Launchpad Lesson 4 - Salesforce Terminology and Navigation

In this lesson, we'll be covering the basic system structure of Salesforce. This is going to help you learn how to navigate the system. First, you need to understand some of the common terminology.

Remember how we used the term objects in the Sales Cloud introduction lesson? Well, here we're going to cover what an object is, along with some of the other common terms that you're going to hear a lot throughout this course: records, fields, apps, relationships, and page layouts.

Let's start with the first three, namely objects, records, and fields. Now, the best way to help you understand what each of these is is to compare them to features of an Excel spreadsheet.

Here's a sample of a very straightforward spreadsheet where Rocket Shop keeps their customer data. If we look in column A, we see the names of the companies that are Rocket Shop's customers. In Salesforce, these represent accounts.

In columns B, C, D, E, and F, we see more data about that company, such as street address, phone number, and so forth. Hence, rows 2, 3, 4, and so on represent Salesforce records, and columns A, B, C, and so on are the fields.

At the bottom of an Excel spreadsheet are tabs representing different worksheets. They're usually labeled Sheet 1, Sheet 2, and so forth. I've renamed these tabs Leads, Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities. These worksheets represent Salesforce objects.

So, we have the Lead object, the Account object, and so forth. As the admin, you have some degree of control over the type of data that we capture on these standard sales objects.

Now, here's an important note about records. Every record is assigned to just one user, with some exceptions that you don't need to worry about for this course. The creator of a new record is assigned ownership of that record.

This ownership can be reassigned by the user to any other user. Record ownership plays a role in security, visibility, and reporting, some of which will be covered later on.

There are three fields on every record that relate to this ownership. Created By displays the user who created the record and when it was created. Last Modified By will show you who last edited the record and when it was edited. And Record Owner will show you who is the current owner of that record.

Now, let's get into Salesforce to show you some more features and what they do.

Let's look at a Salesforce app. Most of you are familiar with the term app when it comes to your smartphone, but a Salesforce app is a little different. In fact, it's actually a little bit misleading in that it's really not all that special.

Up in the corner of every Salesforce page is a little nine-dot box that I like to call a Rubik's Cube. Other people call it a waffle. This takes you to the App Menu.

If we click on it, you'll see a number of different applications available to users. You may not see the exact set of apps that are displayed on my screen, but the concept is the same.

So, what does an app really do? Well, all it does is determine which objects get displayed on the menu header.

The Sales app is going to have those objects that sales reps use, like Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities. Whereas the Sales Operations app may not include all of the objects that sales reps use. But because this team works with products, their app will include the Products object on the menu header.

The Lead Generation app includes Leads and Campaigns, a marketing object, because that's what the lead generation team uses in order to find new business.

So, at the end of the day, the app represents a preferred arrangement of objects on the menu header for that specific group of users.

Now, let's have a look at a standard page layout for a record in Salesforce.

First, we need to get to a record. Let's visit an account. We'll click on the Accounts tab, and from here, you will see a list of recently viewed accounts. We'll talk more about these lists in a later lesson.

Let's select one of these accounts. Salesforce has preconfigured the page layouts for your different objects in slightly modified versions, but in general, they encompass four primary tabs, and those are Related, Details, Activity, and Chatter.

The Account object also has a News tab, as you can see, but this tab isn't on every object. You'll be able to customize these page layouts as you see fit, which we'll be covering in an upcoming lesson.

Let's start with Details. Details is where we see all of the fields where we store the data for that record.

On an account record, for instance, the details will include fields like Account Name, Phone Number, Website, and Billing Address, just like we saw in the cells on that Excel worksheet.

A lot of this data will be entered by your salespeople. Now, to save them time when you launch, we'll be showing you how you can import large amounts of data from an external source in a future lesson.

The Related tab is a key item. I find that a lot of users don't really understand what it means.

The Related tab will display a list of all of the other objects in Salesforce that are related to the record that you're on.

For instance, on an account record, the related list will include related contacts, which are the people who work there; opportunities, representing possible deals we want to close with that account; campaign influence; contracts; and whatever other objects we want to associate with this account.

Again, this is all out-of-the-box setup that you can and likely will change.

Let's visit one of those related contacts. From the Details tab of this record, we can now see that the Account Name is one of the fields, and it is linked back to that account record.

This is what we mean when we say that Salesforce is a relational database model. In other words, it works by relating different objects with one another to tell the full story about those records.

And over here on the right-hand side are Activity and Chatter. Very briefly, Activity represents the interactions we have with our prospects or customers, and Chatter is an internal communication tool for Salesforce users.

We have dedicated lessons for Chatter and Activity down the road.

Okay, so that's some of the key terminology you'll need to know. So, are you starting to feel more comfortable?

Think about it. A couple of lessons ago, the term object was probably something new to you. And now you're starting to build quite a vocabulary of key Salesforce terms.

In the next lesson, we'll have a look at an important concept called user profiles.

See you then.