Salesforce.com concepts

Salesforce is a Customer relationship management software that offers a customizable platform that can grow with your business. Salesforce stores critical information about your customers and helps you connect and close deals with new customers. You can modify the Salesforce platform as needed to best reflect how your company does business, and you’ll add new features as your grow, so that your information system is always the right size for your business.

This guide is designed to help Salesforce administrators set up and customize a new sales organization. We assume you’re familiar with common office programs such as Microsoft® Excel® and know at least a little about computer systems. You don’t have to be a Salesforce expert to get started. You’ll learn much of what you need to know as you work in Salesforce.

Concepts
A Salesforce name for a loose federation of features that help you accomplish certain types activities,such as selling products, supporting your customers, or collaborating with your coworkers. Two common examples you’ll come across are Service Cloud and Sales Cloud.

Cloud: Technology that enables Internet-based services that let you sign up and log in through a browser. Salesforce delivers its service in the cloud. Other familiar cloud computing services include Google Apps and Amazon.com.

Cloud Computing
Software delivered not by traditional means (such as on disk) but in the cloud, as a service. There’s nothing to download or install, and updates are automatic.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Introduction Key Concepts and Terms
Concept Definition
A Salesforce term for its companywide commitment to building and delivering the most secure, fast, and reliable cloud-based service available.

Created to enhance customer success, trust.salesforce.com is a systems status website giving Salesforce customers and the community access to real-time and historical system performance Trust information and updates, incident reports and maintenance schedules across all its key system components.

Salesforce offers several bundles of its products and services, each geared toward a different set of business needs.

These bundles, called editions, all share the same look and feel, but they vary by feature, functionality, and pricing. For example, a feature that is available in Professional Edition for an additional fee may be included in Enterprise Edition. You might choose to start with a more basic edition, then upgrade later as you grow your business.
For a comparison chart of editions and their features, see the Salesforce Pricing and Editions page.

Contact Manager is designed for small businesses and provides access to key contact management features including accounts, contacts, activities, calendars, notes and attachments, and reports. Contact Manager also provides straightforward and easy-to-use customization options. For more information about Contact Manager features, visit the Salesforce Pricing & Editions page.

Salesforce Edition Overview
Salesforce Group Edition is designed for small businesses and workgroups with a limited number of users. Group Edition users can manage their customers from the start of the sales cycle through closing the deal to providing customer support and service. Group
Edition offers access to accounts, contacts, opportunities, leads, cases, dashboards, and reports. For more information about Group

Edition features, visit the Salesforce Pricing & Editions page.

Developer Edition provides access to the Force.com platform and API. It allows developers to extend the Salesforce system, integrate with other applications, and develop new tools and applications. Developer Edition provides access to many of the features available
with Enterprise Edition.
Salesforce does not provide technical support for Developer Edition. You can solicit help from the developer community message boards available to registered users via the Force.com developer website – developer.salesforce.com.
Note: Personal Edition isn’t available to new organizations. Existing organizations that have already set up Personal Edition continue to have access. In addition, Personal Edition organizations that signed up after June 2009 don’t have access to opportunities.
Personal Edition is a CRM solution designed for an individual sales representative or other single user. Personal Edition provides access to key contact management features such as accounts, contacts, and synchronization with Microsoft Outlook®. It also provides sales
representatives with sales tools such as opportunities.

Learn Salesforce Basics Editions

Salesforce Professional Edition is designed for businesses who need full-featured CRM functionality. Professional Edition includes straightforward and easy-to-use customization, integration, and administration tools to facilitate any small- to mid-sized deployment.

Enterprise Edition
Salesforce Enterprise Edition is designed to meet the needs of large and complex businesses. In addition to all of the functionality available in Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition organizations get advanced customization and administration tools that can support large-scale deployments. Enterprise Edition also includes access to the Web services API so you can easily integrate with back-office systems. For more information about Enterprise Edition features, visit the Salesforce Pricing & Editions page.

Unlimited Edition
Salesforce Unlimited Edition is Salesforce’s solution for maximizing your success and extending that success across the entire enterprise through the Force.com platform. Unlimited Edition customers benefit from new levels of platform flexibility for managing and sharing all of their information on demand.

Unlimited Edition includes all Enterprise Edition functionality plus Premier Support, full mobile access, unlimited custom apps, increased storage limits, and more. For more information about Unlimited Edition features, visit the Salesforce Pricing & Editions page.

Performance Edition is Salesforce’s solution that combines CRM and the Force.com platform with Data.com, Work.com, Identity, Live Agent, Salesforce Knowledge, and additional sandbox functionality.

Performance Edition is designed for customers that need to drive amazing growth, achieve new levels of customer satisfaction, and maximize sales and service success in the social and mobile world. Performance Edition includes all Unlimited Edition functionality plus
clean, targeted lead and customer data from Data.com, coaching and feedback tools from Work.com, trusted identity services from Identity, and more. For customers in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, we offer Performance Edition Limited, which includes all
Performance Edition functionality except Data.com.
Database.com is a multitenant cloud database service that’s designed to store data for mobile, social enterprise applications. You can use Database.com as the back-end database for applications that are written in any language and run on any platform or mobile device.

Database.com’s built-in social computing infrastructure and native support for building sophisticated REST-based APIs enable you to create employee-facing, native mobile and social apps.

As a Salesforce user, you’re already using Database.com when you’re performing tasks such as creating custom objects, managing security, or importing data with the Force.com platform and API.

A standalone version of Database.com is available for developers who want to create applications that leverage other languages, platforms, and devices.
There is no Database.com-specific documentation. Instead, you use the Salesforce documentation and a list of features that Database.com supports. This list identifies the Salesforce documentation subjects that apply to Database.com.