Dreamforce 2022 Recap: Salesforce Genie, Slack Canvas, and more!

This year marked the 20th anniversary of Dreamforce and Salesforce spared no expense making it one of the most highly anticipated tech conferences in the country. This Dreamforce was the first in-person conference that Salesforce has held since the start of the pandemic. More than 40k individuals attended the annual conference in San Franciso and over 150k streamed the event online. During this annual event, Salesforce delivered significant tech innovations and product announcements that will surely mark a new chapter in their history.

As you can see, over the last years, Salesforce has released innovations to the Salesforce ecosystem, and they will continue to.

Dreamforce 22 innovation
Source: Salesforce

Salesforce Genie: Real-Time Data Integration across all Clouds

What is Salesforce Genie?

David Schmaier, Salesforce President and Chief Product Officer described the launch of Genie as “The most significant change to the Salesforce platform in the company’s history.”

Salesforce Genie is a new Customer Data Platform (CDP) that offers the ability to provide highly personalized customer experiences hyper-scaled to every single part of your business in real-time.

Organizations use many applications to run their business resulting in customer data being disconnected which can make customer experiences repetitive. Genie combs data sources across applications, ensuring teams will have every piece of customer information available at any point it’s needed. 

Genie is more than just a data integration layer. Natively built within the Salesforce platform, it combines Einstein AI, machine learning, and the Salesforce flow. It opens up all kinds of automation possibilities by allowing data to flow faster and more freely. 

Source: Salesforce

Salesforce Genie’s Main Characteristics

  1. Connect all your data and historical data sources in real time.
  2. Salesforce Genie democratizes access to real-time data across every cloud. It enables all your teams — across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and more — to adapt their experiences in real-time to whatever is going on in your customer’s world.
  3. With harmonization built-in, Salesforce can resolve all this data into a single view of the people behind it and create a real-time Customer Graph of all your customers or interactions. 
  4. Salesforce Genie stores all this data using a lakehouse architecture. This makes it easier to categorize and classify the unstructured data that businesses rely on; as a result, Salesforce Genie accesses all this data faster and puts it to work for you.

To understand this new platform, look at Salesforce Genie Trailhead.

Source: Salesforce

Slack Innovations

Transform Productivity with Slack Canvas

Slack canvas is a new surface in the digital HQ that will transform how teams can organize and share critical resources. Slack canvas saves time by helping workers find essential information quickly within Slack chats. This new tool will be available next year. 

Ali Rayl, Senior Vice-President of Product Management at Slack, commented: “Canvases enhance the real-time collaboration you have in Slack channels by offering a set place to organize and share information of any kind in ways that make people more productive and efficient.”

Source: Salesforce

Some Slack canvas features:

  • Sharing essential files, such as account plans, executive briefing docs, and team contacts
  • Creating a curated list of relevant channels the team needs to reference to support their account 
  • Implementing common workflows, like reporting a customer issue to an engineer or approving requests
  • Accessing opportunity data from Salesforce Sales Cloud, plus usage and spend data
  • Create a snapshot of all the data teammates need, code-free. 
  • And much more!

New Slack Huddles Feature

Huddles enhance virtual conversations and optimize how the teams collaborate and make decisions without leaving Slack.

Slack Huddles New Capabilities:

  • Lightweight video
  • Multiperson screen sharing, drawing, and cursors
  • Emoji, reactions, and stickers
  • Information shared during a huddle gets automatically saved in the channel or DM 
  • And much more!

Purchase Carbon Credits through New Net Zero Marketplace (Coming Soon!)

Now in the Net Zero Cloud, you can find Net Zero Marketplace, a climate action hub and a trusted site for organizations to purchase carbon credits. You can sign up to be the first to know when it goes live. For now, only organizations based in the US will be able to make carbon credit purchases initially, to soon expand to additional regions.

Source: Salesforce

These were some of the latest Salesforce innovations, take a look at the Dreamforce 2022 Main Keynote to learn more details:

Dreamforce & The Oktana Team

As we mentioned in our Dreamforce guide, the Oktana management team was present at Dreamforce. We chatted with multiple companies about Salesforce technologies, languages, frameworks, and ways we could help them with digital transformation. 

If you couldn’t schedule a meeting with our team, you can email us at [email protected] to get in touch.

