Introduction
In this technological world, data is one of the most important assets. Anyone can easily collect data, but the way a platform organizes the data is necessary for its success. Data stored should be safe, and it should be so that any user can easily access it without inconsistency. In this article, I will explain my understanding of the data model that Salesforce CRM is using, in simple terms.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that brings the company and its customers together. It is an integrated platform that offers various products for Sales, Service, Marketing, Community, Commerce, etc and it brings all these products in its single integrated platform. The company was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff, Dave Moellenhoff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez.
Data model in Salesforce
Salesforce CRM contains user data, which is organized in a structured way. The user can easily differentiate the various levels of data with the help of Objects, fields, and records. Also, Salesforce CRM allows the customization of the standard data model for their custom functionality and it allows us to build our own data model.
Consider the Salesforce data model as the database or an Excel spreadsheet. They store the data in a row and column order.
What are Object, Fields, and Records?
Consider an example. If a dress shop is using Salesforce CRM. They store various details about the customers, brands, merchant details, etc. While the details are viewed in Spreadsheet point of view, it may look like the following:
Object
- Objects are considered as the database tables or spreadsheets that allow us to store organization data.
- It acts as a container for information.
Types of Objects
- Standard objects
- Custom objects
- External objects
- Platform events
- BigObjects
The two important objects are Standard Objects and Custom Objects.
These are the objects provided by Salesforce.
The standard objects are:
- Accounts
- Contacts
- Opportunities
- Leads
- Products
- Campaigns
- Cases
- Users etc.
- Custom Objects
These objects are created by an organization to store its unique and important information. The example in the above diagram contains the custom object called Properties. The other examples that may be the custom objects of Job Portal companies are Job Applicant, Candidate, Interviewer, etc.
Fields
- The fields are like the columns that come under a Spreadsheet or database table.
- Salesforce comes with the standard fields under the Salesforce Objects.
- The Standard objects are also customized by adding the Custom fields.
- The custom fields are also added into the Custom Objects.
- Every field has a data type which indicates what kind of information to be stored in the field.
Records
- Records are like rows in the database table or spreadsheet.
- A record may be text, number, date, checkbox, formula, DateTime or any other data type of the column or fields.
Sample Objects, Fields and Records in Salesforce CRM
Objects
Records and Fields
Summary
In this article, I explained the Salesforce CRM data model. In the next article, we will see how to create Salesforce objects, fields and records. Thanks for reading this article.