The Next-Gen Admin: In Conversation With Donald Bohrisch

Salesforce Administrators have always been at the center of how organizations run their most critical systems. But as AI, automation, and agents reshape the way work gets done, the admin role is evolving faster than ever.

The Next Gen Admin: Conversations Shaping the Role in the AI Era is a series exploring how Salesforce Administrators are evolving to run the Agentic Enterprise. We spotlight leaders who are experimenting, advising, and redefining how modern systems are built, governed, and scaled.

In Conversation with Donald Bohrisch

As one of the first graduates of the Salesforce Military program (aka Vetforce), now a Salesforce Implementor at the AI operating system known as VAST Data, I bring over 12 years of experience across the Salesforce Ohana, supporting organizations ranging from startups to enterprise and government. As a longtime Lightning Champion and now an Agentblazer Legend, I focus on building scalable, future-ready solutions that help organizations evolve toward more intelligent experiences. Along the way, I’ve earned seven Salesforce Certifications and am currently pursuing my Slack Admin and Data Cloud Consultant certs.

What feels different about the admin role right now?

I’d say it’s the fire-hose pace at which we’re learning about the future as it’s being created. But that part isn’t entirely new—Salesforce has expanded its capabilities for years.

What feels different now is the shift from troubleshooting and configuration to orchestrating a customer intelligence platform.

We’re no longer just configuring workflows. We’re designing agentic reasoning systems that can act automagically while remaining secure, compliant, and more deterministic through low-code and no-code tools. Flow, along with my personal favorite, Prompt Builder, help us shape and orchestrate these intelligent systems.

Admins aren’t on the sidelines. As Agentblazer Legends, we have the opportunity to shape how this next generation of solutions is built!

We’ve seen similar evolution before on the Salesforce Platform, like when Lightning launched or Steelbrick became CPQ. But this new era of agentic AI takes the admin role a step further, both in how we support stakeholders and how we build our own future.

Where are you currently experimenting with AI, automation, or new governance approaches?

Becoming an Agentblazer Legend sparked a creative energy in me to think about AI on the Salesforce Platform from a more architectural perspective. It’s not just about configuring an agent, but understanding how the other building blocks of the platform work together with AI tools like large language models (LLMs) to create solutions we can trust.

When I’m building, I usually start with a simple agent to establish my baseline. From there I can feed it structured and unstructured data through Data 360, create further efficiencies by blending with flows, and even expand who it can help by embedding it into an Experience site. By combining these layers, I’m able to engineer a more deterministic AI solution, all while leaning on the built-in extensibility, security, compliance, and governance that we already trust on the Salesforce Platform.

Data plays a central role in making AI useful and trustworthy. Much of it already lives in Salesforce, and additional structured and unstructured sources can be brought in via Data 360 to better ground agents in real business processes. This creates a strong foundation for building AI experiences that are directly connected to real business processes.

I’m diving deeper into these agentic capabilities while pursuing my Data 360 and Slack certs, and building my own intelligent apps like my Lil Dreamers Agent series and EV Range Rescuers applications. It’s exciting to see how far we can push intelligent automation while keeping these solutions safe, scalable, and aligned with best practices.

What excites you, and what concerns you, about the rise of autonomous systems?

The excitement: What excites me most is how autonomous systems can bring together data across your entire system landscape and act on it. When AI taps into integrated data sources, it becomes far more powerful and relevant to real business processes. That’s when you start to see truly intelligent systems that don’t just inform decisions, but actually help drive them.

The concern: It’s less about the rise of Terminator and more about the risk of falling behind on understanding how these technologies work together, and how to build them most effectively at an architectural level. As admins, we have a responsibility to continue growing, especially in areas like prompt engineering or designing for governance, security, and trust. If we’re not intentional, we risk just building versus building for use.

The real opportunity isn’t just to build the future—it’s to build it in a way that’s responsible, grounded in best practices, and actually useful.

What skills do you believe admins need to build next?

Next-gen admins need to be what we used to call in the Army, “Flexi-Gumbi”—balancing technical skill and strategic thinking while putting to work what we learn on the fly.

Beyond just building for today, it’s about designing intelligent systems that integrate AI while grounding them with real business data. Skills like prompt engineering, working with Data 360, and building secure, scalable automations are becoming foundational.

Equally important are governance, security, and compliance analysis skills to ensure these systems operate responsibly and reliably. As AI takes on more responsibilities, admins need to ensure solutions are safe, reliable, and grounded in best practices.

Ultimately, a future-ready admin combines technical fluency with strategic vision—not just making things work, but making them work well.

In your words, what does it mean to be a next-gen admin?

Being a next-gen admin is about more than clicks and workflows. It’s about orchestrating intelligently connected systems that act on data and drive results while staying safe and compliant.

We combine technical skill with strategic thinking, use AI and LLMs alongside tools like Data 360 and Flow, and build experiences ranging from external sites to internal Slack interactions.

We’re not just solving today’s problems; we’re designing and building innovations for tomorrow. A next-gen admin turns Salesforce into a platform that works for people, for the future, and for everyone who relies on our innovations.

The conversation is just getting started

The Next-Gen Admin is still being defined—and your voice matters. What skills are you building? What questions are you wrestling with? Join the conversation.