Blog HomeIntroducing Generative Canvas: Dynamically Generated UX, Grounded in Trusted Data and Workflows
TLDR; Salesforce just released Generative Canvas for Lightning UX (Pilot) on the AppExchange, allowing users to easily visualize and interact with their business data and workflows in a completely new way.
Imagine you're a sales representative in a high-stakes prospecting call. The customer is firing a barrage of detailed questions at you about your products. In the past, you'd have to frantically look up answers. While chat-based AI interfaces with tools like in-call coaching, next-best actions, and copilots have allowed users to ask questions and provide text guidance, information was still buried in chat threads or scattered across the timeline, making it difficult to locate specific details or gain a clear overview. Furthermore, the user experience was also cluttered, with a rigid interface that lacked the flexibility to adapt to user needs.
Now, thanks to generative AI-powered UX integrated into your Salesforce CRM, our new Generative Canvas provides dynamically generated experiences that utilize the full screen and include not just text, but also tables, charts, trends, and other rich visual Lightning components to represent key metrics. Powered by Agentforce and LLMs, Generative Canvas helps sales and service teams readily access essential information and retrieve actionable insights in a personalized interface — helping everyone work faster and make better-informed decisions.
Why Salesforce developed Generative Canvas
Over the last decades, software has generally followed the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern that separates an application's logic into three layers: the data model, the user interface view, and the logic controller. Generative AI is transforming every layer of the tech stack from chips to compute to MVC.
At the data model layer, Salesforce’s Data Cloud has pioneered both zero-copy data federation with partners, including Snowflake, Databricks, BiqQuery, and Redshift, and expanded to support both structured and unstructured data, such as Slack conversations, contact center transcripts, sales meeting notes, images, and videos.
At the logic layer, the Salesforce Platform has augmented our Flow low-code builders and Apex code with generative AI for flow and code generation, as well as introduced Agentforce Studio – Prompt Builder, Agent Builder, and Model Builder – to make it easy for customers to build trusted AI apps grounded in their organization’s data, policies, guardrails, knowledge, and semantics.
For the user interface layer, we’re introducing Generative Canvas for Lightning, to enhance business productivity by dynamically creating rich, interactive, and trusted user experiences and offering actionable insights.
With Generative Canvas, teams can explore data through suggestive prompts, surface key insights, and address strategic questions to achieve better outcomes. Instead of having to search and navigate a more rigid UX, sales and service reps can engage with a dynamic, intelligent experience that adapts to their specific needs and provides tailored insights for their accounts. For our Salesforce Admin Trailblazers, this also means freeing up time from having to painstakingly build every custom page layout for every role and user at your company.
A New AI-Powered Personalized Experience Paradigm for CRM Teams
Completely Personalized To You
Whether you’re prepping for a big sales meeting or trying to quickly resolve a high-stakes support issue, having the right context makes all the difference. That’s where Generative Canvas comes in, designed to align with each end user’s profile, intent, and goals to provide the right guidance, visualization, and automation.
For approved pilot customers, Generative Canvas is accessible from the Seller home page or apps menu. It pulls data from the user’s calendar to give suggested prompts and relevant information tailored to their needs.
Say you’re meeting with a customer to discuss a new sales opportunity. Generative Canvas can pull together all the key details, from account information to stakeholder insights. Start by using a suggested prompt like “Show me an analysis of the top cases on my account,” or pose your own unique question. The app quickly collects and analyzes relevant data, providing a concise summary tailored to your accounts.
Reps can dive deeper by running an AI-powered opportunity analysis or checking open cases. They can even pull in the latest news and trends that impact their accounts, and Generative Canvas then neatly organizes this information into two actionable categories:
- Conversation Starters: With Generative Canvas, you're equipped with timely and relevant topics that help reps build rapport and deepen relationships.
- Business Opportunities: Beyond just chit-chat, Generative Canvas helps users identify potential growth paths and collaborative opportunities that can significantly enhance their business strategy.
In addition to offering detailed account summaries and AI-curated recommendations, Generative Canvas also identifies key upsell and cross-sell opportunities and gives a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape. Features like Elevator Pitch help reps quickly hone in on the key points to convey during a sales call based on real-time internal and external data.
By bringing together these various data tables, Generative Canvas enables sales professionals to make well-informed decisions and strategically maximize each opportunity for significant impact. It’s like having a personalized command center, combining your Salesforce data with external insights to keep your teams fully informed.
A Trust-Led Approach
When it comes to trusting AI-generated experiences, plans, flows, or other outputs, context is key. Generative Canvas is built on the new Agentforce platform, and all queries run through the Einstein Trust Layer to ensure data privacy, data security, and ethical guardrails are in place.
Rather than generating UI from pixels, Generative Canvas is grounded on your organization’s approved Lightning components and respects all of the data-sharing rules and permissions currently configured in your Salesforce instance.
Request to Join the Pilot
During this pilot phase, Salesforce is dedicated to incorporating user feedback and further refining the capabilities of Generative Canvas. Check out the AppExchange listing where you can see a live demo and request to join our pilot program. We look forward to hearing your feedback on this groundbreaking technology!
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