TDX `24 Recap

At TDX 2024, the Salesforce community gathered to witness the unveiling of the latest innovations, with Einstein Studio taking center stage. As we delve into the insights from attendees Shane, Nathan, Kevin, and Juan from Saltbox Mgmt , we capture the essence of Trailblazer DX 2024 - from the hands-on implementation of Copilot to the exploration of unsung features and the importance of community-driven initiatives in empowering the next generation of developers.

Each perspective offers a unique lens through which to view the event's impact, highlighting the transformative power of AI, the advancements in platform architecture, and the pivotal role of community in driving innovation within the Salesforce ecosystem.

Shane Smyth - CTO

TDX is my favorite event of the year! It’s where Architects, Developers and Admin’s can come together to learn about the next wave of technology that is coming to the Salesforce Ecosystem. This year Copilot stole the show, this was a primary topic in the keynote and most breakout sessions. Copilot is the next generation of ‘interfaces’ that Salesforce is applying to their entire product suite. This interface provides a chat experience powered by GTP technology through the Einstein Trust Layer which ensures your data is masked and not shared with outside vendors.

I was able to attend several of these sessions along with a hands-on workshop where I was one of the first partners who was able to implement Copilot in an org. The power of Copilot is the planning service and extension framework, let’s unpack what this functionality is:?

• Planning Service - When you go to your copilot and ask it to do something like update a record, summarize an account, or pull back information from other systems, Copilot will take the context and map out the actions that it will take to accomplish the request.?
• Extensibility Framework - These are the actions that Copilot can pull from, of course there are standard actions, but the real power in my opinion are custom actions. These are derived from prompt templates and either Flow’s / Apex, with these two combined you can connect to any system and perform very powerful actions

Think about the time that you can save and the insights you can obtain as a Commerce Merchandiser managing a store, or as a Support rep trying to better understand your customers as you jump into a chat with them. The possibilities are endless with extensions!

Nathan Andersen - VP Solution & Consulting

While the theme of the show was far and away the release of the Einstein Copilot & Studio tools, there were a number of really interesting sessions highlighting some of the “unsung” feature development continuing to happen on the platform. I particularly enjoyed a couple sessions on the advancements in the LWR Experience Builder and runtime in general. Enhancements being made in SEO capabilities and a few other admin friendly features are really exciting for those of use who’ve been grumbling about these areas for a while now. Making it easier to build and develop consumer-grade experiences is the name of the game. Even Einstein Copilot will be able to help, as one session highlighted a feature coming soon that will be able to create LWCs and Lightning pages from Figma designs. Hard not to get excited about that! Also really enjoyed the Architect content from the team in charge of the architects.salesforce.com space. The additional focus on how to build safe, scalable architecture on the Salesforce platform is very welcome, and extremely well done.

Kevin Bhasin - Technical Architect

My first time at TDX just wrapped up and really reminded me of the importance of attending tech conferences. Preparing for the conference was a breeze, the hotel was across the street and the badge check-in had no line, and I was able to schedule my agenda the day before on the mobile app. Arriving on the main conference floor it was evident that the top three subjects to learn were on AI (Copilot), Data Cloud, and Salesforce’s expanded partnership with AWS. The keynote was on entirely the latest in AI use cases, which I was eager to consume with partners not having direct access yet outside of attending the hands-on workshops. After listening to some sessions and then quizzing some experts in the field, my main takeaways were:

• Having to frequently sync all your data out of Salesforce into a data lake or into AWS with Appflow is a thing of the past. Zero Copy (Zero-ETL) is the future - Direct, shared, and private access to entire cross-platform datasets to run analytics and models using Salesforce, AWS Sagemaker, or Google Vertex is a brilliant offering that is enabled by SF Data Cloud
• Platform Events are a key piece of enterprise architecture going forward. Point-to-Point integrations can grow out of hand and multiple systems end up all needing the same data. By using AWS EventBridge and SF Event Relay, SF OMS platform events can trigger events all along the order lifecycle to external applications. Furthermore, Platform Event Triggers can now start running in parallel - the same trigger runs over triggered events which are custom partitioned into sets, increasing the speed at which apex subscribers can process platform events. Lastly, External subscribers can in the future grab their last successfully processed event from the API, which is useful if they disconnect unexpectedly.
• Einstein Copilot Actions have extensive use across the entire platform, especially in Commerce. It can be exposed to buyers to have trusted actions they can take directly through the chatbot, it can be used by merchants to write better product descriptions with Generative AI, and also by admins to quickly place new products into categories.

We wrapped up with a Commerce networking session, I put some names to some faces, and came away thoroughly enjoying my experience at TDX2024 and ripe with fresh ideas to take back to my work at Saltbox Mgmt!

Juan Moguel - Sr Developer

Trailblazer DX was a thrilling immersion into the dynamic world of Salesforce, with this year's spotlight on the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence. As a Salesforce developer, the event presented a unique opportunity to explore cutting-edge advancements and practical applications of AI within the Salesforce ecosystem. I explored advanced CSS techniques, improving my skills to create more dynamic and visually appealing user interfaces. Additionally, I explored the innovative capabilities of Einstein Copilot, Prompt Builder, and Action Builder, gaining insights into how AI-driven tools can streamline workflows and enhance productivity for developers.

One of the highlights of Trailblazer DX was the session titled "Empower Young Developers Through Innovative Communities," which I had the privilege to present. This session delved into the pivotal role that community-driven initiatives play in nurturing and empowering young developers within the Salesforce ecosystem. By fostering inclusive and supportive environments, innovative communities not only cultivate technical skills but also instill confidence and inspire creativity among aspiring developers. Through engaging discussions and real-world examples, the session underscored the transformative impact of community collaboration in shaping the next generation of Salesforce trailblazers.