Salesforce glossary

A record representing a company or organization you do business with. Accounts can be linked to contacts, opportunities, cases, and other records to build a complete view of customer relationships.

Tasks, events, and calls logged against records. Activities track interactions with leads, contacts, and accounts, providing a timeline of engagement for sales and support teams.

Salesforce's autonomous AI agent platform that allows organizations to build and deploy AI agents capable of taking actions across Salesforce applications — from answering customer questions to automating complex business workflows.

Salesforce's proprietary, strongly-typed programming language similar to Java. Used to write server-side logic including triggers, controllers, batch jobs, and web services that run on the Salesforce platform.

A set of protocols allowing external applications to interact with Salesforce data and functionality. Salesforce offers REST, SOAP, Bulk, Streaming, and Metadata APIs for different use cases.

Salesforce's enterprise marketplace for third-party applications, components, and consulting services. It features thousands of solutions built on the Salesforce platform, both free and paid.

An automated process that specifies a sequence of steps required to approve a record. Approval processes can route requests to different approvers based on criteria and include email notifications.

A RESTful API optimized for loading or deleting large volumes of data. Bulk API processes data asynchronously in batches, making it ideal for data migration and large-scale operations.

A record used to track and manage marketing initiatives such as email campaigns, events, webinars, and advertisements. Campaigns track ROI by linking to leads and opportunities.

A record representing a customer issue, question, or feedback. Cases are central to Service Cloud and support workflows, tracking resolution from creation through closure.

A streaming feature that publishes change events for Salesforce record modifications. External systems can subscribe to these events to stay synchronized with Salesforce data in near real-time.

Salesforce's e-commerce platform enabling B2C and B2B online storefronts. It provides tools for product management, pricing, promotions, order management, and personalized shopping experiences.

A record representing an individual person associated with an account. Contacts store personal details, communication preferences, and serve as the primary relationship link for sales and service.

A Salesforce product that helps sales teams generate accurate quotes quickly. CPQ automates product configuration, pricing rules, discounting, and quote document generation.

A user-defined database table in Salesforce that extends the platform beyond standard objects. Custom objects can have their own fields, relationships, page layouts, and automation.

A visual display of key metrics built from report data. Dashboards use components like charts, gauges, tables, and metrics to provide at-a-glance business intelligence.

Salesforce's customer data platform (CDP) that unifies data from any source — CRM, mobile, web, IoT — into a single customer profile. It powers segmentation, analytics, and AI-driven personalization across all Salesforce products.

A desktop application for importing, exporting, updating, and deleting large volumes of Salesforce records. Data Loader supports CSV files and can process up to millions of records.

Salesforce's AI technology layer embedded across the platform. Einstein provides predictive analytics, natural language processing, image recognition, and automated insights for sales, service, and marketing.

Generative AI capabilities built into Salesforce that create personalized content — emails, summaries, knowledge articles — using CRM data combined with large language models.

A platform for building branded digital experiences including customer portals, partner communities, help centers, and forums. Formerly known as Community Cloud.

A single data element within a Salesforce object, similar to a column in a database table. Fields can be standard (built-in) or custom, with various data types like text, number, date, and picklist.

An industry-specific Salesforce solution for banking, insurance, and wealth management. It includes specialized data models, compliance tools, and client relationship management features.

Salesforce's primary automation tool for building complex business processes with a visual, declarative interface. Flows can create, update, and delete records, call APIs, send emails, display screens, and execute logic without code.

The visual drag-and-drop tool used to create and edit Flows. Flow Builder provides elements for logic, data operations, screen interactions, and subflow orchestration.

A read-only field that derives its value from a formula expression using other fields, operators, and functions. Formula fields auto-calculate and are useful for computed values across records.

Enforced runtime limits in Salesforce that prevent any single tenant from monopolizing shared resources. Limits include SOQL queries (100 per transaction), DML statements (150), and CPU time (10,000ms).

A Salesforce solution designed for healthcare and life sciences organizations. It provides patient management, care coordination, clinical data models, and HIPAA-compliant features.

A cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) owned by Salesforce for building and deploying custom applications. Heroku supports multiple languages and integrates with Salesforce through Heroku Connect.

A company that builds and distributes applications on the Salesforce platform, typically through AppExchange. ISVs use managed packages to distribute their solutions to customers.

A collection of articles that provide information and solutions for common customer issues. Salesforce Knowledge integrates with Service Cloud to help agents and customers find answers quickly.

A record representing a prospective customer who has shown interest but hasn't been qualified. Leads can be converted into accounts, contacts, and opportunities once qualified by sales.

Salesforce's modern UI framework based on web standards (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). LWC uses native web components for high performance and is the recommended approach for building custom Salesforce interfaces.

A bundle of Salesforce components (objects, classes, pages) distributed through AppExchange. Managed packages have intellectual property protection and support versioning and upgrades.

