Labs solutions versus paid partner AI apps

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Sharon Klardie, Senior Director of AppExchange Labs & Innovation at Salesforce.

Join us as we chat about how Labs empowers Salesforce employees to build and share solutions on the AppExchange, and what that means for admins navigating the new world of AI.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Sharon Klardie.

What is Salesforce Labs?

Next year, Salesforce Labs will celebrate its twentieth birthday. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s an innovation program for Salesforce employees to create solutions, package them, and share them with customers like you.

That’s why I was so excited to sit down with Sharon Klardie. She’s the Senior Director of AppExchange Labs & Innovation, and as she puts it, her team’s job is to “showcase the art of the possible.”

If you’ve ever stared at a new feature and felt some blank canvas anxiety when it comes to how to actually implement it in your org, browsing through Salesforce Labs solutions could be a great starting point. Even if you don’t end up using something, you can see what’s possible and even look at how they did it on GitHub.

The key to AI implementation

If you’re like most of the admins I talk to, you’re probably looking for new ways to use Agentforce. As Sharon puts it, “How do you have meaningful and mindful implementations of AI at your organization?”

You can get a lot of ideas looking through Labs apps that incorporate Agentforce. However, as Sharon points out, that’s only one piece of the puzzle. You need to get your data in a good place and build a solid foundation for scalable AI, and there are several Salesforce Labs solutions that can help you get started.

Best practices for AppExchange

Finally, we talk through some AppExchange best practices that will help you get the most out of any Labs solutions you want to try out.

First and foremost, never install an app you haven’t used directly into production. Spin up a dev org or sandbox so you can test without breaking anything. But more importantly, make sure you have a solid rollout and change management plan for any new functionality you’re adding to your org. You need to tell users what’s new, teach them how to use it, and be ready to handle any edge cases that will inevitably pop up.

Be sure to catch Sharon’s presentations at Dreamforce, and say hi if you see her! And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.

Podcast swag

• Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store

Learn more

• Trailhead Module: Salesforce Labs Basics
• Trailhead Module: AppExchange Basics
• AppExchange: Trending on Salesforce Labs
• AppExchange: Salesforce Labs App Guide
• YouTube channel: AppExchangeTV
• GitHub: Salesforce Labs
• Help Article: How To Get Support for Salesforce Labs Created Applications
• Dreamforce session: 7 Free Solutions to drive Your AI Strategy Forward

Admin Trailblazers Group

• Admin Trailblazers Community Group

Social

• Sharon on LinkedIn
• Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn
• Salesforce Admins on X
• Mike on Bluesky social
• Mike on Threads
• Mike on X

Full show transcript

Mike:
This week on the Salesforce Admin Podcast, I sit down with Sharon Klardie, who’s the senior director of Salesforce Labs, to talk about, well, what else? Free innovation. Sharon shares how labs empower Salesforce employees to build and share solutions on the AppExchange and what that means for Salesforce admins navigating the new world of AI and why, this is important, you should never install a new app straight into production. Now, whether you’re Dreamforce-bound or catching up after Dreamforce, this one’s packed with a lot of great tips from Sharon and a lot of AI strategy gold. So tune in, take notes, and let’s get Sharon on the podcast.

So, Sharon, welcome to the podcast.

Sharon Klardie:
Thank you for having me, Mike.

Mike:
I find it hard to believe, but you are one of the few people in the world that hasn’t been on the Salesforce Admin podcast despite you and me being in the ecosystem for like a thousand years.

Sharon Klardie:
I know. I was thinking about this morning and I was like, “I can’t believe I haven’t been on here yet.” So I’m super excited to share with the listeners here today.

Mike:
Well, let’s talk about that. So how did you get started in Salesforce and in the ecosystem, and what do you do at Salesforce?

Sharon Klardie:
Oh, I love a Salesforce origin story. So picture, it’s 2010, and I’m working at a software company that gets bought by an equity partner, and that equity partner implements Salesforce at every company they buy. And that was my first introduction of Salesforce back when it was just Sales and Service Cloud. And I absolutely felt in love with the platform. I felt empowered. There was community behind it. And ever since then, so from 2010 till today, I’ve been all Salesforce all the time.

Mike:
Wow. And you joined Salesforce. What part of Salesforce did you join?

Sharon Klardie:
So when I joined Salesforce in 2018, I joined leading the Salesforce Labs program. That was exclusively my focus. It’s been part of my remit my entire time, almost eight years here at Salesforce. And I’ve added some other things to what I do on the daily basis, but the Salesforce Labs program, community innovation, it’s my passion area. It’s what brings me joy. I just actually love being part of it, seeing the creativity of the employee community, creating labs, and seeing the creativity of our trailblazers who are using Labs solutions.

