The 69 terms you will hear when buying, building or running Salesforce, explained for the people who sign off on the project rather than the people who configure it.
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An account is the Salesforce record for a company or organization you do business with, such as a customer, partner, or prospect. Contacts, opportunities, and cases hang off it. A clean account structure, including parent and child relationships, gives sales and service one shared view of each customer and keeps reporting on revenue and activity trustworthy.
Learn more →Agentforce is Salesforce's platform for building AI agents that can answer questions and take actions, such as updating records or resolving routine service requests, inside your org and channels. Agents follow instructions and topics you define and use your own data and automation. Results depend heavily on data quality, clear permissions, and well-built flows underneath, so readiness work usually comes first.
Learn more →Apex is Salesforce's own programming language, used when declarative tools such as Flow cannot handle a requirement cleanly. Developers write Apex for complex business logic, integrations, and custom processing. It runs on Salesforce servers, must stay within governor limits, and requires automated test coverage before deployment to production, so it adds capability but also long-term maintenance responsibility.
Salesforce is a shared, multitenant platform, so it caps how much work any one customer can do. API limits control how many calls outside systems can make over a period. Governor limits cap what a single transaction of code or automation can consume. Designs that ignore these limits tend to fail under real data volumes, so architects plan integrations and automation around them from the start.
Learn more →AppExchange is Salesforce's marketplace for apps, components, and consulting listings that extend an org. Many packages install directly into Salesforce and add objects, automation, or screens. Picking the right app can save months of custom build, but each package brings its own licensing, security review, upgrade cycle, and data model, so evaluate fit and long-term cost before installing.
A case is the Service Cloud record for a customer question, problem, or request. It tracks who raised it, what it concerns, its status, priority, and every interaction until it is closed. Well-designed case processes, with clear statuses, assignment rules, and escalation paths, are the foundation of service reporting and of any routing or AI deflection you add later.
Learn more →A change set is Salesforce's built-in, point-and-click way to move configuration and code from one connected org to another, typically from a sandbox to production. It works for simple deployments but has no version history, cannot easily remove components, and becomes error-prone as teams grow. Many organizations move to DevOps Center or source-control-based pipelines for more predictable releases.
Learn more →A connected app is a configuration in Salesforce that lets an outside application authenticate and access your org through APIs, usually with OAuth. It controls which users can connect, what scopes they get, and session policies. Reviewing connected apps regularly matters because an unused or overly permissive connection is a common and easily overlooked path into company data.
Learn more →A contact is the Salesforce record for an individual person, usually linked to an account. It stores details such as name, title, email, and phone, and ties that person to opportunities, cases, and campaigns. Keeping contacts deduplicated and correctly linked lets sales, service, and marketing see the same person and avoids embarrassing duplicate outreach.
Learn more →CPQ stands for configure, price, quote: tools that let sellers build valid product bundles, apply pricing and discount rules, and generate quotes. Salesforce CPQ is now end of sale for new customers, though existing customers can keep using, renewing, and getting support for it; Revenue Cloud Advanced is its successor. Either way, clean products and pricing rules matter more than the tool.
Learn more →CRM Analytics, formerly known as Tableau CRM and Einstein Analytics, is Salesforce's native analytics product for building interactive dashboards and datasets inside Salesforce. It can combine Salesforce and external data and embed insights on record pages. It suits teams that need more than standard reports but want analytics to live within the CRM where users already work.
A custom object is a database table your team creates in Salesforce to store information that standard objects do not cover, such as projects, contracts, or equipment. Custom objects get the same platform features as standard ones, including reports, security, and automation. Create them deliberately, because unnecessary custom objects fragment data and add long-term maintenance.
Cutover is the planned switch from an old system or process to the new Salesforce setup. It covers the final data load, freezing changes in the legacy system, deploying to production, enabling users, and a rollback plan if something goes wrong. A rehearsed, hour-by-hour cutover plan is what separates a calm go-live weekend from a chaotic one.
