Author: Peggy Schael | Salesforce Trainer | WeLearnSalesforce
Salesforce as a Cloud-based Software as a service (SaaS) Platform
Salesforce is a SaaS platform that provides its customers and partners with everything they need, all in one place. And we’re not just talking about customer data management. We’re talking about creating custom applications, automating business processes, and integrating additional functionality, seamlessly.
The Salesforce Multitenant Cloud – Like Living In An Apartment Building
Salesforce brings all their products, like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and so on, together onto the same platform. The Salesforce platform is built on a multitenant architecture, which allows customers to share resources and data. Salesforce also calls the platform the Multitenant Cloud. Because it’s like an apartment building where the tenants in all the apartments benefit from the network of power supply, storage facilities, facility management tools and so much more. This saves development and maintenance costs.
The Core Architecture of Salesforce And Its Robust Framework
The Salesforce architecture offers a lot more than that. Salesforce Objects and Applications are all coming together on the one and same Lightning Platform. This ensures a seamless integration across all the Salesforce applications as well as applications from other providers that are built on the Lightning platform. All declarative and programmatic tools are shared across the entire platform and make it easy to add new apps or even develop completely new applications.
The Salesforce platform offers a robust framework for data services, artificial intelligence like Einstein, and API integrations. Plus you automatically get release updates three times per year. And since it’s all happening in the cloud, you don’t need to install a thing.
Can You Trust the Salesforce Platform?
And with all of that, one very critical component is most certainly…trust. Salesforce takes data security within its platform very seriously. And not only that, but Salesforce also cares a lot about the customizations you are building into your Salesforce org for all your vital business functions and ensures they run reliably.
Have a look at the Salesforce dedicated trust site trust.salesforce.com. You will find information about compliance, service availability and performance, how data is secured, and more.
The Concept of Metadata Elements
Everything you are building and all the data you are storing on the Salesforce platform is driven by Metadata. Metadata is the data about your data. 🤯 It defines the structure of your fields, page layouts, user profiles, reports, dashboards, etc.
In the example below, the Account Name field represents the metadata, a.k.a. the type of field. This is where the data about the name of the company this contact works for, is stored in.
Metadata is used for different purposes. For example when changes are made in a Sandbox environment and then moved into the Production environment or when data is integrated through external resources. It identifies existing items like fields, page layouts etc. by its metadata.
In our example, the Account Name is actually just the label that appears to the user. The metadata itself is the Field Name or API name. If you changed the label to ‘Company Name’ for example, the metadata or API name would remain unchanged so it can still be identified.
Understanding the Salesforce Architecture isn’t too hard or too boring, right? What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
WHAT ELSE…
This video tutorial is part of our Complete Salesforce Certification Courses. They cover everything from Salesforce Basics to advanced Salesforce features and functionalities every Salesforce professional should know about.
We provide you with different types of study materials, so you can choose what works best for you. This includes well-structured Salesforce Video Tutorials, downloadable Study Workbooks and realistic Practice Exams.
And if you are brand new to the world of Salesforce, I’d recommend to sign up to our FREE 21-Day Salesforce Beginners Challenge.