The announcements made at Dreamforce 2022 will impact the organizations positively. As a Salesforce Summit Consulting Partner specializing in Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, and development across the Customer 360 Platform, these innovations help us enhance businesses to accelerate their growth.

Why you should attend Dreamforce 2021

Dreamforce starts next week, in just 5 days. If you’re new to Salesforce, you may not know about Dreamforce, the annual event that brings together the global Salesforce community for learning, fun, community building, and philanthropy. It’s an experience where Trailblazers from all over the world gather to share their stories, their successes, and learn from each other.

Why you should attend dreamforce

Why Attend Dreamforce

Salesforce is taking a hybrid approach this year, both on-site and online. Dreamforce 2021 takes place September 21-23, 2021, and will host select attendees in San Francisco, while the rest of the world will join virtually. 

Dreamforce will broadcast globally, for free on Salesforce+. There will be four live broadcast channels and 100+ hours of on-demand content. Salesforce is known across the industry for its excellent events. We highly recommend attending if you are working with Salesforce or would like to start learning more about it. There are four key reasons why you want to be a part of Dreamforce 2021. 

  • Learn. Transform your career with breakout sessions, training, and certification opportunities. Participate in cutting-edge demos. Meet new partners with solutions to help your organization grow.
  • Get inspired. The world’s most innovative minds come to Dreamforce to inspire, excite, and motivate attendees every year.
  • Give back. Attendees help build diversity, inclusion, equality, and sustainability with action and volunteerism. Past organizations Salesforce has supported include Girl Scouts of America, RED, and many more.
  • Have fun. When Trailblazers get together, it’s a party. And Dreamforce is the biggest one of all. Dreamforce is a celebration of the community.

 

Recommendations to attend Dreamforce 

Are you ready for three full days of non-stop events? There are many sessions and topics, that’s why we have some recommendations for you:

Plan your time: One of the biggest challenges with a virtual Dreamforce will be that everyone is spread across different time zones. Dreamforce has everything you need, from session descriptions to calendar links. Don’t forget to add the sessions to your calendar and keep track of what’s coming. Take a look at the schedule and the episodes, so you can choose the sessions that make the most sense for your interests and responsibilities. During the three-day marathon, we recommend blocking off time to catch up on tasks and stay productive. 

To make your life easier, here are some sessions we recommend. Remember that if you cannot attend some sessions, they will be available later in Salesforce+.

 

Day 1: Tuesday, September 21 

  • Dreamforce Main Show: Trailblazing Together with Marc Benioff and Special Guests (12:45 p.m. ET)
  • Integrate Everything, Automate Anything with MuleSoft (1:00 p.m. ET)
  • Innovation from Anywhere with Salesforce Developers (6:30 p.m. ET)
  • Create User Experiences with Lightning Web Components (7:30 p.m. ET)
  • Develop Enterprise Applications with Apex (8:00 p.m. ET)

 

Day 2: Wednesday, September 22

  • A Special Conversation with Co-Founder & CTO Parker Harris (12:00 p.m. ET)
  • Build the Future of Business with Salesforce Architects (3:30 p.m. ET)
  • Architecting at Scale (4:30 p.m. ET) 
  • Unlocking Insights with Tableau (5:30 p.m. ET)

 

Day 3: Thursday, September 23  

  • Your Roadmap for Connected, Effortless Service (12:00 p.m. ET)
  • MuleSoft: Create Integrated Customer 360 Experiences (12:30 p.m. ET)
  • Fast and Easy Integration with MuleSoft Composer (1:00 p.m. ET)
  • The IT Leader’s Guide to the Salesforce Platform Roadmap (2:00 p.m. ET)
  • Empower IT to Ship Faster with Functions and DevOps Center (2:30 p.m. ET)

 

Test your equipment. Make sure you have all the equipment ready and prepared for a perfect virtual experience. Test your internet speed, and have a backup source just in case. Also, prepare your laptop and phone chargers as well as grabbing additional cables in advance. You don’t want to have your devices run out of power in the middle of a great session. 

 

Prepare your space: We’ve all been juggling working from home for months, so we know how easy it is to become distracted. The best approach is to find a space in your home that will let you focus on the event with minimal interruptions. Close that email, for example. We know it’s tempting to multitask; avoid it if at all possible. Give yourself the time to focus on learning and engaging as much as you can. And some of those sessions may be early; make sure you have your favorite brew ready!

 

Whether it is your first time attending Dreamforce, the second time, or more, we are sure you will have a great experience!