Learn more →A dashboard is a visual page of charts, tables, and key figures built from Salesforce reports. Executives use dashboards to track pipeline, service performance, or adoption at a glance, and managers use them to coach teams. Dashboards are only as reliable as the reports and data behind them, so consistent definitions and clean data come first.
Data 360 is the current name for the product Salesforce previously called Data Cloud. It brings customer data from Salesforce and outside sources into unified profiles that can drive segmentation, analytics, automation, and AI. It is often the data foundation for Agentforce. Value depends on choosing the right sources, identity rules, and use cases before connecting everything.
Learn more →DevOps Center is Salesforce's tool for managing changes and releases with source control behind the scenes. Admins and developers track work items, move changes through pipeline stages, and see what is deployed where, without relying on change sets. It helps teams release more predictably and keep an audit trail of what changed, when, and why.
Learn more →Discovery is the first phase of a Salesforce project, where the partner and your team document goals, current processes, pain points, data sources, integrations, and constraints. It produces requirements, a proposed design, and a realistic scope and plan. Skipping or rushing discovery is one of the most common reasons projects go over budget or miss what users actually need.
Learn more →Matching rules define how Salesforce decides two records are likely the same, for example by comparing company name and website. Duplicate rules decide what happens when a match is found, such as warning the user, blocking the save, or reporting it. Together they keep new duplicates out, which protects reporting, routing, and customer experience, but existing duplicates still need a cleanup project.
Learn more →Entitlements define what level of support a customer is owed, and milestones track service-level agreement targets such as first response or resolution time on cases. Salesforce can show countdowns, warn agents, and escalate when targets are at risk. Set up correctly, they turn SLA commitments in contracts into something your service team can actually see and manage every day.
Learn more →An Experience Cloud site is a branded portal or website built on Salesforce, used for customer self-service, partner collaboration, or member communities. External users log in to view records, submit cases, or share information stored in your org. Because outsiders are accessing your data, licensing, sharing settings, and page design must be planned together from the start.
Learn more →A field is a single piece of information stored on a record, such as a phone number, status, amount, or date. Fields have types that control what users can enter, and they can be required, calculated by formula, or restricted by security. Too many unused or overlapping fields clutter screens and reports, so field sprawl is a common cleanup target.
Field-level security controls whether a user can see or edit a specific field, regardless of whether they can access the record. It is set through profiles and permission sets. It matters for protecting sensitive data such as salaries, health details, or financial information, and it also affects what integrations, reports, and AI features are able to read.
Learn more →Flow is Salesforce's main tool for building automation without code. Record-triggered flows run when data changes, screen flows guide users through step-by-step forms, and scheduled flows run on a timetable. Flow replaced Workflow Rules and Process Builder as Salesforce's recommended automation tool. Good flow design, naming, and documentation keep automation understandable as the org grows.
Learn more →Grounding means supplying an AI model with relevant, current information from your own systems, such as record details or knowledge articles, when it generates a response. In Salesforce, prompt templates and agents pull in CRM and Data 360 data for this purpose. Grounding makes AI answers more accurate and specific, but only if the underlying data is correct and properly permissioned.
Learn more →A guest user is the built-in identity Salesforce uses for unauthenticated visitors to a public Experience Cloud site or form. Anything the guest user can see is effectively public. Misconfigured guest user sharing has exposed sensitive records in real orgs, so its object access, sharing rules, and API exposure deserve a careful, regular review.
Learn more →Health Check is a built-in Salesforce Setup tool that compares your org's security settings, such as password, session, and login policies, against a Salesforce baseline or a custom one and gives a score. It is a quick way to spot weak settings. It covers configuration only, not your data model, automation, or sharing design, which a broader partner-led assessment reviews.
Learn more →Hypercare is the period right after go-live when the project team provides intensified support. The team watches for errors, answers user questions quickly, fixes defects, and tracks adoption before handing the org over to normal support. A defined hypercare window with clear exit criteria helps users build confidence and catches issues before they become habits.
