Salesforce Development - Glossaries

1.What Is An Object?

Think of an object as a spreadsheet or database table in Salesforce where you store information. Common examples are Accounts (companies), Contacts (people), and any custom tables you create for your specific business needs.

2.What Is A Record?

A record is simply one entry in your table. For instance, if you have an Account object, each individual company you work with is one record.

3.What Is A Field?

A field is like a column in your spreadsheet – it holds one specific type of information. Examples include someone’s Name, Email address, or Phone Number.

4.What Is A Standard Object?

These are ready-made tables that Salesforce gives you right out of the box – like Account, Contact, and Opportunity. They’re designed for common business activities that most companies need.

5.What Is A Custom Object?

When the standard stuff doesn’t quite fit your needs, you can create your own custom objects. These let you track specialized information unique to how your business operates.

6.What Is A Lead?

Lead is a potential customer or prospect who has shown interest but is not yet qualified. Leads are typically managed in the Sales Cloud.

7.What Is An Opportunity?

Opportunity is a potential revenue-generating sales deal associated with an Account. Used to track stages, forecasting, and win/loss.

8.What Is An Account?

An account in Salesforce is a company, organization, or household your business is working with. It serves as the parent record for Contacts and Opportunities.

9.What Is A Contact?

A contact in Salesforce is an individual associated with an Account, such as a customer, decision-maker, or partner.

10.What Is A Workflow Rule?

The workflow rule is a Salesforce automation tool used to trigger simple actions like email alerts, field updates, and tasks when certain conditions are met.

11.What Is A Process Builder?

A process builder is a visual, declarative automation tool used to build multi-step processes. Though still used, it’s being replaced by Salesforce Flow.

12.What Is A Validation Rule?

A validation rule checks if the data entered in a record meets certain criteria prior to saving. It serves to uphold data quality as well as prevent bad data from being entered.

13.What Is An Apex Trigger?

The apex trigger is code that is written in Apex that runs before or after record events (create, update, delete, undelete). It is used when business logic is too complex to apply declaratively.

14.What is Apex?

Apex is a Java-like programming language that has been created by Salesforce as a proprietary language for its ecosystem to build custom logic, integrations, and server-side applications.

15.What Are Lightning Web Components (LWC)?

Lightning Web Components (LWC) is a contemporary Salesforce framework that is built using web standards (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) for designing fast, reusable components for use in Lightning Experience.

16.What Is Visualforce?

Visualforce is an older UI framework for creating custom Salesforce pages using a tag-based markup language, and optional Apex controllers.

17.What Is An API (Application Programming Interface)?

API interfaces like REST and SOAP that allow external systems to interact with Salesforce, perform integrations, and exchange data.

18.What Is A Multi-Tenancy?

Multi-tenancy is a Salesforce architecture that allows multiple organizations to utilize the same infrastructure and core platform and have access to logic and data that is secure and isolated.

19.What Is An AppExchange?

AppExchange is Salesforce’s marketplace for third-party apps, components, integrations, and consulting services.

20.What Is A Data Loader?

A data loader is a client app that extracts, imports and upserts large volumes of data into Salesforce.

21.What Is A Dashboard?

A dashboard is a visual representation of key business metrics through the use of charts, graphs and tables to visualize data based on the underlying Reports.

22.What Is A Report?

A report is a structured list or summary of data based on defined filters. Reports are used for full analytics, performance tracking, and decision-making.

23.What Is A Permission Set?

A permission set is a Salesforce tool used to grant additional permissions to users without modifying their profile. Helps manage fine-grained access control.

24.What Is A Custom Metadata / Metadata API?

Custom metadata or metadata API is a configuration component such as objects, fields, page layouts, and automation rules that define the structure and behavior of a Salesforce org. These can be deployed across environments using Metadata API.