Chapter 15How Do You Build a Custom Agent from Scratch?
In this chapter, we are going to build an Agentforce service agent using only Agent Builder and our own savoir faire. Creating the agent is just the first step; you then have to configure and deploy it. But we'll get to that second part in a moment.
Those of you with more retentive beans will recall we built an agent together earlier, in Chapter 4. That was indeed an agent, but it did not quite reflect how it works in real life. Most agents are built to be embedded somewhere in the company's digital channels, such as on their website or in their call-center consoles. Figure 15.1 shows how such integration-in-real-life is done.
We will take you through the steps an Agentforce user would take to create a custom agent in some detail. If you're impatient for more on the agentic AI business or cultural implications, you can push on. The rest of you will be treated to a hands-on paper demo of a working agent created for the benefit of developers and admins who have some familiarity with how agents work but not exactly how to fashion one.
First, you'll open your Salesforce platform screen and look in Setup Quick Find for Agents, selecting +New Agent and then Agentforce Service Agent. By default you're given the prebuilt service agent with some preselected topics, but because we want to start from scratch, we deselect all the topics and start fresh.
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