%, and needs to prove that there is demand for such agents by real users. Slack’s research also showed some reluctance in the workplace to use AI tools, particularly because some workers feel its use is unfair.

Slack users need to integrate more apps into their messaging system.

Sluggish slope in AI innovation

Adding AI agents to Slack isn’t the company’s only AI-focused update.

It also adds notes and transcriptions of conversations via audio and written messages to Huddles — Slack’s audio meeting option. Notes are displayed on the Canvas, in the Slack channel’s tab summarizing the channel’s activities, or in any other notes that people in the channel want to share.

AI Workflow Builder creates workflows from instructions to automate tasks, while AI Search finds answers to questions from files uploaded to Slack, transcripts, or documents from connected apps like Zoom.