Salesforce Glossary: Familiarizing yourself with Salesforce Terminology

Whether you’re new to Salesforce or just looking to clarify what exactly a specific term means in the Salesforce ecosystem, this Salesforce glossary will help you learn the lingo. Here are just a few of the most commonly used terms within the Salesforce platform, we hope this glossary will help you become more familiar with the platform and eventually became a power user of the platform.

The Salesforce glossary consists of 3 sections:

• Salesforce
• Salesforce Clouds
• myTrailhead

Salesforce

Salesforce is the name of the company and the actual name of the application. Salesforce initially began as basic customer relationship management CRM software, it was used for companies to track their accounts, contacts, and opportunities but has since evolved over the years. It now also provides enterprise applications focused on customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development.

Campaigns

A place to store details about a marketing activity. Basic details about the campaign can be recorded as well as campaign members, leads or contacts added to the campaign to track responses.

Leads

A lead is a place to capture details of someone that has registered interest in your products or services. It could have come from your website (if you are using web to lead functionality), it could have been imported as part of a list or it could have been manually entered. Once leads are qualified, they are converted to an account, contact and optionally opportunity.

Account

These are the companies that you want to track related to your business. You can define the types of companies you want to track, but usually, you would include prospects (after converting from a lead), current customers, past customers, competitors, and partners. As with all Salesforce objects, as well as the standard fields, you can define additional fields specific to the information you would like to capture for the different types of accounts.
Salesforce also has a concept of the ‘person account’, to cater to companies that have a B2C model, e.g. selling directly to consumers or individuals. A bank, for example, would track the customers it does business with directly as person accounts.

Object

An Object is a term used for a record within Salesforce. Accounts, leads, opportunities, and so on are all examples of Salesforce objects. More objects can be added as per business requirements.

Opportunities

An object that represents a potential sale is termed an Opportunity in Salesforce. Details of the deal are included in this object to make it easier for a sales rep to use.

Queue

A Salesforce Queue is where unassigned records reside. When it is not yet determined who to to ‘own’ a record, it remains in the queue.

Task

A Salesforce task is the action that will accompany an object. If a lead has to be contacted over the phone then that is the task assigned to it.

Trigger

A Trigger is a piece of Apex code that can cause an action in response to an event. The creation of a new object or changes in an existing object can be the event that sets off the trigger.

Web to Lead

The Web to Lead tool allows Salesforce users to create forms for the web. Information filled into these forms automatically gets populated to the user’s Salesforce platform.

Workflow Rule

The Workflow Rule tool can automate tasks like sending notifications, updating records, and so on.

Quote

A record showing proposed prices for products and services. Quotes can be created from opportunities and emailed as PDFs to customers.

Cases

A detailed description of a customer’s feedback, problem, or question. Used to track and solve your customers’ issues.

Knowledge

Salesforce offers optional knowledge base functionality that allows answers to frequently asked questions or issues to be stored. The knowledge base is integrated with cases so that relevant answers can be displayed when a case is entered or a solution to a problem can be easily added to the knowledge base when a case is closed.

Products

The products module is where products and services are stored. They can be linked to price books so the appropriate price can be used in opportunities and quotes.

Reports

Salesforce offers many standard reports that cover all areas of the application. Existing reports can be customized or new reports created.

Dashboards

Dashboards summarize information from reports and display it in a visual format, usually in a chart or table. They are used to present key performance indicators for a part of the business and are visible when users first log in to the system on the home page.

Content

Content is the place to store documents related to your sales and service activities.

Documents

Documents is a place to store files that need to be accessible by the system such as images.

Communities

Salesforce allows the system to be accessed by customers, through a customer community, or by partners by using a partner community.

Salesforce App Exchange

AppExchange in Salesforce is a business app store with paid and free apps that users can add to the CRM implementation to customize it for their own needs.

App

An app is a group of tabs that can be either Standard Salesforce e.g. Sales, Call Center or they can be custom apps that you create, or they can be apps that have been installed from the AppExchange. They are not apps in the sense that each one provides totally different functionality, they are just a way of grouping related functions and some tabs appear in multiple apps.

Salesforce Clouds

Salesforce has a suite of products to help business grow faster. This is an overview of the most commonly used clouds. We also have an

Sales Cloud

Sales Cloud is used by sales organizations and is focused on supporting a sales process, including campaigns, leads, accounts, contacts through to managing opportunities. Sales Cloud refers to the “sales” module in Salesforce.com. It includes:

• Accounts, Contacts
• Leads, Opportunities
• Reports, Dashboards
• Campaigns
• Tasks, Activities
• Products, Assets, Quotes
• Calendars, Events
• Forecasts, Territory Management
• Chatter
• Custom Apps, Tabs & Objects
• Self-Service Portal
• Public Knowledge (via Communities)
• CTI Integration (more service-focused)
• Cases, Solutions
• Visual Workflow
• Add-On: Knowledge Base
• Add-On: Service Cloud Portal

Service Cloud

Service Cloud is used by support organizations with functionality such as entitlements, case management, and knowledge bases. It includes everything that Sales Cloud does, but adds the additional:

• Service Cloud Console
• Service Entitlements
• Service Level Agreements
• Visual SLA Timelines
• Add-On: Live Agent
• Omnichannel Routing
• CTI integration
• Web-to-case
• Add-On: Live Messaging

Marketing Cloud (SFMC)

Salesforce’s platform (or “Cloud”) in the area of marketing automation and customer engagement. It is a SaaS platform made up of four “base versions,” each with different levels of functionality and multiple additional at-cost components that further increase functionality.

