Welcome to this week’s No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. This week, NJR highlights: Salesforce launched the Einstein 1 Platform, a suite of AI-powered tools offering analytics, automation, and customer data capture at scale. The new platform includes native integration with Data Cloud and Einstein Copilots. In addition, Slack launched new AI, automation, and list capabilities. Lastly, a Microsoft study found that the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot improved customer experience within its own customer service and support team.
Salesforce Announces the New Einstein 1 Platform and Einstein Copilot
At Dreamforce 2023, Salesforce announced the new Einstein 1 Data Cloud which is now natively integrated with the Einstein 1 Platform. Data Cloud is Salesforce’s data “engine” which unifies and harmonizes customer data, enterprise content, telemetry data, Slack conversations, and other structured and unstructured data to create a single customer view. Because Data Cloud is now integrated with the Einstein 1 Platform, siloed data can be “unlocked” by mapping it to the Salesforce metadata framework.This allows organizations to customize customer experiences via AI, automation, and analytics.
Einstein Copilot is a conversational AI assistant built into every Salesforce application. Users can ask questions in natural language and receive answers that are ground in secure proprietary company data from Data Cloud. Einstein Copilot can also proactively recommend actions after a query.
Einstein Copilot Studio enables companies to build AI-powered apps with custom prompts, skills, and AI models. The new application can also make Einstein Copilot available for use across consumer-facing channels like websites to power real-time chat, or integrate with messaging platforms like Slack, WhatsApp, or SMS.
Both Einstein Copilot applications will be piloted in the fall of 2023. Salesforce said that every customer with Enterprise Edition or above can now get started with the new Data Cloud at no cost.
Slack Launched New AI, Automation and List Capabilities
The week prior to Dreamforce 2023, Slack launched several new capabilities including AI built natively into the collaboration platform. Via a conversational interface, Slack AI enables users to generate channel recaps and summarize threads. In the release, Slack notes that these AI tools do not use customer data for model training and data is not shared among customers. Slack AI will be in pilot in winter 2023.
Additionally, Slack’s new Workflow Builder allows users to connect workflows and tools from companies such as Google Workspace, Atlassian and Asana via an automation hub. With Workflow Builder, developers can build custom Slack apps that integrate internal systems or enable custom business logic. Slack will host those custom creations. Workflow Builder is available now on paid plans; the automation hub will be available later in September 2023.
Lastly, Slack Lists is a new capability to track work, triage requests and manage projects. Users can assign owners, update status, and discuss the task details all in one place. When users are mentioned in a list, they will be alerted the same way they receive all Slack activity. Via Workflow Builder, approvals and requests can be reviewed, discussed, and closed out. Slack Lists will be in pilot this winter, and generally available in 2024.
Microsoft Study Finds That Microsoft Copilot Improved Customer Service
Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Economist, in partnership with the Dynamics 365 product group, completed a study that evaluated Copilot’s early impact on productivity among Microsoft’s commercial business support engineers since April 2023. Microsoft detailed the results across two separate posts: here and here.
The initial results were drawn from a pool of 11.5K agents, total. Of those, 6.5K agents used Copilot while the control group of 5K agents did not use Copilot. In early 2023, Microsoft introduced its Dynamics 365 Copilot, which it describes as “the world’s first AI Copilot natively built for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.”
Microsoft’s study found that “in one support business, 10% of cases that normally require[d] collaboration with peers were resolved independently.” The study also found that for “low severity chat cases in one area of Microsoft’s commercial support business, the study observed a 12% reduction in average handle time – the time actively spent on resolving customer cases.”
Microsoft Announced Copilot Copyright Commitment
Microsoft announced its Copilot Copyright Commitment for customers. According to the post, if a “third party sues a commercial customer for copyright infringement for using Microsoft’s Copilots or the output they generate, we will defend the customer and pay the amount of any adverse judgments or settlements that result from the lawsuit, as long as the customer used the guardrails and content filters we have built into our products.” On the flip side, customers “…must not attempt to generate infringing materials, including not providing input to a Copilot service that the customer does not have appropriate rights to use.”
This coverage includes paid versions of Microsoft commercial Copilot services and Bing Chat Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Copilot that brings generative AI to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and GitHub Copilot.
timeOS Launches TimeAI
TimeOS is a Germany-based, venture-backed company that is building a “time operating system [to] transform the traditional calendar…[using] advanced AI and automation.” The company launched TimeAI for AI-powered scheduling, note taking, and agendas. The technology uses current and historic information available in a user’s calendar as context to inform them how they should spend their time and identify tasks that AI may be able to complete for them. For example, a TimeAI-created avatar could attend meetings on behalf of the user and convey information to the user’s team members. The software will create automatic drafts of meeting agendas, follow-up emails with action items, and provide meeting summaries.
TimeAI integrates with communication platforms including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and more. It can also take actions from those environments and translate them into Asana, ClickUp, or Monday.com items.
This Week on No Jitter
In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories:
