Agentforce Actions Guide (2026): Native Flows vs. MuleSoft vs. External Services

Salesforce's Agentforce runs on the Atlas Reasoning Engine, operating in a reason → act → observe loop to complete real business work, not just answer questions. If your agent lives entirely inside Salesforce (updating an Opportunity, querying Data Cloud), you can ship fast.

Most deployments stall when the agent needs to interact with the rest of your stack: post to Slack, update Jira/Linear, check a GitHub PR, schedule a meeting, or create a PagerDuty incident. That's where "Actions" become the bottleneck.

Salesforce documentation will point you toward Flow HTTP Callouts, their Standard Actions library, or MuleSoft. Each presents significant trade-offs for engineering teams trying to move fast without breaking the bank or their security posture.

What Is an Agentforce "Action"?

An Agentforce Action is a callable tool that the Atlas engine can invoke to execute a step in its plan. Actions run either within Salesforce (native operations) or in external systems via External Services actions generated from OpenAPI specifications.

Reasoning is only helpful if the agent can reliably execute actions, securely and with the proper permissions, across your SaaS ecosystem.

Key Takeaways

• Bottleneck: Agentforce can reason, but deployments fail when agents can't reliably execute external actions.

• Native tradeoffs: Flow HTTP Callouts + per-user Named Credentials add ongoing auth/admin burden. Schema changes can break flows.

• Coverage gaps: Standard Actions and connectors rarely cover the long tail or deep endpoints.

• Best pattern: Curated OpenAPI specs imported into External Services create discoverable Agentforce actions without shipping brittle glue code.

• The Solution: Composio acts as a bridge, generating secure, OpenAPI-compliant connectors that import directly into Salesforce as Actions.

• The Result: You deploy deeply integrated agents in days, accessing the "long tail" of SaaS tools with user-level security strictly enforced.

The Agentforce Actions Bottleneck (Why Most Deployments Stall)

The Atlas engine uses a sophisticated reasoning loop. Atlas evaluates a user query, plans a path, and looks for tools to execute that plan. If your agent lives entirely within the CRM (updating Opportunities or querying Data Cloud), you're fine.

Friction arises when business logic bleeds outside the Salesforce ecosystem. A Sales Agent is useless if they can't schedule a Google Calendar meeting. A Support Agent fails if they can't check the status of a Linear ticket.

To bridge this "actions gap," you have three choices:

1. Flow HTTP Callouts / Apex (the management + brittleness trap)

2. Standard Actions / MuleSoft (breadth vs depth vs velocity tradeoffs)

3. Generic iPaaS (the security context gap)

Each of these standard patterns often fails to meet Agentforce's specific needs.

Agentforce Integration Options Compared

Why Standard Integration Patterns Fail Agentforce

1. Flow HTTP Callouts & Apex (The Management Trap)

Salesforce has improved here. You no longer need to write raw auth code in Apex. You can use Named Credentials to handle the OAuth handshake, and Flow HTTP Callouts allow no-code integration. This works well for simple, system-to-system connections.

The Friction: The problem isn't the handshake. It's the User Context.

Agentforce requires agents to act as the user (e.g., "Post to Slack as Sarah"). To achieve this natively, you must configure "Per-User" Named Credentials. This requires setting up individual Auth Providers and managing granular scopes for every external tool.

Scaling this is painful.

• Schema Complexity: Flow HTTP Callouts often choke on the massive, nested JSON schemas returned by modern APIs like Jira or GitHub.

• Maintenance: You still manually map inputs and outputs. If the external API changes its schema, your Flow breaks, and your agent fails.

2. Standard Actions & MuleSoft (Breadth vs. Depth vs. Velocity)

Salesforce is rapidly building a library of "Standard Actions" for major platforms (like Jira or ServiceNow). If the standard action does exactly what you need, use it.

The Reality: Enterprise workflows rarely fit "Standard" boxes.

• The Breadth Gap (The Long Tail): Your organization likely uses 50+ tools: Linear, Notion, PagerDuty, Brex, and Asana. Salesforce won't build native connectors for all of them. Spinning up a MuleSoft project for these "long tail" apps kills velocity.

