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Is your Salesforce org ready for AI? Five things to fix first

An AI agent does exactly what your org allows it to do, with the data your org holds, and at a speed no person can match. That is useful when the org is clean. When it is not, an agent finds the gaps faster than any user: the sharing rule that was left open in 2017, the customer who exists three times under three spellings, the knowledge article nobody has reviewed since launch. Salesforce’s own troubleshooting guidance for Agentforce makes the point plainly: data errors show up as incomplete or irrelevant responses.

Below are the five things we check before an org’s first agent goes live, how you can check each one yourself in Setup, and what fixing it involves.

Before the five: what Agentforce needs in place

Agentforce is available in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited and Developer Editions, with Foundations or an Agentforce Max edition (formerly Agentforce 1). Salesforce now turns the Agentforce platform on by default, so the work is configuring and governing agents. Einstein generative AI must also be on, and Salesforce’s setup guide says to make sure Data Cloud is provisioned first, because the Einstein Trust Layer depends on it. Builders need the Manage AI Agents permission. Data Cloud is now called Data 360, though some Setup pages and permission names still use the old name.

1. Who can see what

This is the check that matters most. How an agent reaches your data depends on the kind of agent.

A service agent, the kind that talks to customers, runs as a dedicated agent user, or as the customer’s Experience Cloud site user when credential-based user verification is enabled. Salesforce creates the agent user with minimal access so the agent is secure by default, and you open access through the agent’s own permission set and its place in the role hierarchy. The detail that catches older orgs out: when a service agent runs as the agent user, your internal organization-wide sharing defaults apply. If your org gives every internal user read access to every account, a service agent whose permission set includes accounts can read them all. Salesforce’s advice is to restrict internal defaults and open access with sharing rules. It also warns that context such as the customer’s contact record tells the agent who it is talking to, without limiting what it can see.

An employee agent works the other way. It runs as the person using it, with their permissions. So an employee agent is no safer than your profiles and permission sets: a sales rep who can see every opportunity can have the agent summarize them all.

One more reason this matters: data masking in the Einstein Trust Layer is switched off for agents. Permissions and sharing are the control, but flows and Apex behind agent actions can run in system context without sharing.

Check it yourself

  • Setup > Sharing Settings: note the internal default for Account, Contact, Case and Opportunity. Public Read/Write on customer data is the first thing to fix.
  • Setup > Agentforce Agents: open each agent’s user, then its role and permission sets. Ask why each object is there.
  • For employee agents, review which profiles and permission sets hold View All or Modify All Data.
  • Open the flow or Apex behind each action: does it run without sharing? Salesforce recommends you debug a flow by running it as the agent user.

2. Duplicates and gaps in your data

An agent that finds two records for the same customer may answer from the wrong one. Salesforce lists null or outdated field values, inconsistent relationships between records and Data 360 sync delays as causes of bad answers.

Salesforce’s duplicate management has two parts. A matching rule defines what counts as a duplicate. A duplicate rule uses it to decide what happens when someone creates or edits a likely duplicate: allow it with an alert, or block it. Standard rules exist for accounts, contacts and leads; in older orgs we often find them switched off.

Gulf orgs have a specific problem. The same customer arrives as Mohammed, Mohamed and Muhammad, with and without Al-, in Arabic script from one form and Latin script from another, with a phone number written as +971, 00971 or 05. Test the default matching rules against data like this before you trust them.

Check it yourself

  • Setup > Duplicate Rules and Matching Rules: which are active, and do they alert or block?
  • Report on contacts and person accounts grouped by mobile number or email. Groups with more than one record are likely duplicates.
  • Report on blank values in the fields your first agent will read, for example case reason, product or contract end date.

3. Knowledge the agent can quote

Many first agents answer questions, and the standard action for that, Answer Questions with Knowledge, answers from your Knowledge articles and uploaded files. It only uses articles the person asking can access, and it needs Data 360 set up and a data library that indexes your content for search. Salesforce’s own troubleshooting article lists “Knowledge articles not published or indexed” as a cause of poor answers.

So every article must be safe to quote to a customer word for word. Look for articles with no owner, no review date, old prices and policies, and English articles with no Arabic version, or Arabic versions that have drifted from the English.

Arabic needs its own plan. Salesforce lists Arabic as a Beta language for Agentforce, and notes that languages in beta may be inconsistent when retrieving information. Subagent (formerly topic) and action instructions are supported in English only, and Arabic is not among the languages Salesforce lists for citations or toxicity detection. Arabic conversations can work well. They need more testing, tighter scope and a clear route to a person.

Check it yourself

  • Knowledge: count published articles, articles with no review in the last twelve months, and articles that exist in one language only.
  • Check data categories and channel visibility, because the agent only sees what the asking user can see.
  • Pick twenty real customer questions in Arabic and English and see whether a published article answers each one.

4. Old automation

Salesforce ended support for Workflow Rules and Process Builder on 31 December 2025. Existing rules and processes still run, and you can still edit them, but Salesforce provides no support and fixes no bugs in either. New automation belongs in Flow.

