with Jennifer Dell

Expert Jennifer Dell tells us why Slack isn’t replacing Salesforce — it’s becoming the command line for it.

Transcript:

NICHOLE: Hi everyone, welcome back to Ateko Talks.

Today we are very happy to have Jennifer Dell, our resident Slack expert, join us to share some critical insights on Salesforce’s Slack.

In particular, post Dreamforce. We all watched the Dreamforce 2025 keynotes, and one question stood out.

After years of promises, is Slack finally the single “pane of glass” for Salesforce?

JEN: It’s a great question, and I think what Dreamforce 2025 really showed us is that we’ve been asking the wrong question.

For years, people wondered, “Will Slack replace the Salesforce UI?”

But Slack isn’t the new interface — it’s the new command line.

NICHOLE: Ouuu! Command line? That’s an interesting way to put it.

What do you mean by that exactly?

JEN: Okay so, before, Slack was mostly a notification layer.

You’d get alerts — a deal closed, a case updated. That was it.

Now, with AI agents and deep metadata integration, Slack has become an action layer.

We’ve shifted from collaborating on work to commanding work.

NICHOLE: So what does that look like exactly in practice?

JEN: Before, you might say: “Hey team, can someone update the opportunity for Acme Corp?”

Great.

Now you can type: “@AgentForce, find all opportunities over $100K for Acme Corp, summarize the last three call logs, and draft an email to the VP of Sales for my review.”

It’s not about looking at Salesforce inside Slack anymore.

It’s about doing Salesforce inside Slack.

The “single pane of glass” isn’t a window you look through.

It’s a microphone you talk into.

NICHOLE: Ouu, that’s a powerful shift.

But when you start automating that much, governance must become a real challenge.

JEN: Exactly. The big challenge now isn’t adoption.

It’s governance and auditing.

So who has permission to tell an AI to update 10,000 records?

Organizations need to define ownership and accountability.

Who’s responsible if an AI agent makes a mistake?

They also need real-time monitoring, audit trails, and explainable AI so every action can be tracked and understood.

And just like people, AI agents need ethical guidelines.

What’s acceptable, what requires human review,

And where intervention is mandatory.

NICHOLE: So it’s really about balancing that speed with structure.

JEN: Exactly. The future isn’t just fast.

It’s accountable.

Dreamforce 2025 showed us that Slack isn’t where we talk about work anymore.

It’s where we do the work.

But as AI becomes part of that workflow, governance has to evolve just as quickly.

NICHOLE: Well said. So how would you say sum that up in a line or two?

JEN: The “single pane of glass” isn’t about what you see.

It’s about what you can command.

And in this new era of AI-driven collaboration, success will belong to the companies that move fast and stay accountable.