Mike:
So for anybody that hasn’t heard about Labs, when you say Salesforce Labs, what do you mean?

Sharon Klardie:
So Salesforce Labs is a program that’s actually turning 20 next year, if you can believe it. It’s an innovation program where we empower Salesforce employees to create solutions, package them, and share them on AppExchange for our customers to use. And Salesforce Labs solutions are always free. They’re community-driven. You can think of them like an open-source project. So it’s volunteered by employees. It’s not an employee who is on a product team and this is part of their regular release roadmap. This is an employee who sees a problem in the space that they want to solve, or they have a really creative idea on how to use our technology. So the Labs program really helps trailblazers to learn new technology, play around with it, get starter packs and templates. Blank canvas anxiety is a real struggle as an admin, throwing back a few years from my admin days, but sometimes a new feature would be rolled out and you’d be like, “I’m not sure where to start.” So the Labs program really tries to help trailblazers be able to adopt new technology, understand how you can use it, and showcase the art of the possible.

Mike:
That’s good. I know as an admin, I found Labs because I needed a project management app, and at the time, Reid Carlberg had a really cool one, so I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool.” And then from there on, I looked for the little beaker logo.

Sharon Klardie:
Yeah, we love that beaker logo, and then we evolved the logo to actually use the periodic elements of tables to use labs spelled out because we’re geeky like that.

Mike:
Right. I know. It kind of has like a Breaking Bad feel to it.

Sharon Klardie:
Yeah.

Mike:
I’m all about that.
So at Dreamforce you’re going to talk about seven free solutions to drive your AI strategy forward, and it’s going to be a really cool presentation, and some people are going to get to see it, some people aren’t. Why is it important for admins to look to the AppExchange and some of our Labs apps in terms of moving AI forward in their organizations?

Sharon Klardie:
Yeah. So right now, AI is moving at the speed of light or whatever is faster than the speed of light. I’m not sure what that is, but there’s probably something faster than the speed of light, and that’s what it feels like is happening right now. So one of the benefits that the Labs program will have is we can showcase different solutions on how to use this new technology, but also I think even more importantly is how do we think about how do we want to implement AI at our organization. And sometimes that might actually be using a Labs solution or another partner solution on AppExchange that isn’t actually AI-driven, but helps set the groundwork for how do you have a strong AI strategy. So an example of that would be, is there a set of technology or tools or processes that you should have in place at your organization to really help you identify what are your goals and use cases for using AI?

And we have a number of different Labs solutions that we’ll share. Pro-tip for anybody who’s going to see the content, it would be probably a few more solutions than seven. We’ll throw a couple bonus things in there and some shout-outs. But there’s a lot of technology out there to really help you frame is your data ready. Data readiness is super important as an AI strategy to move forward in the space. If you’re going to train your AI or use AI on your data and if your data is no good, then you’re going to have a problem. The AI isn’t going to respond the way that you expect or what your business needs. So we want to showcase these solutions that you can use to get started to help ground you in strong AI strategies.

Mike:
So it’s not just downloading agents.

Sharon Klardie:
Exactly. It’s going to be more than that. It’s really about thinking about how do you have meaningful and mindful implementation of AI at your organization. And we’ll also have some showcases of how to use cool Agentforce and AI technology.

Mike:
Oh, nice.
I noticed you put the word free in your title. That implies that there’s some that aren’t free.

Sharon Klardie:
Yes. So all Salesforce Labs solutions are free. So anything that our employees create and contribute are free to download from AppExchange. But there are other solutions from our partner ecosystem and some are free and some are paid. It is important to note for anybody who’s not familiar with the Salesforce Labs program is these are not official Salesforce products, which is actually called out in the master service agreement, the MSA. These are community contributions, so you can’t pick up the phone and call support and get help for them. We generally try to open-source all of our Labs solutions on GitHub so you can actually use it to learn new technology, see how an employee built that solution, or maybe that solution does 80% of what you want, but you want to change it. You can go get the source code and then go customize it for whatever works for your business. And if the solution that the employee built hits a home run and it solves your business challenge you’re trying to solve, you can go install the managed package and off to the races.

Mike:
Yeah. And I’m also thinking any of your Labs apps are also going to immediately be able to be agentified?

Sharon Klardie:
I would say. So we have some Labs solutions. I wouldn’t say that’s a hundred percent guarantee, although most of them should be able to be extended, but we have over 500 Labs solutions on AppExchange and I can’t say conclusively that all 500 would become-

Mike:
You don’t know all 500 just like the back of your hand? Come on now.