• The Depth Gap: Standard connectors often expose only the top 10% of API endpoints (e.g., "Create Ticket"). If your agent needs to "Update a Custom Field" or "Fetch Transition History," and that endpoint isn't exposed, you're back to square one: building it yourself.

3. The Security Gap (The Context Problem)

This is the most critical failure point of generic iPaaS tools (like Zapier). These tools typically rely on a "System User," one API key that rules them all.

The Risk: Imagine an intern asks the Agent, "What are the Q3 strategic risks?" The Agent, reasoning that it needs to check documentation, uses a System Key for Google Drive to search for "Risks." Because the System Key has admin access, the Agent pulls a confidential M&A document that the intern should never see.

The Requirement: You need strict User-Level OAuth. The agent must act as the user, respecting their specific permissions in the external tool.

The Composio Approach: Managed Actions for Agentforce

Composio solves the "Hands" problem by providing a specialized integration layer designed for AI agents. Composio doesn't replace your MuleSoft backbone. It handles the agile, long-tail SaaS connections that your agents need now, with 100% API coverage.

Composio maps Salesforce Users to External Identities and then generates standard OpenAPI Specifications that Salesforce natively supports.

The Workflow:

1. Connect & Curate: A developer selects the tools (e.g., GitHub, Slack) and specifically selects which actions to expose.

2. Export: Composio generates a curated, strictly typed OpenAPI Spec optimized for Salesforce limits. This avoids the "spec bloat" errors common when importing massive raw API definitions into External Services.

3. Import: The developer imports this optimized spec into Salesforce "External Services."

4. Deploy: Agentforce immediately recognizes these new endpoints as "Actions" available to the Atlas Engine.

You don't fight with Flow JSON parsers or configure Auth Providers. You import capabilities.

Deep Dive: The "Deal Room" Workflow

Here's a real-world scenario that shows how this architecture works.

Scenario: A Sales Rep tells the agent:

"Update the Acme deal stage and notify the solutions team channel."

Step 1: Reasoning (The Brain)

The Atlas Engine analyzes the intent. Atlas identifies two distinct tasks: update a Salesforce Object and send a message to Slack.

Step 2: Data Access (Internal)

The Agent uses standard Salesforce permissions to update the Opportunity record.

Step 3: External Action (The Hands)

The Agent recognizes it needs to send a message. The Agent calls the Composio_Slack_PostMessage action defined in External Services.

Step 4: Authentication (The Passthrough)

The request routes through Composio. Composio operates as a secure passthrough execution layer.

• Composio identifies that Sales Rep Sarah triggered the agent.

• Composio injects Sarah's specific OAuth credentials into the header in-flight.

• Zero-Data Retention: The payload (message content) passes through our encryption tunnel without being stored in our databases. We maintain SOC 2 compliance and a zero-knowledge architecture for your payload data.

Step 5: Observation

Composio returns a success flag or a structured error message. Atlas confirms the action to the user.

Note on data handling: In production deployments, enterprises often require configurable logging/retention. Composio supports enterprise security controls (e.g., SOC 2) and can minimize or avoid payload logging depending on policy and environment.

Why "User-Level" Auth Is Non-Negotiable

In an autonomous agent world, Least Privilege is the only defense against data leaks. When you use "System" credentials (common in generic integrations), you bypass the security controls of your external SaaS tools.

Composio creates a 1:1 map between the Salesforce User and the External Tool Identity. This ensures your Agent never defaults to "superuser." You can confidently deploy agents that interact with sensitive systems like Jira, GitHub, or HRIS platforms, knowing they can't transcend the permissions of the human commanding them.

Agentforce Actions Deployment Checklist (Production-Ready)

Use this checklist to avoid the most common "works in sandbox, fails in prod" issues:

1. Choose identity model: Default to per-user auth for least privilege.

2. Define an action allowlist: Only expose the actions your agent should use (principle of minimal capability).

3. Use curated OpenAPI: Prefer a spec that's typed, minimal, and importer-friendly. Avoid massive raw API definitions.

4. Validate schema + limits: Confirm request/response shapes won't break your runtime (large nested objects, optional fields, pagination).

5. Add policy controls: Logging/retention, audit trails, environment separation, and secrets handling should match security requirements.

