GET STARTED WITH SALESFORCE

SALESFORCE

Salesforce is a cloud-based platform that provides software and services to create relevant customer experiences. Starting as Software-as-a-service (SaaS), Salesforce is based on a multi-tenant architecture. This means that multiple customers share common technology and all run on the latest release. There is no worry about the application or infrastructure upgrades, as they happen automatically.
This helps the organization focus on innovation rather than managing technology. Salesforce is one of the best Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It benefits both small and large businesses.

PURPOSE OF SALESFORCE

• Provides the fastest path from Idea to App. One can concentrate on building app using Salesforce tools, rather than building the infrastructure and tools themself.
• Unique for three major reasons – Easy, Fast and Effective
• It is in the cloud, so a team of members can use it from anywhere with internet access.
• Integrates with 3rd party apps. If you want to integrate Salesforce with Gmail you can do it, on the other hand, integration is tough with other CRMs.

STATISTICS ABOUT SALESFORCE

As of May 2016, Salesforce has had over 150,000 customers across the world. In the world of CRM, Salesforce dominates with a 19.7% market share. Its closest competitors SAP (12.1%), Oracle (9.1%) and Microsoft (6.2%) are far behind. The Salesforce AppExchange features over 2,700 applications which has driven a total of over 3 million installations and more than 70% of Salesforce customers use applications that are listed on the AppExchange. Today, many companies are developing their applications on Salesforce platform or are migrating to Salesforce.

TERMS IN SALESFORCE

• ORG: Refers to a specific instance of Salesforce
• APP: Set of objects, fields, and other functionality that supports a business process.
• OBJECTS: Tables in the Salesforce database that store a particular kind of information. There are standard objects and custom objects.
• RECORDS: Rows in object database tables. Records are the actual data associated with an object.
• FIELDS: Columns in object database tables.

TRAILHEAD PLAYGROUND

A Trailhead Playground (TP) org is an environment to practice the skills you’re learning before taking them to real work. It comes with all the standard app building and customization tools required to test your app development chops. It is a special type of DE. TP orgs are free and can have up to 10 of them at a time.

USE CASES OF SALESFORCE

Operational-CRM: Focused to improve the business processes, enhancement, automation, and also improve customer experience. Example: Websites, data aggregation systems, and call centres.
CRM for Sales: Software application used for contact management, which saves the time of salespeople and improves efficiency. The CRM software and applications are simple and easy-to-use contributing to increased sales operations and converting leads into opportunities.
Support: It helps to stay connected with customers and track their interactions. A successful business requires forecasting its priorities and having a clear picture of its future interactions. Salesforce provides 24/7 assistance to its customer and help them resolve their issues in a little or no time.
Management: CRM empowers you to track and manage your leads, estimate different projects, estimate their size, protect deals, hold meetings, etc. Also, it is used by managers to assign responsibilities to the team members and effectively manage different teams like sales and marketing.
Marketing: One can synchronize CRM with the marketing teams and make it easier to find new prospects. The team can use it to collect more data about the customers and analyse their behaviour.
Finance: Budget management, Contract management and Pricing.
Health Care: With Salesforce Community Cloud, Health Leads are leading the way to a new model for healthcare. Also, with Salesforce App Cloud, they can easily view and update patient data, coordinate with physicians and find effective community resources.

SALESFORCE ARCHITECTURE:

Multi-Tenant Layer:

The multitenant architecture means one common application for multiple groups or clients. In such architecture, multiple clients use the same server, but their oaks are isolated from each other. It means the data of one client is secure and isolated from other groups or clients.
Due to multitenancy, any developer can develop an application, upload it on the cloud, and easily share it with multiple clients or groups. Multiple users share the same server and application hence it is very cost-effective. In salesforce, because of this multitenant architecture, all customers' data is saved in a single database.
In this diagram, common application is shared among the three clients.

METADATA:

The Salesforce platform follows the meta-data development model. The metadata means data about the data. Salesforce stores the metadata in the shared database along with the data that is, it stores the data as well as what data does. In the below diagram, the tenant-specific data ensures that the common data is only shared with one tenant, not with another tenant or group. This ensures the security of the data even in the shared database. The security issues get resolved with the multitenant architecture because all data is stored on different levels in the form of metadata, i.e., data above data.

API SERVICES:

The salesforce metadata-driven model allows the developers to create their applications easily with the help of various tools. But sometimes developers need some more functionalities for their apps to make some modifications. To make such modifications, salesforce provides a powerful source of the APIs that helps them to customize the Salesforce mobile application. The API provides a simple but powerful, and open way to programmatically access the data and any app running on the salesforce platform. Helps the developers to access apps from any location, using any programming language that supports Web services, like Java, PHP, C#, or .NET

NAVIGATE SETUP

Setup menu: Setup is your one-stop-shop for customizing, configuring, and supporting your org.
Object Manager: Can view and customize standard and custom objects in org.
Three main categories in the Setup menu:
• Administration: Here one can manage users and data. Can add users, change permissions, import and export data, and create email templates.
• Platform Tools: Most of the customization is done in Platform Tools. One can view and manage data model, create apps, modify user interface, and deploy new features to users. Platform Tools is where you manage your code as well.
• Settings: One can manage company information and org security. Can add business hours, change locale, and view org’s history.

APP EXCHANGE

AppExchange is a marketplace offering solutions, such as apps, components, and consulting services. To make your own solution publicly available to potential customers, you must be a Salesforce partner.
WORKING OF APP EXCHANGE
AppExchange is also the place for Salesforce admins to choose and install solutions that fit their org’s needs. Here’s how AppExchange works.
Create: Salesforce partner initiates the process by creating an innovation that can improve a business process, such as a custom object, custom tab, or component. Partners share their customizations with other Salesforce users as a packaged AppExchange solution, whether an app, a Bolt solution, a Flow solution, Lightning data, or a component.
Publish: The Salesforce partner registers, packages, and publishes their solution on AppExchange. They can also create a demo of the functionality included in their solution for others to view before installing and include a trial version.
Install: Salesforce customers browse solutions published on AppExchange and choose which solutions to install in their orgs. Installing a published AppExchange solution is safe and simple.
Customers can: • Browse— the descriptions, reviews, and demos of solutions on AppExchange. They choose the solution that fits their needs.
• Test Drive— a fully functional demo of the solution as a read-only user, and plan their implementation with their admins.
• Install— the solution and all its components to their Salesforce environment.
• Deploy— give their users access to the solution or customize it for a select group of users.