Looking back at Dreamforce 2018

dreamforce 2018

 

With Dreamforce 2018 in the books, we wanted to pause and take a look back at everything we did at the show. From hosting sessions to manning our own booth and getting to see a pretty cool concert, it was a great show for everyone at Oktana.

 

The expo hall at Dreamforce was full of energy and I know our team was thrilled to be there. We loved seeing what everyone in the Salesforce community has been working on. Speaking of the expo hall, we had our own booth and meeting space. It was great to meet and talk to so many people over the course of the conference.

 

Developers from Oktana hosted three sessions this year at Dreamforce and they’re all archived and ready for you to watch online.

First, developer Carlos walked attendees through his experiences in developing front-end apps for Salesforce using Angular, React, or Vue. Carlos offered a number of live demos of his work as he demonstrated his expertise and approach to front-end app development.

 

Next, three of our developers Lorenzo, Carlos, and Gonzalo presented a session on how to use Salesforce DX to easily adopt Continuous Integration into your projects. Our team not only discussed the advantages that Continuous Integration offers to developers but also shared some of their own success stories which helped illuminate and better highlight those advantages.

And finally, project lead Antony brought us something special as he walked everyone through his team’s project of bringing a robotic Einstein to life through the power of Einstein.ai and Einstein Bots. With the emphasis on Einstein at Dreamforce this year we were thrilled to see Antony sharing this project with the world. It’s definitely one of our favorite projects in from recent memory but it’s also a great visual representation of just what makes Einstein.ai special. We’ll be going into more detail on this project on our blog soon so stay tuned.

Overall, Dreamforce 2018 was a great experience and we look forward to seeing everyone there again next year!

Interested in working on Salesforce projects? We are now hiring! Check out our open positions.

5 Reasons Why We Think You Should Join Us At Dreamforce 2017

Salesforce’s annual conference, Dreamforce, takes off in San Francisco and it gets bigger and better every year. We’re extremely excited to announce that Oktana will be attending this coming November again for the four-day event and we can’t wait to share what we’ve been up to!

While we’re super stoked and eager to plan our Dreamforce 2017 adventure, many of you are probably asking: “What’s in it for me?” 

Dreamforce 2017

Dreamforce conference 

Do you ask what exactly is all of the big hype around Dreamforce? It’s just a tech conference, so why is it important for people outside of the tech industry?

1. Well, to start off, Dreamforce isn’t just any kind of annual tech conference. Sure, it’s in San Francisco (aka the hub for any kind of high-tech event or news), but over every other tech event, Dreamforce is the largest software conference in the world. This means that there are more people and more opportunities related to software and innovation here than at any other conference in the world. That, itself, speaks volumes.

2. In today’s world, almost everything is run by technology. Additionally, the pace of technological revolution is at its record high, and sometimes, it can be difficult to keep up with. This conference is here exactly to help bridge that gap. There are over 2000 learning sessions and learning programs at Dreamforce for everyone that teach attendees the latest Salesforce products and how to utilize them to the furthest potential. This is great for those with no tech background because, at the end of the day, we all want our businesses to be successful and absorbing all of this knowledge is the best way to make that happen.

3. With it being the biggest software conference in the world, people from all over the globe are attracted to this event. All types of executives and creatives come to see what’s offered, making Dreamforce the perfect opportunity to network. People aren’t just here to learn about Salesforce and its products, people also come to meet more folks! The number of doors that Dreamforce can open for a person is countless.

4. With so much intelligence packed into a four-day Salesforce conference, there will be so many ideas sparking from every corner! Whether it’s a new app possibility or a solution to a consistent issue, Dreamforce attendees can discuss these thoughts with industry leaders already present at the conference to make these ideas a reality.

5. Technology has constantly been changing the way we live on a global level. In the hospital, the classroom, or even the laboratory, the creation of innovation has helped humanity reach levels of success like no other. Salesforce supports this ideology and continues to make Dreamforce an event of giving back. There are plenty of ways to contribute to the community since the conference partners with many organizations such as (RED), Girls Who Code, and Vetforce. Dreamforce wants to help society and give to those that need it, and by attending, it’s giving that much more support to an initiative to improve our world.

Bottom line: Dreamforce is THE event to go to for the year; no matter what, there’s always something to be taken away from it. Oktana is honored to be part of this event, and we look forward to hopefully seeing you there!

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