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Agentforce Fundamentals

What an agent actually is: topics, grounding, actions, channels, guardrails, testing and the cost of running one.

  • Beginner
  • 50 lessons
  • 12 modules
  • English

Designed and created by Salesforce Expert

$79
or $249 / year for all access Buy this course

What you'll learn

  • Explain what an agent is, in terms a sceptical colleague will accept
  • Scope an agent with topics so it does one job well
  • Ground an agent in prompt templates, knowledge and Data Cloud
  • Design the handoff to a human, and the guardrails around it
  • Test, observe and cost an agent before it reaches customers

Course content

12 sections · 50 lectures · 26 hands-on labs

Orientation 3 lectures
  1. 1.1 The Bot That Could Not Answer
  2. 1.2 Ridgeline Cycles: 140 Dealers, Four Questions, One Queue
  3. 1.3 Hands-On: Switch Agentforce On Hands-on
What an agent actually is 4 lectures
  1. 2.1 Topics, Actions, Instructions
  2. 2.2 The Reasoning Loop
  3. 2.3 Hands-On: Build an Agent From a Template, and Talk to It Hands-on
  4. 2.4 Hands-On: Read the Reasoning Trace Hands-on
Topics 4 lectures
  1. 3.1 A Topic Is a Job, Not a Keyword
  2. 3.2 Writing Instructions That Hold
  3. 3.3 Hands-On: Author the Order Status Topic Hands-on
  4. 3.4 Hands-On: Two Topics, One Question Hands-on
Grounding I — prompt templates 4 lectures
  1. 4.1 Prompt Engineering Inside Salesforce
  2. 4.2 Grounding a Template
  3. 4.3 Hands-On: Build the Warranty Reply Template Hands-on
  4. 4.4 Hands-On: Attach the Template as an Agent Action Hands-on
Grounding II — knowledge and Data Cloud 5 lectures
  1. 5.1 Why the Model Must Not Know Your Answers
  2. 5.2 Data Library, Retrievers, Search Index, Filters
  3. 5.3 Hands-On: Build a Data Library Hands-on
  4. 5.4 Hands-On: A Retriever With a Filter Hands-on
  5. 5.5 Hands-On: Ground the Answers Topic Hands-on
Actions 6 lectures
  1. 6.1 An Action Is a Contract
  2. 6.2 Choosing the Mechanism
  3. 6.3 Hands-On: A Flow Action Hands-on
  4. 6.4 Hands-On: An Apex Action Hands-on
  5. 6.5 Hands-On: An External Action Hands-on
  6. 6.6 Hands-On: The Action It Never Calls Hands-on
Context, identity and memory 4 lectures
  1. 7.1 Who Is the Agent Talking To?
  2. 7.2 Variables and Context
  3. 7.3 Hands-On: Pass the Rider's Identity In Hands-on
  4. 7.4 Hands-On: The Employee Agent Hands-on
Channels and the handoff 4 lectures
  1. 8.1 Where Agents Live
  2. 8.2 Escalation Is a Feature
  3. 8.3 Hands-On: Deploy to Web Messaging Hands-on
  4. 8.4 Hands-On: Route to a Human Hands-on
Trust, safety and guardrails 5 lectures
  1. 9.1 The Trust Layer End to End
  2. 9.2 The Guardrails You Write Yourself
  3. 9.3 Hands-On: Read the Audit Trail Hands-on
  4. 9.4 Hands-On: Red-Team Your Own Agent (Part 1 of 2) Hands-on
  5. 9.4 Hands-On: Red-Team Your Own Agent (Part 2 of 2) Hands-on
Testing and evaluation 5 lectures
  1. 10.1 You Cannot Chat Your Way to Confidence
  2. 10.2 What a Good Test Case Looks Like
  3. 10.3 Hands-On: Forty Cases Through Testing Center, and Reading the Failures Honestly Hands-on
  4. 10.4 Hands-On: Fix the Two Real Failures (Part 1 of 2) Hands-on
  5. 10.4 Hands-On: The Row We Leave Red (Part 2 of 2) Hands-on
Observability, cost and release 4 lectures
  1. 11.1 What To Watch After Go-Live
  2. 11.2 What An Agent Costs
  3. 11.3 Hands-On: The Dashboards, On A Real Week Hands-on
  4. 11.4 Hands-On: Versions, Sandbox to Production, Activation and Rollback Hands-on
The loop 2 lectures
  1. 12.1 Mining Transcripts Into the Next Topic
  2. 12.2 What You Built, and Where You Go Next

Requirements

  • CORE-101 Salesforce, End to End, or equivalent platform familiarity
  • A free Developer Edition org

Description

Agentforce is the centre of Salesforce's own catalogue now, and most of what is written about it is either a demo or a press release. This course is the working explanation: what an agent actually is, how topics scope it, how grounding works through prompt templates and through knowledge and Data Cloud, and what an action really does.

It then covers the parts that decide whether an agent survives production — context, identity and memory, channels and the handoff to a human, trust and guardrails, testing and evaluation, and observability, cost and release.

Who this course is for

  • Administrators, consultants and developers meeting Agentforce for the first time.

Skills you'll practise

AgentforcePrompt templatesGroundingAgent actionsGuardrailsAgent testing

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