Learn more →An integration user is a dedicated Salesforce user account that an outside system uses to connect, rather than borrowing a real person's login. It is usually limited to API access and given only the permissions the integration needs. This makes activity easier to audit, prevents breakage when employees leave, and reduces the damage if credentials are ever compromised.
Learn more →Salesforce Knowledge is a library of articles, such as how-to guides, troubleshooting steps, and policies, that agents and customers can search. Articles can be attached to cases, shown in portals, and used to ground AI responses. A governed knowledge base with owners, review cycles, and clear categories reduces repeat questions and improves both agent and AI answers.
Learn more →A lead is a Salesforce record for a prospective buyer who has not yet been qualified, often from a web form, event, or list. Sales or marketing works the lead and, if it is promising, converts it into an account, contact, and usually an opportunity. Clear qualification criteria and routing rules keep leads from going stale or being worked twice.
Learn more →Lightning App Builder is Salesforce's drag-and-drop tool for designing Lightning pages, including record pages, home pages, and app pages. Admins place components, add tabs, and show or hide sections based on rules such as record type or user permission. Well-designed pages put the right information in front of each role and reduce clicks, which directly improves adoption.
Learn more →Lightning Web Components, often shortened to LWC, is Salesforce's modern framework for building custom user interface components using standard web technologies. Developers use LWC when standard pages and tools cannot deliver a needed experience, such as a specialized calculator or data grid. Custom components add flexibility but need testing, documentation, and upkeep across seasonal releases.
A managed package is a bundle of Salesforce components, usually from an AppExchange publisher, that installs into your org as a unit. The publisher controls the code and pushes upgrades, and you often cannot see or change its internals. That reduces your maintenance burden, but it also means the package's limits and roadmap shape what you can customize.
Managed services is an ongoing arrangement where a Salesforce partner supports and improves your org on a recurring basis instead of through one-off projects. Typical work includes admin requests, bug fixes, release readiness, small enhancements, and user support. It suits organizations without a full in-house Salesforce team that still need steady, expert attention to keep the platform healthy.
Learn more →Metadata is the configuration that defines how your Salesforce org works, including objects, fields, page layouts, flows, permissions, and code, as opposed to the business data stored in records. Metadata is what gets deployed between sandboxes and production. Treating it as something to version, review, and document is the core of disciplined Salesforce release management.
Learn more →MuleSoft is Salesforce's integration platform for connecting applications, databases, and APIs across an organization. Instead of point-to-point connections, teams build reusable APIs that expose systems such as ERP or billing in a consistent, governed way. It fits organizations with many systems to connect, where integration reliability, monitoring, and reuse matter more than a quick one-off link.
Learn more →Multi-factor authentication requires users to prove who they are with something beyond a password, such as an authenticator app or security key, when logging in to Salesforce. It sharply lowers the risk from stolen or reused passwords. Salesforce treats MFA as a baseline security expectation, and rollouts go smoother with clear user communication and a plan for lost devices.
Learn more →An object is a table in the Salesforce database that stores one kind of record, such as accounts, cases, or invoices. Each object has fields, relationships to other objects, page layouts, and security settings. The set of objects and how they relate, called the data model, drives what you can report on and automate, so it deserves careful design.
Omni-Channel is Service Cloud's routing engine for pushing work, such as cases, chats, messages, and leads, to the right available agent based on capacity, skills, and priority. It replaces agents picking from shared queues. Good routing design balances workload, speeds up responses, and gives supervisors real-time visibility into who is handling what.
Learn more →An opportunity is a Salesforce record for a potential deal, tied to an account and tracked through sales stages until it is won or lost. It holds the amount, close date, products, and next steps. Consistent stage definitions and required fields make opportunities the basis for accurate forecasting and pipeline reporting.
Learn more →An org, short for organization, is a single instance of Salesforce: your company's own environment with its data, configuration, users, and licenses. Production is your live org, and sandboxes are separate copies used for building and testing. Some companies run several orgs, which affects reporting, integration, and cost, and sometimes leads to org consolidation projects.
