Salesforce Terminology
- Objects are tables in the Salesforce database that store a particular kind of information. There are standard objects like Accounts and Contacts and custom objects that you can create to fit your organization's needs.
- Records are the actual sets of data you create. Think of a record like a submission within Formstack.
- Fields are where individual pieces of data are stored within a record. Whenever you create a contact record, for example, there will be fields for the contact's name, phone number, email address, etc.
Setup
Setup is the area used for customizing, configuring, and supporting your organization and is an area Salesforce admins use frequently.
1. Object Manager: Object Manager is where you can view and customize standard and custom objects in your org.
2. Setup Menu: The menu gives you quick links to a collection of pages that let you do everything from managing your users to modifying security settings.
3. Main Window: We’re showing you the Setup home page, but this is where you can see whatever it is you’re trying to work on.
4. App Launcher: Used to choose which app you need to work within in Salesforce.
Accounts are companies with whom you're doing business and are the main object type which you'll use to reference information for your customers. They also will list any contacts, leads, or opportunities that have a relationship with the account. Below is an example of what an account will look like in Salesforce, note that you can see records that share are related to the account in the 'Related' tab.
Contacts are the people who work for your customers. These records will contain information for those people, including phone number, email, and address so you can quickly get in touch with them. There can be multiple contacts created that have a relationship with an account, but they can also exist within Salesforce without having any account relationship if needed. Below is an example of a contact record. You'll notice along the top that the account they're related to is listed and below all of the other record types related to the contact can be found.
Leads are used to track potential sales or deals. While organizations don’t have to use leads, there are some big advantages to using them, like knowing what’s in the pipeline and focusing energy on the right deals. You can better track, report on, and target marketing campaigns to prospective customers. Leads may help you concentrate on the potential deals most likely to close. They also help executives maintain visibility and help on key deals. If your company has separate sales teams for prospective customers and existing customers, using leads helps everyone work more efficiently. If no assignment rules are in place then all lead records are owned by the user that creates them, but it is possible to set up rules to automatically assign leads based on certain criteria if needed and is how many organizations to their assignments. Once a lead has been fully qualified and there is a know genuine interest in purchasing, it will be converted which creates an account, contact, and opportunity using information from the lead.
1. Lead Information. Contains the basic information for the lead, including the name of the point of contact, phone number, email, and company name. You can also quickly convert/edit the lead using the options at the top right.
2. Lead Status. The lead status can be seen along the top below the lead information or by looking at the lead status field. You can manually change the status of a lead to be converted, but will still have to go through the conversion process for the lead to actually be considered converted. This can be done by clicking the 'Convert' option as seen in part 1 or you can manually change the status and then click the 'Change Converted Status' button that will appear in the tool bar pointed out above, as that button will replace the one currently listed as 'Mark Status as Complete'.
3. Activity. This tab can be clicked to log calls/emails made to the lead or to create new events or tasks. Past activity and upcoming steps will be listed for review on this tab.
Opportunities are deals in progress. In Salesforce you can create opportunities for existing accounts or by converting a qualified lead. Stages are an important field for opportunities, as it tracks where in the sales process a potential deal is. Opportunities will be related to both accounts and contacts, as the account record will be the company that the deal is in progress with and the contacts will be who you are working with from the organization to try and close the deal. Check out a sample opportunity below and take note of the account name it's related to along the top and the contact it's related to at the bottom right. You can also see the stage listed along the top and in the 'Stage' field within the Details tab.
Understanding Objects and Relationships
There are two types of objects within Salesforce: Standard and Custom. Standard objects are objects that are included with Salesforce. Common business objects like Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity are all standard objects. You can also make customizations to standard objects, if needed. If the Account object needs a field collecting an email address, for example, you can add a custom field to the object to collect this information. Custom objects are objects that you create to store information that’s specific to your company or industry. If you have a realty company, for example, you can build a custom Property object that stores information about the properties you manage.
Below are some exercises to introduce you to working within the Salesforce environment. Follow the below steps in your Salesforce Developer instance to practice editing and creating objects.
Creating Custom Objects
1. Click the gear icon at the top right of the page and choose ‘Setup’.
2. Click the Object Manager tab.
3. Click Create > Custom Object in the top right corner.
4. For Label, enter Property. Notice that the Object Name and Record Name fields auto-fill.
5. For Plural Label, enter Properties.
6. Check the box for Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after saving this custom object.
7. Leave the rest of the values as default and click Save.
8. Select your desired Tab Style and click Next, Next, and Save.
Adding Custom Fields to Standard Objects
1. From Setup, go to Object Manager > Property.
2. In the sidebar, click Fields & Relationships.
3. Click New along the top to create a new field.
4. For data type, select Currency.
5. Click Next.
6. Fill out the following:
- Field Label: Price
- Description: The listed sale price of the home.
7. Check the Required box.
8. Click 'Next', 'Next' again, and then 'Save'.
Object relationships are a special field type that connects two objects together. This can be useful if one object type in Salesforce interacts with other types, such as an Account that a sales rep is working on having a Contact that the rep is communicating with. It makes sense, then, that there should be a relationship between the Account object and the Contact object within Salesforce. When you look at an account record in Salesforce, you can see that there’s a section for contacts if you scroll down. These are actual contact objects within the account that share a relationship with the account. You can also see that there’s a button that lets you quickly add a contact to an account.
The Account to Contact relationship is an example of a standard relationship in Salesforce. But just like objects and fields, you can build custom relationships as well.
Before practicing creating object relationships it's important to know the different types of relationships that exist: lookup and master-detail.
In the Account to Contact example above, the relationship between the two objects is a lookup relationship. A lookup relationship essentially links two objects together so that you can “look up” one object from the related items on another object. Lookup relationships can be one-to-one or one-to-many. The Account to Contact relationship is one-to-many because a single account can have many related contacts, but you can also have one-to-one relationships.
While lookup relationships are fairly casual, master-detail relationships are a bit tighter. In this type of relationship, one object is the master and another is the detail. The master object controls certain behaviors of the detail object, like who can view the detail’s data. For example, in Formstack's own Salesforce instance we have Accounts and also Intakes that are used to track on-boarding for accounts that close. Since an Intake can't exist without an Account for it to be assigned to and you'd want to delete any Intakes associated with an Account if it were deleted, this is a good example of why you'd want to use a master-detail relationship.
Now let's get some practice creating different types of relationships. First, you're going to create a Lookup Relationship on the Account object to link it to the custom object you previously created.
1. From Setup, go to Object Manager > Property.
2. On the sidebar, click Fields & Relationships.
3. Click New.
4. Choose Lookup Relationship and click Next.
5. For Related To, choose Contact.
6. Click Next.
7. For Field Name, enter Contact and click Next.
8. Click Next, Next, and Save & New.
Now you're going to create a Master-Detail Relationship between the Property object and the Account object where the Property is the child and the Account is the Master.
1. Choose Master-Detail Relationship and click Next.
2. For Related To, choose Account.
3. Click Next.
4. For Field Name, enter Account and click Next.
5. Click Next, Next, and Save.