The complete guide to Salesforce AI documentation in 2025

If you’ve ever been a Salesforce admin, you know the feeling. Your mouse is hovering over the ‘delete’ button on some custom field that looks like it’s been there since the beginning of time. A cold sweat starts to form. What does this thing do? Who put it here? What will explode if I get rid of it?

That little moment of panic is what life is like in a Salesforce org with little to no documentation. And as more companies bring AI into their Salesforce setup, that "little" problem is turning into a massive one. Your AI can't work its magic if it's flying blind.

This guide will walk you through what Salesforce AI documentation actually means, why it’s suddenly so important, and how you can use AI to both create and find the knowledge you need. It’s time to turn that tangled mess into something that actually works.

What exactly is Salesforce AI documentation?

When people talk about Salesforce AI documentation, they usually mean one of two things. You really need to get both right for your AI strategy to work.

First, there’s documentation for your AI. This is about keeping a clear, updated record of your Salesforce org's metadata, processes, and data models. As some experts say, this documentation is basically "fuel for AI." It gives tools like Salesforce Einstein the context they need to give you smart, accurate answers. Without it, you're just feeding your expensive AI models a bunch of mystery data and hoping for the best.

Then, there's using AI to create your documentation. This is a newer idea, where AI-powered tools can scan your entire Salesforce configuration, from Apex code to custom objects, and spit out explanations in plain English. This is a huge help for teams trying to figure out what’s going on in a complex org without spending months playing detective.

A good Salesforce strategy needs both. You have to create solid documentation, and you should use AI to make that job a whole lot easier.

Why old-school documentation methods fail

The old way of doing things, like keeping massive Word documents or forgotten wiki pages updated, just isn't cutting it. In an era where AI needs up-to-the-minute information, these static documents are more of a liability than a help.

Here’s where things usually go wrong:

It goes stale, fast. Salesforce orgs are living things. They're constantly changing with every new project or user request. Manual documentation is out of date almost as soon as you write it, and once your team stops trusting the docs, they stop using them.

It's a pain to create (and nobody does it the same way). Let's be honest, writing documentation is probably at the bottom of everyone's to-do list. When it does get done, it's often rushed. One person might write a novel for a simple validation rule, while another gives you a single, cryptic sentence for a monster of an Apex trigger. This inconsistency makes it unreliable. One Salesforce expert even noted that around "40% of development time is dealing with technical debt," and a big chunk of that is just trying to figure out how things work.

It's scattered everywhere. Even if the documentation exists, it’s probably spread across five different places. You’ve got tech specs in Confluence, business needs in Google Docs, process maps in Miro, and important updates buried in some long-forgotten Slack channel. This turns your team into digital archaeologists, always digging for info instead of actually working.

AI can't make sense of the mess. AI models work best with structured, connected information. A random pile of documents is nearly impossible for an AI to understand. It can’t see how things relate to each other, which really limits its ability to answer questions or find useful patterns.

How to use AI to generate and maintain your Salesforce documentation

While AI is making good documentation more necessary, it's also giving us the tools to fix the problem. Instead of thinking of documentation as a boring manual task, you can now use AI to do most of the heavy lifting.

Use AI to explain configurations

There's a new wave of tools out there, like Panaya ForeSight, Sweep, and Salto, that can connect to your Salesforce org and automatically generate documentation. They scan your objects, fields, and code, then use generative AI to write out what everything does and how it's all connected.

A screenshot of Panaya ForeSight's landing page, a tool for Salesforce AI documentation.

A screenshot of Sweep's landing page, a tool for Salesforce AI documentation.

This can save you a ton of time, especially if you've just inherited a messy, undocumented org. It helps you get a quick lay of the land and find hidden dependencies before they cause problems.

But there's a catch. These tools are great at explaining the what, but they almost always miss the why. An AI can tell you that a validation rule stops a user from saving an opportunity without a close date, but it can’t tell you that the rule exists because the finance team needed it for a new report they started in Q3. That business context is still stuck in meeting notes, project plans, and people's heads.