A partner-led org health check is a structured review of your whole Salesforce environment by a consulting partner. It typically goes beyond Salesforce's built-in security Health Check to examine the data model, automation, code, security and sharing, data quality, integrations, and adoption. The result is a prioritized list of risks and improvements you can act on.
Learn more →Organization-wide defaults, or OWDs, set the baseline level of access every user has to records they do not own, for example private, public read only, or public read and write, for each object. They are the starting point of Salesforce's sharing model. Other tools can only open access further, so choosing restrictive enough defaults is a key security decision.
Learn more →A page layout controls which fields, buttons, and related lists appear on a record page, and in what order. Different layouts can be assigned by profile and record type, so a sales rep and a finance user see what each needs. Simplified, role-specific layouts reduce clutter, speed up data entry, and noticeably improve user adoption.
A permission set is a bundle of access rights, such as object permissions, field access, and system abilities, that you assign to users on top of their profile. Salesforce recommends managing most access through permission sets rather than profiles. This approach makes it easier to grant exactly what each job needs and to see why a user has access.
Learn more →A permission set group combines several permission sets into one assignable package, usually aligned to a job role such as sales manager or service agent. Admins assign one group instead of many individual sets and can mute specific permissions within it. Groups keep access consistent across people in the same role and simplify onboarding and audits.
Learn more →A price book is a list of products and their prices in Salesforce, used when adding products to opportunities and quotes. Organizations often maintain separate price books for regions, currencies, channels, or customer segments. Keeping price books accurate and limited in number prevents quoting errors and makes revenue reporting by product reliable.
Learn more →Process Builder is an older Salesforce automation tool for updating records and triggering actions when data changes. Salesforce ended support for it on December 31, 2025. Existing processes continue to run, but Salesforce no longer provides support or bug fixes. Organizations should migrate processes to Flow, which also helps consolidate automation and reduce technical debt.
Learn more →Production is your live Salesforce org, where real users work with real customer data. Changes should reach production only after being built and tested in a sandbox and deployed through a controlled release process. Editing configuration directly in production is fast but risky, because mistakes affect users immediately and are harder to trace or undo.
Learn more →A profile is the base set of settings every Salesforce user must have, covering things like login hours, IP ranges, default apps, and page layout assignments. Historically profiles also carried most permissions. Salesforce now recommends keeping profiles minimal and granting access through permission sets, which reduces the number of near-duplicate profiles that complicate security reviews.
Learn more →A prompt template is a reusable set of instructions for a generative AI task in Salesforce, such as drafting a sales email or summarizing a case. Built in Prompt Builder, templates can pull in record fields, related data, or flow outputs to ground the response. They let admins standardize AI output and control what data the model sees.
Learn more →Record types let one object support different business processes, for example separate picklist values, page layouts, and sales stages for new business versus renewals. Users choose or are assigned a record type when creating a record. Used well, they keep one shared object tailored to each team; overused, they multiply layouts and automation to maintain.
Salesforce upgrades every org three times a year with its Spring, Summer, and Winter releases. Sandbox preview instances receive each release a few weeks before production, giving teams time to review release notes and test changes. Planning around releases helps you adopt useful features early and avoid surprises when updates change existing behavior.
Learn more →A report type is the template that defines which objects and fields a Salesforce report can use, such as accounts with opportunities. Salesforce provides standard report types, and admins can create custom ones for specific relationships. When users say a report is impossible to build, the fix is often a missing or poorly designed report type.
The role hierarchy mirrors your reporting structure in Salesforce and, by default, lets managers see and report on records owned by people below them. It also shapes forecasting and some sharing behavior. It should reflect how data access needs to flow, not necessarily the exact org chart, and overly deep hierarchies can create performance and maintenance problems.