Agents make this more urgent. When an agent creates a case or updates a record, every automation whose criteria are met fires: the workflow rule from 2014, the process from 2018 and the flow from last year, sometimes all touching the same field. A person notices when a record changes unexpectedly. An agent carries on. Salesforce’s Migrate to Flow tool converts workflow rules and processes into flows, including partial migration for most process actions, and Salesforce says to test each flow after migrating. One related change: since February 2026, outbound messages cannot send session IDs, so check any integration that relied on them.

Check it yourself

  • Setup > Workflow Rules and Process Builder: count the active ones, by object.
  • Setup > Migrate to Flow: see which can be converted automatically.
  • For each object your first agent will touch, list every active rule, process, flow and trigger in one place.

5. Security and integration debt

Agents call flows, Apex and integrations on behalf of customers. A broken integration that a person would work around becomes a wrong answer in front of a customer. Salesforce has been retiring old platform features steadily, and orgs with ten years of history usually carry several of them:

Change Date What to look for
MFA enforced for all employee logins, including single sign-on 20 July to 3 September 2026 Your identity provider must send the signals Salesforce needs, and admins and privileged users need phishing-resistant MFA
Uninstalled connected apps blocked for most users Early September 2025 Integrations that stopped working, or users given broad bypass permissions to keep them running
New connected apps restricted, then support ends Spring ’26, then Summer ’27 Integrations to move to external client apps
Incorrect instance URLs in API traffic blocked Sandboxes October to November 2026; production January to March 2027 Integrations that call an instance name where they should call your My Domain URL
SOAP API login() needs a new permission, then retires 1 December 2026, then Summer ’27 Older middleware and ERP connectors that log in with a username and password
Salesforce to Salesforce stops working Spring ’27 Record sharing between orgs, common after mergers
API versions 31.0 to 40.0 unsupported, then retired Summer ’27, then Summer ’28 Calls to retired versions fail. Versions 21.0 to 30.0 were retired in Summer ’25.

Salesforce’s Security Health Check is the fastest first look. It scores your security settings against the Salesforce Baseline Standard, and a score of 90% or above counts as Excellent, while 54% or below is Very Poor. Its Fix Risks option changes settings to the baseline values, so review what it will change before you click it. For the integration items, Salesforce points to the API Total Usage event log, which reports SOAP, REST and Bulk API activity, in its API retirement guidance.

Check it yourself

  • Setup > Health Check: note the score and the high-risk items.
  • Setup > Connected Apps OAuth Usage: which apps are in use, and which are installed?
  • The API Total Usage event log: which integrations call old API versions or the SOAP API?

Where to start

Do the five checks in order. The first one decides what your agent can reach, so fix sharing before anything else, and before the agent user is given a role. The second and third decide whether its answers are right. The last two decide whether it keeps working. In our experience, the five checks take a senior admin about a day. Fixing what they find takes longer, and the fixes usually improve the org for people as much as for agents.

Want it done for you? The free Salesforce Health Check covers all five areas and gives you a written report with the fixes in priority order. If you are ready to choose your first agents, the Agentforce Readiness Assessment goes deeper on use cases, permissions and Arabic, and our one-page agent charter shows how to govern each agent once it is live.

Frequently asked questions

Does Agentforce respect Salesforce sharing rules?

Yes, through its running user: for service agents, the agent user or, with credential-based user verification, the logged-in Experience Cloud site user; for employee agents, the signed-in person. But flows and Apex behind agent actions can run in system context without sharing, so check how each action runs.

Do we need Data 360 for Agentforce?

Salesforce says Data Cloud, now called Data 360, must be provisioned and enabled before you turn on Einstein generative AI, because the Einstein Trust Layer depends on it. Answering from Knowledge also uses a data library that indexes your articles.

Do Workflow Rules and Process Builder still work?

They still run, and you can still edit them, but Salesforce ended support for both on 31 December 2025 and fixes no bugs in them. Salesforce’s Migrate to Flow tool converts them to flows.

Does Agentforce support Arabic?

Salesforce lists Arabic as a Beta language for Agentforce. Subagent and action instructions are supported in English only, so plan extra testing in Arabic and a clear handover to a person.

Which Salesforce edition do we need for Agentforce?

Salesforce lists Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited and Developer Editions, with Foundations or an Agentforce Max edition (formerly Agentforce 1), for its employee and service agents.

What is the Salesforce Security Health Check?

A tool in Setup that scores your security settings against a baseline such as the Salesforce Baseline Standard. A score of 90% or above is rated Excellent and 54% or below Very Poor, and you can fix risks from the same page.

Free Agentforce readiness assessment

Ten working days to see whether your Salesforce org, data and people are ready for AI agents in Arabic and English, with three use cases and a costed pilot plan. The report is yours to keep.

Request the assessment →or talk to the team

Sources

Picture of Yahia Hassanein

Yahia Hassanein

Yahia runs managed services delivery at Arcsen, keeping live Salesforce platforms healthy after go-live. 9x Salesforce certified, across consumer goods, real estate, automotive and the public sector.
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