How Should I Clean Metadata for Salesforce AI Agents?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jonathan Fox, Head of Salesforce Architecture at IntellectAI.

Join us as we chat about why we should rethink how we label, structure, and maintain Salesforce metadata.

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

How do you know if your metadata needs to be cleaned up?

When we were trying to implement Agentforce on the Admin Evangelist org, we came to a sobering realization. Despite all the content we create on how to do things the right way, it turns out that we all approach metadata a little differently. That’s why I was so excited to sit down with Jonathan to talk about how to clean up your metadata for AI.

Training an agent is like showing your org to someone who knows nothing about your business. Suddenly, it’s really important what the labels mean and that they’re consistent.

Start small with metadata

The thing about technical debt is that it’s not a problem until it becomes a problem. Your metadata is probably fine for most of your users, who have a working knowledge of your business processes. It’s only when you try to implement Agentforce that you realize you have a problem.

Jonathan recommends that you start small when you’re trying to clean your metadata. Roll out Agentforce for a small use case and only clean up the metadata associated with that specific task. If you need to generate buy-in, try running Agentforce as-is and then show your stakeholders just how much difference a little bit of cleanup can make.

Metadata is the foundation

“Your metadata is the foundation of your Salesforce org,” Jonathan says, “you don't want to get it wrong, you don't want to make it worse. So it needs to be treated with that respect and that kind of importance when you're changing it.”

Documentation is the key to making sure that you’re keeping things usable for human and AI employees alike. You need to make sure that you fully understand the impacts of any changes you’re implementing, or you risk breaking all sorts of automations in your org.

Jonathan had so many more great insights about how to start cleaning up your metadata for AI agents, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us every Thursday.

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Full show transcript

Mike:
Welcome to the Salesforce Admin's podcast, and hey, how did we do last week? Did you listen to that episode to see how our 2025 admin predictions were holding up? If not, add that to your play next list, because that was a fun look back. I like listening to things from the past, but let's go ahead to the future. So in this episode this week, we're joined by Jonathan Fox, who takes us behind the scenes on something every admin deals with, and maybe you don't think you do, but it's metadata. And in fact, in next week's episode, we're going to talk about cleaning data, so buckle up folks. It's summe