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ASU among the first universities to deploy Salesforce's new AI agent

The team at ASU Enterprise Technology unveiled the project – which bolsters ASU’s AI position — at the Salesforce Education Summit in Chicago on Tuesday, March 11.

Joycelyn Muñoz

March 12, 2025

Arizona State University is home to one of the largest Salesforce implementations in higher education. And today, the university is among the first to leverage Salesforce’s newest AI product: Agentforce. The proof of concept was drafted and finalized within just 7 days.

“We have been at the forefront of innovating on the [Salesforce] platform,” said Frank Montoya, senior IT product manager at ASU Enterprise Technology. Montoya and a team of technologists – including Michael Blimbaum, senior Salesforce platform engineer – were tasked to develop proofs of concept using Agentforce.

Agentforce became generally available in October of last year as the first platform for building and customizing autonomous AI agents.

The team proposed several ideas starting in November 2024. “After the presentation of two high-potential demos, we decided to pilot the AI agent poised for the most immediate impact,” shared Kimberly Clark, deputy chief information officer for ASU. “It is speed and progress over perfection as we accelerate our digital transformation journey.”

Working with Salesforce, ASU units collaborated to design an AI agent that allows ASU users to self-serve through the AI-enabled experience. They started with the Parking and Transportation Services website.

The team coined the AI agent “Parky,” which offers a 24/7 customer engagement through the AI-driven communication tool. The agent derives information from the Parking and Transportation website and ASU knowledge articles to provide fast and accurate information to user prompts and questions.

“Parky” launched on February 21. From answering questions about how to obtain permits to parking on campus, the AI-agent offers a new way for users to access information available on the website. Today, the team monitors the AI agent and is quick to iterate to improve functionality.

Montoya, along with partners across ASU tied to the project, credit ASU’s culture of innovation and early partnership with Salesforce for their ability to explore use-cases of the AI product.

“Don't go for perfection,” Montoya said. Rather, he encourages others to position themselves to act quickly to iterate on feedback and issues in real time.

“I don’t think we could have gone as quickly and as confidently as we did without the support of Signature Success resources and the Salesforce product team,” Montoya said.

This story reflects the university’s commitment to collaborating with industry leaders early and often — and, in turn, positions ASU to shape industry standards for higher education.