6. Fail safely: Ensure errors return structured messages so Atlas can recover (e.g., by asking for missing fields, retrying, or escalating).

7. Measure cost + reliability: Track action success rate, retries, and timeouts. Metered actions mean reliability affects ROI.

Conclusion

Agentforce represents the future of CRM, but connectivity constraints limit it. The Atlas Reasoning Engine is ready to run, but it needs tools to execute effectively.

Don't let your agents fail because of schema errors in Flow, wait weeks for a MuleSoft connector, or hit a dead end because a Standard Action lacks the specific API endpoint you need.

Build the brain in Salesforce. Let Composio handle the hands. Sign up for free today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Agentforce integration compare to MuleSoft?

MuleSoft is powerful for legacy, heavy-duty data orchestration but is often too slow and expensive for agile AI agents. For Agentforce, using External Services via OpenAPI specs is significantly faster to deploy. It avoids the high operational burden of MuleSoft while solving the "long-tail" app connectivity problem that slows down engineering teams.

Can Salesforce Agentforce connect to tools like Jira, GitHub, and Slack?

Yes. While native coverage can be spotty, you can bridge this gap by importing curated OpenAPI specifications into Salesforce. This allows Agentforce to perform complex actions—like checking GitHub PR status, updating Jira tickets, or sending Slack notifications—directly from the reasoning engine.

Does Composio store my data?

No. Composio operates as a passthrough execution layer. We manage authentication tokens (encrypted at rest), but we don't store the action payloads (inputs or outputs) your agents execute. Our logs can be configured for zero-knowledge, ensuring compliance with strict data-residency and privacy requirements (SOC 2).

Why do I need Composio if Salesforce has "Standard Actions"?

Salesforce Standard Actions work well for everyday use cases on major platforms (e.g., "Create Jira Ticket"). If you need to access the "Long Tail" of apps (Notion, Linear, PagerDuty) or need "Depth" (e.g., accessing a specific, non-standard API endpoint in Jira), Standard Actions fall short. Composio provides connectors for hundreds of apps and exposes their whole API surface area, not just the most common actions.

How does Composio connect to Salesforce Agentforce?

Composio exports standard OpenAPI specifications. You import these specs directly into Salesforce "External Services." This creates native "Actions" that the Agentforce Atlas Engine can discover and use immediately.

Does this consume Salesforce Flex Credits?

Yes, the Agent's action execution consumes Flex Credits, just like any other action. Because Composio connectors are maintained and strictly typed, you avoid wasting credits on failed API calls, retries, or "hallucinated" parameters that often occur with brittle home-grown integrations. The cost standardizes at $0.10 USD per action.

How does this handle security and permissions?

Composio uses "User-Level" authentication. When an agent executes an action, it uses the authentication credentials of the specific Salesforce user interacting with the agent. This ensures the agent never accesses data or performs actions that the human user isn't authorized to do in the external system.

What is the timeout limit for an External Service call?

External Services synchronous operations time out after 120 seconds. This is the hard limit for any single External Service callout. When you configure custom timeouts in Apex, the maximum is 120 seconds, the minimum is 1 millisecond, and the default is 10 seconds. Additionally, there's a cumulative limit of 120 seconds for all callouts within a single Apex transaction.

What is the max JSON payload size?

The External Services schema definition itself has a limit of 100,000 characters when you register your OpenAPI specification. However, Salesforce documentation does not specify a hard limit on the size of individual JSON request payloads for External Services calls. For general REST API requests, the combined URI and headers cannot exceed 16,384 bytes. If you're working with larger payloads, test thoroughly and consider breaking requests into smaller chunks.

If I use a bridge like Composio, will my agent be slow? How much latency does the 'hop' add?

Composio adds approximately 2-3 seconds of overhead per agent call. This is consistent with other production-grade MCP (Model Context Protocol) gateways, which add minimal network latency but are highly optimized for performance. Whether this is acceptable depends on your use case. For most, this overhead is "typically a worthwhile trade-off for the significant gains in security, observability, centralized management, and developer efficiency." For simple parameter passing, avoid agent-based orchestration; use it only when you have complex multi-step workflows that require reasoning across 3+ tools.