Can AI Enhance Salesforce Architecture and Decision-Making?

Salesforce Admins Podcast

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Tom Leddy, the Product Director of Well-Architected and Decision Guides at Salesforce.

Join us as we chat about decision-making in the age of AI and why cleaning up your data is more important than ever.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Tom Leddy.

Decision Guides and the Well-Architected Framework

Almost exactly a year ago, we had Tom on the pod to talk about the Well-Architected Framework. I’ll link the episode below but Tom gives us a quick summary: “It tells you how to build healthy solutions with Salesforce and what a healthy solution should look like,” he says.

Making your org healthy comes down to looking for patterns and anti-patterns. Essentially, you want to do things in a way that sets you up for long-term success.

Tom and his team are hard at work rolling Decision Guides into the Well-Architected Framework. These walkthroughs are designed to help you decide which Salesforce tool is right for you when they have overlapping functionality. The answer is going to depend on your specific use case, so looking at a Decision Guide can help you understand the full picture and make the best choice for your business.

Understanding AI as a tool

Looking forward, Tom sees a lot of potential in combining AI tools like Einstein Copilot with the information in Well-Architected and Decision Guides. There’s a lot of potential to make things more interactive or quicker to digest, but you’ll still need to do some critical thinking and make your own decisions.

In terms of incorporating AI tools into your org, Tom is working on decision guides for that, too. “A lot of the cool AI features are not going to work very well unless you have a good underlying data strategy,” he says. Working through the Well-Architected Framework will help you create a solid foundation to get the most out of these new tools now and in the future.

Why AI needs clean data

If you’re a frequent listener, you’ll know that we can’t have an episode about AI without mentioning just how important it is to have clean data. As Tom points out, this extends to patterns and anti-patterns as well. It’ll be easier than ever to roll out code to your org and create new customizations, but you need to be sure you’re doing it the right way and not crippling yourself with technical debt.

Luckily, Tom and his team are working on tools to help you make sure your org is, well, Well-Architected. Stay on the lookout for a Data Strategy Decision Guide, coming soon™, and new ways to assess the health of your org with Einstein Copilot. The future is bright, and hopefully a little more organized.

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more tips from Tom, and don’t forget to subscribe for more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast.

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• Well-Architected Framework

• Listen: Well-Architected Automation with Tom Leddy

• Listen: Why Clean Data Is Non-Negotiable in the AI Era with Lizz Hellinga

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