Salesforce ships a major AI overhaul of Slack: 30 new features at once

Salesforce has unveiled a major update to Slack: 30 new features, with a heavy focus on artificial intelligence. The company positions it as the platform's biggest redesign in several years, effectively turning the corporate messenger into an operating environment for AI agents.

The headline addition is autonomous AI agents that work directly inside Slack. They can answer employees' questions, carry out tasks, search corporate systems for information and route requests to the right specialists, all without switching between apps. The agents are built on Agentforce, Salesforce's AI platform launched in 2025.

The second key area is handling information. Slack can now automatically summarize long threads, meeting recordings and channels a user returns to after being away. The Catch Me Up feature has been developed considerably: the AI doesn't just retell the conversation, it also picks out tasks that require a specific user's involvement.

For teamwork, Salesforce has added AI channels, spaces where agents can be full participants in discussions. The bot is no longer a bystander but a participant that receives the context of a conversation and acts on it. Salesforce has also expanded Slack's integration with its own CRM: data on deals, customers and tasks is now available directly from chat through Einstein search.

The updated interface also deserves a mention. Salesforce has reworked the sidebar, added personalized activity feeds and improved the notification system, a long-standing pain point for users. The design is cleaner and navigation more intuitive.

The 30 features also include improved search with AI ranking, voice messages with automatic transcription, AI-based workflow templates and an expanded Workflow Builder that now understands instructions in natural language.

The announcement looks strategically important for Salesforce. The company has long been trying to prove that its $27.7 billion purchase of Slack in 2021 will pay off, and it is now betting that the messenger will become the main interface for interacting with AI agents in the enterprise. In essence, Salesforce is ceasing to sell Slack as a "place to communicate" and starting to sell it as a "place where AI works." It is a direct response to Microsoft, which is actively embedding Copilot into Teams. The competition between the two ecosystems, Salesforce plus Slack versus Microsoft plus Teams, has now moved firmly onto the terrain of AI agents and workflow automation.