Takeaways from Salesforce’s TrailblazerDX 2022 Conference

Well, another TrailblazerDX conference is in the books. But TrailblazerDX 2022 felt different from conferences in years past. As I approached Moscone Center in Downtown San Francisco alongside many other backpack-laden Salesforce enthusiasts, I knew this conference would be memorable. This year’s TrailblazerDX conference marked the rebirth of Salesforce’s in-person conferences since Dreamforce in 2019, a return to normalcy for me and many other Salesforce Professionals—not to mention, a whole new round of developer innovations and product offerings from Salesforce.

TrailblazerDX 2022 offered many traditional courses such as Apex, Lightning, SOQL, and other standard languages that have been part and parcel to Salesforce for many years. But this year Salesforce focused mainly on the latest products to join the Salesforce family including Tableau Analytics, the MuleSoft integration platform, and Slack integration with Sales and Service.

Data and Analytics Capabilities with Tableau Integration

Let’s start by taking a closer look at Tableau, featured heavily this year with many courses on how to build, integrate, automate, and scale analytics and insights across the enterprise. The most exciting feature was Tableau’s “exchange” which allows third parties to provide various applications and templates, greatly increasing time to market for Tableau customers. In addition to its REST API interface, Tableau has also introduced a brand-new Web Hooks feature for automating analytics tasks in an event-driven manner. Tableau also featured its powerful low-code SAQL language for building insightful data models within its CRM product. However, one of the most exciting features introduced was certainly the ability to integrate Tableau Analytics into any platform. This includes using JavaScript to integrate dashboards into other platforms, the ability to trigger Salesforce flows right from analytics dashboard, and the ability to integrate Lightning Web Components within Tableau Dashboards allowing you to ship custom coded components without reinventing the wheel.

Salesforce and MuleSoft: A Match Made in Heaven

Let’s now look at the latest examples of Salesforce’s integration capabilities with MuleSoft. The most exciting feature has to be MuleSoft’s Integration Automation Composer which became generally available in March of 2021. Composer allows users to automate seamless integrations between platforms using clicks, not code. MuleSoft has also released its 1.1 version of Tableau Connector which allows you to integrate and transform data from any application for visualization and activation through a robust API set.

The Power of Automation with MuleSoft RPA and Einstein Automate

Released last fall, Einstein Automate is a portfolio of workflow automation, integration, digital interactions, and AI capabilities embedded across Salesforce Platform. The new products include MuleSoft RPA (Robotic Process Automation), Einstein Document Reader and Digital Process Automation.
As we’ve said before, RPA capabilities can greatly improve organizational productivity. With low-code tools, even more employees can harness the potential enabled by RPA, freeing up IT resources for more critical tasks.

Expanded Possibilities with Slack

Finally, TrailblazerDX wouldn’t be complete without showcasing Salesforce’s latest acquisition, Slack. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t have my head wrapped completely around all the possible use cases for Salesforce integration with one of the world’s leading communication tools. I can tell you that the first integration of Slack to Sales Cloud and Service Cloud has been a very powerful one. Adding real-time communication into the sales and service process within Salesforce allows your Sales and/or Service teams to communicate in context. Examples include creating and updating Salesforce objects such as opportunities, tasks, cases, and estimates on the fly within chat channels, and creating powerful sales and service flows that allow various teams across the enterprise to follow the same integrated workflow. Standardized workflows add value to the organization by providing a unified standard for business management, increasing quality of work and providing a more seamless experience for customers.

TrailblazerDX 2022 showcased many innovative enhancements in low-code. From building powerful integrations with MuleSoft and insightful dashboards and reports in Tableau to the many new low-code features of Lightning and Flow Builder platforms, Salesforce has once again proven its commitment to “low code” and “no code” solutions for integration, analytics, communication, and automation.

Learn more about our trailblazing work as a Salesforce partner.

Author

Mike Hepworth

Managing Director, Salesforce Marketing Cloud