Web grounding for real-time external data
Key Takeaway
When an agent must answer from current information that is not stored in Salesforce, such as what public websites show right now, add the Search the Web standard action to the agent in a subagent.
Web grounding gives an agent or a prompt template current information from the internet that is not stored in Salesforce, such as news, market trends, or competitor details. The main tool is the Search the Web action, which sends a query to a search provider and returns a summary with citations. Web grounding complements internal grounding, such as Agentforce Data Library and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) in Data 360, which base responses on your own org's information.
When to choose web grounding
The right grounding technique depends on where the facts live.
If the answer depends on real-time or external information that is not in Salesforce CRM...
Use web grounding with the Search the Web action.
If the facts live inside your org...
Use Agentforce Data Library or RAG in Data 360, because they are a better fit than a live web search.
Typical cases for web grounding are:
- News
- Market trends
- Competitor details
- Product comparisons
- Salesforce answers that need added context from the web
Agentforce Data Library indexes your knowledge articles and fields, your file uploads, or web sources. RAG in Data 360 grounds prompts with knowledge from unstructured data sources.