Learn more →A sandbox is a copy of your production org used to build, test, and train without affecting live users. Types include Developer and Developer Pro, which copy configuration only, Partial Copy, which adds a sample of data, and Full, which copies all data. Choosing the right sandbox for each stage of work is basic to safe releases.
Learn more →A sandbox refresh replaces a sandbox's contents with a fresh copy of production, bringing its configuration and, for data-bearing sandboxes, its records back in sync. Each sandbox type can only be refreshed at set intervals, and a refresh erases work not yet deployed. Teams coordinate refreshes with release schedules and mask sensitive data afterward.
Learn more →A service appointment in Field Service is the scheduled visit for a technician or crew, with a time window, location, status, and assigned resource. It is what dispatchers and scheduling tools place on the calendar and map. Accurate appointment data drives technician routes, customer arrival notifications, and first-time-fix reporting.
Learn more →Sharing rules automatically open record access beyond organization-wide defaults to groups of users, based on who owns the record or on field values, such as sharing all West region accounts with the West sales team. They handle predictable exceptions without manual sharing. Too many overlapping rules make access hard to explain and can slow large orgs.
Learn more →SOQL, the Salesforce Object Query Language, is the language used to retrieve records from Salesforce, similar to SQL for traditional databases. Developers use it in Apex and integrations, and admins sometimes use it for quick data checks. Efficient queries matter because poorly filtered SOQL can hit governor limits or slow pages as data volumes grow.
Standard objects are the tables Salesforce provides out of the box, such as Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, and Case. They come with built-in features, reports, and integration with other Salesforce products. Using standard objects where they fit, rather than recreating them as custom objects, makes future features, AI tools, and partner apps easier to adopt.
A statement of work, or SOW, is the contract document that defines what a Salesforce partner will deliver: scope, deliverables, assumptions, roles, timeline, acceptance criteria, and commercial terms. A clear SOW sets shared expectations and a process for handling changes. Vague scope or missing assumptions in the SOW are a frequent source of disputes later in a project.
Learn more →Tableau is Salesforce's analytics platform for exploring and visualizing data from many sources, not only Salesforce. Analysts build interactive dashboards that combine CRM data with finance, operations, or product data. It fits organizations that need enterprise-wide analytics, while standard Salesforce reports and CRM Analytics serve more CRM-centered reporting needs inside the platform.
Learn more →Technical debt is the accumulated cost of shortcuts and outdated choices in your org, such as unused fields, overlapping automation, legacy tools, hardcoded values, and undocumented code. It slows every future change and raises the risk of errors. Paying it down through cleanup and consolidation makes enhancements, releases, and AI adoption faster and safer.
Learn more →The Einstein Trust Layer, which Salesforce increasingly calls simply the Trust Layer, is the set of safeguards applied when Salesforce AI features call a large language model. It includes grounding in permitted data, masking sensitive information, zero data retention by model providers, toxicity checks, and audit logging. It reduces AI risk, but your own permissions and data quality still matter.
Learn more →User acceptance testing is the phase where real business users test the new Salesforce setup against their everyday scenarios before go-live. It confirms the system supports how people actually work, not just the written requirements. Well-prepared test scripts, representative data, and a clear defect triage process make UAT productive instead of a last-minute scramble.
Learn more →A validation rule checks data when a user or integration saves a record and blocks the save with an error message if a condition is not met, such as a close date in the past or a missing reason for a lost deal. Validation rules protect data quality at the source, but too many can frustrate users and break integrations.
A work order in Field Service describes the job to be done, such as an installation, repair, or inspection, including the asset, location, required skills, and line items for parts or tasks. Work orders generate service appointments for scheduling. A well-structured work order model keeps technicians, dispatchers, and billing aligned on what was requested and completed.
Learn more →Workflow Rules are Salesforce's oldest automation tool, used for simple field updates, email alerts, and tasks when records change. Salesforce ended support for them on December 31, 2025. Existing rules still run, but Salesforce no longer provides support or bug fixes. Salesforce offers a Migrate to Flow tool to help move them to Flow.
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