In the not so distant future, AI agents are going to become one of the core consumers of APIs. To drive quality customer interactions at scale, these agents will need to be plugged into your entire IT ecosystem and given autonomy to take decisive action.
This is a subtle, impactful shift in the world of API management. It also represents a natural evolution as the “agentic” frontier continues to push the boundary of what’s possible when it comes to integration.
Connecting applications has traditionally been a request driven affair; a business process needs to act across multiple systems, and it’s up to IT to configure that pathway, usually via an API. These routes are generally hard-wired, with the IT team determining what this connection looks like and how it operates.
How will IT teams and agents work together?
As AI continues to grow in prominence, IT teams are going to find agents in the driving seat – leaning on user-defined, natural language instructions to make autonomous decisions around which APIs to call and where to take action.
IT will continue to define the scaffolding, most likely empowered with a separate set of generative AI tools, to rapidly implement these connections. They’ll have to consider the parsability of an API by an agent during the development process, though; soon enough, developers will be designing APIs specifically with agent usage in mind.
If you want to see this new reality in action, look no further than MuleSoft for Agentforce. Agentforce is Salesforce’s collection of assistive and autonomous AI agents. These agents can reason, plan, and act across your business based on user inputs and specific contexts, massively increasing efficiency.
They span across the Salesforce platform, assisting with CRM data retrieval, automating order management logistics, or streamlining claims processes among many other use cases. Out of the box, Agentforce can already take action across the Salesforce ecosystem, and this encompasses a great deal of use cases. We understand that our customers have existing investments with third-party, legacy applications and these systems can play just as important a role in the expansion of Agentforce as Salesforce’s core applications. Incorporating MuleSoft is thus a natural progressive step in this journey.
MuleSoft for Agentforce centers around leveraging your existing MuleSoft investment to extend Agentforce connectability, offering multiple channels for Agentforce to take action when leveraging these connections. Just as important as connectability is providing appropriate security and governance controls, ensuring you can empower Agentforce with a degree of confidence as you experiment and develop your agentic strategy.
MuleSoft offers a variety of different tools associated with each tenet: MuleSoft for Flow, MuleSoft AI Chain, and API management to name a few, but the focus of this article is taking action with MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center, one of our marquee releases designed specifically with Agentforce in mind.
MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center
One of the core technical structures of MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center is what we refer to as a Topic. Topics are a resource that can be utilized by Agentforce. They’re a packaged list of actions for AI Agents, alongside a set of instructions on how these actions should be used.
As you expand the capability of Agentforce to include a third party functionality, you need to provide guidance for how it should act in order to achieve a desired outcome. That’s the function of a Topic. Its collection of paired actions and instructions that form a set of capabilities that Agentforce is able to execute across third-party systems. They ensure that, as you extend your Agentforce capability beyond its initial remit, you’re doing so in a measured way.
MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center is far and away the easiest method to create a programmatic collection of such Topics to augment Agentforce, but why would you need such a detailed approach when extending Agents to third party systems? Why can you not simply provide Agentforce with direct access to MuleSoft APIs?
It’s not enough to simply give Agentforce the keys to the kingdom and hope it takes the most appropriate action. Agentforce requires foreknowledge to effectively leverage an API, not just access but a contextual focus that will produce optimal results. Controlled access to APIs also necessitates proper authorization, authentication, and guardrails to ensure security and compliance.
And when it does come time to extend Agentforce, users need a simple way to access extensions, not just a list of APIs but a digestible set of browsable capabilities that make it clear how they can augment Agentforce most effectively. Finally, managing Agentforce growth also poses a challenge. Once an Agentforce use case is deployed, users need to have a defined strategy to prevent sprawl and to monitor and manage performance effectively.
MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center addresses the breadth of these challenges by embedding Agent usage across the API life cycle and in the hands of the subject matter expert: a MuleSoft developer. From design through to connection, consumption and management of API assets for Agentforce use.
This process will start in design via Anypoint Code Builder (ACB), where developers will define Topics as they flesh out APIs, establishing the scope of the Topic actions as well as the associated instructions for those actions. ACB will make it easy to define an API spec in such a way as to make them incredibly clear for Agents to parse, leading to more accurate and higher quality responsiveness when they’re leveraged by Agentforce. All that’s required to create a Topic from an API is a single check-box click, followed by defining the Topic parameters using natural language. You can create Topics from scratch as part of the API design process or your existing Mule APIs.
The next component of the journey is connecting Topics to users. This starts with API Management– ensuring the appropriate policies, governance controls and access management are applied to the Topic before it’s made accessible within Agentforce. With appropriate governance in-place, Topics can be mounted to Salesforce via the newly released MuleSoft for Agentforce: API Catalog, a MuleSoft-powered tool within Salesforce that can host all of your Salesforce, Herkou, MuleSoft and third-party APIs in a single work area for use across Apex, Data Cloud, Flow and Agentforce.
This catalog is where the reusable Topics created in MuleSoft will be stored so that when it comes to consumption, the experience will be grab and go for the Salesforce Admins in Agent Builder. Admins will be able to quickly assign these Topics to their Agentforce with confidence – knowing that from the initial design to API management and the Topic being made accessible, what they’re empowering Agentforce with has gone through all the necessary controls established within MuleSoft – ensuring that it operates appropriately and effectively.
The final piece of the puzzle is the management of Topics. Once your Agentforce use cases are up and running, the workload associated will start to incorporate the strategic and operational management of the APIs being utilized.
MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center is going to cater to this need by providing out-of-box monitoring for the Topics being utilized by Agentforce so that MuleSoft users can understand what actions are being used as part of which use cases, alongside traditional health monitoring capabilities to ensure optimal Agentforce performance.
What’s next for MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center?
From design through to connection, consumption and management, MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center embeds Agent usage across the API lifecycle. Whether it’s unlocking a legacy inventory tool or maintaining near real-time financial data in your ERP, MuleSoft is the easiest way to develop your Agentic strategy and empower your Agentforce use cases across Sales, eCommerce, Marketing and Services. If you’re interested in seeing MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center in action, check out our spotlight demo video.
The recent launch of MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center included the ability to generate Agent Topics as part of the API development process in ACB, as well as the ability to share these Topics in Agent Builder via the API Catalog. Later this year, we’ll be launching additional functionality–including the ability to test your Topics within the ACB design experience, as well as providing detailed health monitoring capabilities for the APIs being utilized by Agentforce.
It’s an exciting time at MuleSoft as we continue to extend the capability of Agentforce; Stay tuned for more exciting developments in the new year and further announcements regarding MuleSoft for Agentforce: Topic Center.