Why the human touch is still required

AI-generated documentation is a fantastic starting point, but it's not the final product. You still need a human to check it for accuracy and add that all-important business context.

Here are a few good habits that Salesforce experts recommend to make your docs useful for both people and AI:

• Use clear names and descriptions. This is the simplest form of documentation, and it’s the one most people skip. An AI can do a lot more with a field named "Annual_Contract_Value__c" that has the description "Total contract value for a 12-month period" than it can with a field named "ACV" and a blank description.

• Agree on some standards. When everyone on the team uses the same format for things like process maps or metadata descriptions, it creates consistency that both your team and your AI can understand.

• Document as you go. The best time to document a change is right when you're making it. Adding a quick note to a Jira ticket or updating a description field only takes a minute, but it can save someone else hours of digging around later.

This video explains how to use screen recording and AI tools to quickly create Salesforce documentation.

A simple workflow for creating Salesforce documentation with AI

Here’s a straightforward process your team can start using right away:

1. Run an analysis tool to get a baseline of documentation for your current org. Think of it as a snapshot of how things are right now.

2. Add the business context. Get your team to review what the AI generated and add the "why" behind it all. Link out to project briefs, user stories, or process maps in tools like Confluence, Jira, or Google Docs.

3. Make it a habit. Build documentation into your workflow for all new changes. Make it a required step before any project is considered "done."

4. Keep it all in one place. Well, not literally one place, but make sure it's all accessible from a central knowledge hub.

Making your Salesforce AI documentation easy to find and use

Creating documentation is only half the job. If your team can't find the information when they actually need it, all that work was for nothing. The real goal is to make all that knowledge instantly available.

The problem with knowledge silos

Even when you're committed to documenting everything, information still ends up fragmented. Your technical docs are in one place, your business requirements are in another, and daily questions get answered and then lost in a sea of Slack messages.

This means everyone, from admins and developers to support agents, is constantly on a treasure hunt for answers. They have to stop what they're doing, jump between different apps, and usually end up asking a question that’s already been answered somewhere.

Creating a unified knowledge layer

The fix isn't to force everyone to use a single, clunky documentation platform. Instead, you can set up an AI-powered assistant that sits on top of all your existing knowledge sources, giving your team one simple place to ask questions.

This way, you can keep your documentation right where it is, but make it instantly useful. Instead of digging through five different platforms, a team member can just ask a question in plain English and get an answer right away.

Give your team instant answers from your Salesforce documentation

This is exactly what a tool like eesel AI is designed for. It connects to all the places your Salesforce AI documentation might be stored and acts as a single source of truth.

With a product like their AI Internal Chat, anyone on your team, whether they're a new support agent or a senior developer, can ask questions and get immediate, accurate answers based on your company's own documentation.

Imagine being able to ask:

• "What's our process for handling a B2B refund in Salesforce?"

• "Why did we create the "Discount_Approval__c" object, and what depends on it?"

• "Where's that process map for the new lead assignment rules?"

A tool like eesel AI can answer these in seconds by pulling information directly from your Confluence pages, Google Docs, and Slack history. It connects to your existing sources in minutes, so you don't have to migrate a single document. It’s a powerful Q&A bot for your team that you can get up and running on your own, without a bunch of sales calls. The AI is also set up to only use the documentation you provide, so the answers are always relevant and trustworthy.

Prepare your org for an AI-powered future

Salesforce AI documentation isn't just a "nice-to-have" anymore. It's a must-have if you want to use AI well and keep your org running smoothly. The best approach has two parts: use AI to speed up the creation of your documentation, then use an AI-powered tool to make that knowledge instantly accessible to your entire team.

By getting a handle on your documentation, you're not just cleaning up old messes. You're building a smarter, more agile organization that’s ready for whatever comes next with AI.

Ready to make your Salesforce AI documentation actually useful?

Creating great documentation is the first step. Making it easy to find is the next. eesel AI plugs into your Confluence, Google Docs, Slack, and other tools to give your team an AI assistant that provides instant, trusted answers from your Salesforce documentation.

Get started for free or book a demo to see how it works.