Standard Actions for the Agentforce Employee Agent: What They Do and How to Recognize Them

The Employee Agent in Agentforce often relies on standard actions that come ready out of the box. These actions cover the most common internal workplace tasks, so you can deliver useful automation quickly without building custom logic. The key exam skill is not only knowing the action names, but recognizing which one fits a user request based on intent, data source, and expected output.

When a user is asking for a policy, a procedure, or a “how-to” answer that should come from official company documentation, the correct action is Answer Questions with Knowledge. This action responds using Lightning Knowledge, which means it is designed for guidance and reference content. A critical requirement is that the Knowledge base must contain at least ten knowledge articles, otherwise the action cannot function as intended. Typical requests that match this action sound like “What is our vacation policy,” “How do I submit expenses,” “Where can I find the VPN setup guide,” or “What is the process to request system access.”

When a user wants help writing an email, the correct action is Draft or Revise Email. This action produces an email draft and generates the recipient, subject, and body. It can also revise an existing email to improve clarity, tone, and structure. Typical requests include “Write an apology email to a customer about a delay,” “Make this email more formal,” “Rewrite this email shorter and clearer,” or “Draft an update email to my manager.”

When a user wants to find comparable successful deals as references, the correct action is Find Similar Opportunities. This action searches for similar opportunities that are Closed Won, have a close date within the last twelve months, and are not deleted. It is used to surface examples of successful outcomes that look like the current situation. Requests that match this action sound like “Find similar won deals for this account,” “Show similar Closed Won opportunities from the last year,” or “Do we have comparable successful deals to learn from.”

When a user needs factual information from Salesforce records, the correct action is Query Records. This action is used when the user is asking to retrieve CRM data, not when they want a documented explanation. Typical requests include “Show all open cases for this account,” “Find contacts from company X,” “Which opportunities are in the Negotiation stage,” or “List the last five cases for this user.”

When a user wants a concise overview of a single record, the correct action is Summarize Record. This action produces a summary of a specific record and depends on prompt templates of the Record Summary type. In other words, it is not just a generic summarizer. It uses that template category to produce consistent summaries. Requests that match this action sound like “Summarize this case,” “Give me a short summary of this opportunity,” or “Quick summary with status and next step.”

There are three common exam traps to watch for. The first is confusing Knowledge with Query Records. Knowledge is for guidance and documented policies, while Query Records is for retrieving factual data from Salesforce. If the question is “how do we do this,” it usually points to Knowledge. If the question is “show me the records,” it usually points to Query Records. The second trap is forgetting that Summarize Record relies on Record Summary prompt templates. If those templates are missing or not configured, the summarization action will not behave as expected. The third trap is assuming Draft or Revise Email automatically sends the email. It does not send anything. It creates a draft with recipient, subject, and body, and the actual sending step is separate.

Now that these standard actions are clear, the next step is choosing the correct agent type for a scenario. Next, we will focus on how to select Sales Agent versus Service Agent versus Employee Agent based on the business context, because the exam often tests whether you understand which agent is appropriate for which workflow.