This platform has capabilities to support many facets of marketing including multi-channel campaign execution, dynamic customer journeys, pre-and post-campaign analytics including audience building and segmentation, social media engagement and advertising, and a data management platform. SFMC does this by using component they call “Studios” and “Builders:

• “Studios” are used to manage and engage with channels of communication. In SFMC, this includes Email Studio, Social Studio, and Mobile Studio.
• “Builders” are used to manage data, content, and customer journeys in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform. They are often used by the Studios but don’t have to be (e.g., Analytics Builder).

Marketing Cloud products include:

• Email Studio
• Journey Builder
• Interaction Studio
• Salesforce CDP
• Datorama
• Pardot
• Advertising Studio
• Mobile Studio
• Social Studio
• Content Management
• Google Marketing Platform
• Loyalty Management
• Datorama Reports

Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a highly scalable, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) B2B2C eCommerce solution. It is a multi-tenant, cloud-based commerce platform that empowers brands to create intelligent, unified buying experiences across all channels — mobile, social, web, and store. Common app solutions cover:

• B2B Lightning Commerce
• B2C Commerce
• Order Management

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS is a set of cloud-based services that enable business users and developers to build applications at a speed that on-premise solutions cannot match. Common app solutions cover:

• Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK)
• Social and mobile built-in
• Rich developer environment
• Fully managed cloud database
• Point-and-click app building
• Multi-language development
• Cloud app marketplace

Experience Cloud

Experience Cloud is an online social platform that enables companies to connect customers, partners, and employees with each other — and the data and records they need to get work done. This next-generation portal combines the real-time collaboration of Chatter with the ability to share any file, data, or record anywhere and on any mobile device. Common app solutions cover:

• Help Centers
• Account Portals
• Storefronts
• Build Your Own
• Partner Portals
• Microsites
• Industry Solutions

Tableau CRM

Tableau CRM is a self-service data visualization and business intelligence (BI) platform that integrates Salesforce data with external data. Formerly known as Einstein Analytics, this product boasts some of the most powerful data analysis capabilities in the market. Common app solutions cover:

• Analytics data visualizations and descriptive analytics
• AI and built-in automation of existing CRM data
• Bulk predictions with machine learning

Financial Services Cloud

Financial Services Cloud is a Salesforce.com product that has been designed to support wealth management, retail banking, commercial banking, and insurance carrier markets. When FSC was first released, it was initially designed to support wealth management. Since then it continues to be enhanced to support other aspects of financial services.

• Corporate and Investment Banking
• Retail and Commercial Banking
• Insurance
• Wealth and Asset Management
• Mortgage and Lending

Health Cloud

Health Cloud combines CRM features and industry best practices into one platform where organizations have a centralized system for their operations and management—whether you’re a healthcare or a life sciences organization. It provides a complete view of patients on a unified platform, enabling organizations to evolve from a medical record-focused approach to a patient-centric approach. This 360-degree view of the health ecosystem includes:

• Payers
• Providers
• Pharma
• Med Tech
• Public Sector Health

Slack

Slack is a proprietary business communication platform that offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms (channels) organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging.

Quip

Quip is a collaborative productivity software suite for mobile and the Web. It allows groups of people to create and edit documents and spreadsheets as a group, typically for business purposes

Work.com

Work.com, previously Rypple, is a social performance management platform for managers and employees. It allows continuous coaching, real-time feedback, and recognition. It is aimed at sales management, customer service, marketing, and can be utilized by human resource departments.

Lightning Platform

Lightning Platform (also known as Force.com) is a platform as a service (PaaS) that allows developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce.com application. These third-party applications are hosted on Salesforce.com’s infrastructure.

myTrailhead

Launched in 2019, Salesforce’s myTrailhead is an online training platform that can be customized for the specific needs of its customers. The platform extends functionality to provide users with training content specific to their usage of Salesforce and enables them to create and publish their own training content and programs

Trailhead

In the industry, it’s often requited as “the fun way to learn Salesforce.” It’s made up of many components like Trails, Trailmixes, Modules, Favorites, Badges, etc., which all contribute to the bigger goal of helping you amp up your skills for your future career.

Modules

Modules introduce you to specific topics in bite-sized units. By completing modules, you will learn what a Salesforce feature is, when it’s helpful, and how to use it.

Trails

Trails are described as guided learning paths through modules and projects that help you cover the most ground in the shortest amount of time. Salesforce encourages you to think of them as your personal game plan for exploring new skills.

Trailmixes

Trailmixes encompass modules, trails, projects, and super badges.
You can create your own Trailmixes to follow and complete, or take advantage of Salesforce’s large library of pre-established ones.

Projects

Projects give users hands-on experience with Salesforce technology with step-by-step instructions. You will gain access to a demo environment where you can put your education to work.

Badges

Badges are a reflection of the points you earn and the paths you complete.

Points

You earn Points in Trailhead by completing Trails, Modules, Projects, and Trailmixes.
Points help you move up in the Trailhead ecosystem ranks. They help you work towards your bigger picture goals, possibly of completing certifications as an Admin, Developer, Marketer, or Consultant.

Ranks

Ranks are a reflection of how many points and badges you’ve accumulated throughout your educational journey in Trailhead.

Skill Categories

Skill Categories show you the categories you’ve completed in percentage format as you navigate the system. You can see which you’re following or the most you’ve completed under each category via your Profile.

Certification

Certifications help you advance your career with Salesforce, whether as a Marketer, Admin, Developer, or Consultant. There are a few different learning paths and certifications available, feel free to review our guide and Salesforce certification resources to help you on your certification journey.

We hope this Salesforce Glossary was helpful and will help you on your Salesforce journey. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out!