Sharon Klardie:
I, unfortunately, do not. I know many of them, but not all 500.
But yeah, most of them should be extended. We’re actually looking at engaging with some of our more popular Labs solutions and having conversations with the builders to say like, “What are ways that we could extend this using newer technology that’s come out?” Either adjacent, something like if you want to use AI, you can add onto it, but if you still want to use the main core functionality, like custom objects and flows that was there but not to have an AI arm to it, then you could still use the original. But how can we take these to the next level using the great technology that’s come out over the past couple of years?

Mike:
Yeah. Now, I think the use of apps within Salesforce has probably evolved since you and I were out in the world as we little admins wandering blindly through the Salesforce universe, because it’s become ubiquitous that you’d use an app on your phone, right? Like there’s specialized apps to do things. Oftentimes on my iPhone, I’ll get an app, I’ll try it out, it won’t work, I’ll just delete it, but I don’t have a spare phone. What is best practice for admins evaluating apps, be it from Labs or somewhere on the AppExchange, in terms of trying and testing something out perhaps before it goes into production?

Sharon Klardie:
There absolutely are some best practices. Number one will be we do not install brand-new apps we’ve never explored into production. We do not do that. I’ll repeat, we do not do that. Some trailblazers like to explore in a dev org first, but the cons of that is you don’t have your unique customizations. A lot of trailblazers have a lot of success in installing a Labs solution or a partner solution in a sandbox first so you can see how it interacts with the customizations you’ve made to the platform. But both either a dev org or a sandbox is absolutely where you want to start to check out any new solution, whether it be Labs or partner solution.

Mike:
Yeah. So that was the first mistake that I made back in the day. I would just try things out in production. Why not?

Sharon Klardie:
Yeah, no, hopefully nobody takes that guidance, Mike. Definitely it’s much more advantageous for everyone to play around and see how things work. And it gives you a little bit more freedom as an admin to look under the hood and see how exactly it’s going to work and then what your rollout plan is. Because it’s just like what I tell my Labs builders, it’s not if you build it, they will come. It’s not if you install it, it will work, right?

Mike:
Right.

Sharon Klardie:
So you also need to have that kind of change management process at your organization. If you just install a new app and have some great functionality, if you don’t tell your users about it once you move it to production, they might not know what to do with it or they might not use it in the way that you had in mind. I think we all know in technology, when we release things into the wild of our user base, we are going to come across some use cases and edge cases that we never thought might be the reality. So the more that you can get ahead of that and the change management process, it’s just going to be smoother for both you as an admin and also for your end users.

Mike:
Yeah. Now, one thing I’d be remiss not to cover, we talked a lot about consumption part, but you mentioned Labs is also open to non-Salesforce employees, correct?

Sharon Klardie:
No. So only Salesforce employees today can create and distribute a Salesforce Labs solution.

Mike:
Gotcha. But our AppExchange is open to non-Salesforce?

Sharon Klardie:
Absolutely. We have a very robust partner ecosystem and a process to engage. It can be a free solution that somebody wants to create as a business to kind of spin up and share with the community. You can go through our partner program to do that. And of course, it’s an ecosystem, so if you have a solution, idea that you believe is of value to our broader trailblazer community and customers, then you can engage with our program and list there. But anything created by Salesforce Labs is created by a Salesforce employee.

Mike:
Yeah.

Sharon Klardie:
And I just also want to note Labs go through the same security review process that all of our partner solutions go through as well.

Mike:
Oh, so no cheating because it’s a Salesforce employee?

Sharon Klardie:
That’s exactly right. Trust is our number one value here. We want all the Labs to adhere to that as well.

Mike:
Right, yeah. No, it’s same rules apply for everybody. That way you get the same quality and consistency. So that makes sense.
Well, Sharon, thanks for coming on the podcast. I think this session’s going to be awesome. I can’t wait to hear what people have to say about it, and I can’t wait to see what new stuff comes out from the Labs team.

Sharon Klardie:
Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Hopefully, it’s the first time, but hopefully not the last time. I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you, Mike, and if anybody is at the session and shows up at Dreamforce, stop by and say hello. I’d love to meet you. And I’m on LinkedIn, and if you want to engage with that way, share any feedback about the Labs program, I’m happy to engage.

Mike:
So a big thanks to Sharon for joining us and sharing some behind-the-scenes look at the Salesforce Labs. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to fire up a sandbox and test drive some :abs apps. That was always the most fun part for me as an admin. But remember, not in production, just in a sandbox or not in production. But hey, if you’re heading to Dreamforce, don’t miss her session on the seven, plus she says a few bonus free sessions to fuel your AI strategy. And remember, best part about Salesforce Labs apps is they’re free and open, and they’re built with you, the community, the Salesforce admins, developers, architects in mind. So with that, until next time, we’ll see you in the cloud.

The post How Can Admins Use Labs Apps To Get AI-Ready? appeared first on Salesforce Admins.