Salesforce's digital marketing platform for managing customer journeys across email, mobile, social media, advertising, and web channels. It includes tools for automation, personalization, and analytics.

An API used to retrieve, deploy, create, update, and delete customization information (metadata) in a Salesforce organization. Essential for DevOps workflows, migrations, and CI/CD pipelines.

Salesforce's integration and API management platform. MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform enables organizations to connect any application, data source, or device through APIs and integration flows.

A database table in Salesforce that stores records of a specific type. Standard objects (Account, Contact, Opportunity) come built-in; custom objects can be created to model any business entity.

A record representing a potential revenue-generating deal. Opportunities track deal stages, amounts, close dates, and probability, forming the core of Sales Cloud pipeline management.

A suite of declarative tools for building guided digital experiences including FlexCards, OmniScripts, DataRaptors, and Integration Procedures — without writing code.

A configuration that controls which fields, related lists, buttons, and sections appear when users view or edit a record. Page layouts can vary by record type and user profile.

A collection of permissions and access settings that extend a user's functional access without changing their profile. Permission sets are additive and can be assigned to multiple users.

A publish-subscribe messaging framework on the Salesforce platform. Platform events enable event-driven architecture, allowing systems to communicate asynchronously through defined event messages.

A legacy declarative automation tool for automating business processes (now superseded by Flow). Process Builder creates if/then rules that trigger actions when record criteria are met.

A collection of settings and permissions that defines what a user can see and do in Salesforce. Every user is assigned exactly one profile which controls object access, field visibility, and app permissions.

A tool for creating, testing, and deploying prompt templates that ground AI responses in Salesforce CRM data. Prompt Builder connects generative AI capabilities to business context.

A feature that allows different business processes, picklist values, and page layouts for the same object. Record types customize the user experience based on the type of record being created.

A list of records that meet defined criteria, displayed in rows and columns. Salesforce reports support tabular, summary, matrix, and joined formats with filtering, grouping, and charting.

Salesforce's RESTful web service API for accessing and manipulating data using standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE). REST API uses JSON and is ideal for mobile and web application integrations.

A Salesforce solution that unifies CPQ, billing, and revenue management. Revenue Cloud automates the entire revenue lifecycle from quote to cash, including subscription management.

A record-level security mechanism that controls visibility of data based on a user's position in the organizational hierarchy. Users higher in the hierarchy can access records owned by those below them.

Salesforce's flagship CRM product for managing sales processes. It includes lead management, opportunity tracking, forecasting, territory management, and sales analytics.

A copy of a Salesforce production environment used for development, testing, and training. Sandboxes come in four types: Developer, Developer Pro, Partial Copy, and Full, each with different data and feature sets.

A temporary, configurable Salesforce environment used for development and testing. Scratch orgs are central to Salesforce DX and source-driven development, created from configuration files.

Salesforce's customer service platform providing case management, omnichannel routing, knowledge bases, service consoles, chatbots, and field service capabilities.

Rules that extend record access beyond the organization-wide defaults. Sharing rules can be criteria-based or ownership-based and grant additional read or read/write access to specific groups of users.

A suite of security products including Platform Encryption, Event Monitoring, and Field Audit Trail. Shield provides enterprise-grade compliance and data protection for regulated industries.

Salesforce's collaboration platform that integrates with Salesforce CRM to enable team communication, workflow automation, and real-time collaboration on deals, cases, and projects.

A web service API using XML-based SOAP protocol for integrating with Salesforce. SOAP API provides strong typing and is commonly used in enterprise integrations with established SOAP infrastructure.

A query language similar to SQL used to search Salesforce data. SOQL retrieves records from a single object or related objects using SELECT statements with WHERE clauses and relationship traversals.

A search language for performing text searches across multiple objects simultaneously. SOSL returns records matching search terms and is useful for global search functionality.

Salesforce's business intelligence and data visualization platform. Tableau enables interactive dashboards, data exploration, and advanced analytics from virtually any data source.

An activity record representing a to-do item or action that needs to be completed. Tasks can be assigned to users, associated with records, and tracked through completion.

Apex code that executes before or after data manipulation events on Salesforce records (insert, update, delete, undelete). Triggers enable complex business logic that runs automatically on record changes.

A rule that verifies data entered by users meets specified criteria before saving. Validation rules use formula expressions and display error messages when conditions are not met.

A filtered, sortable list of records for a specific object. List views can be private or shared, and are configurable with column selection, filter criteria, and chart visualizations.

Salesforce's legacy UI framework using tag-based markup similar to HTML. While still supported, Visualforce is being superseded by Lightning Web Components for new development.

A legacy automation feature that triggers actions (field updates, email alerts, tasks, outbound messages) when a record meets specified criteria. Workflow rules are now superseded by Flow.