The proficiency in Salesforce's functionalities, features, and ecosystem is vital for experts in the customer support industry. It involves understanding the various stages a customer support organization navigates to resolve a case.
Often compared to the steps involved in a sales routine, a service process in Salesforce focuses on the case object, rather than the Lead & Opportunity objects. An exemplar case management workflow may evolve from 'New', to 'Working', 'Waiting on Customer', 'Escalated', and finally 'Closed'.
Key to Salesforce's operation is the object concept, which in database parlance, is merely a data table. This table houses an assortment of fields, each containing pieces of information like an email address, phone number, or company name.
Two types of objects are present in Salesforce - standard and custom. The standard objects are preloaded with Salesforce products out of the box. For instance, Accounts & Contacts in most Salesforce products, Lead & Opportunity in Sales Cloud, and Cases & Entitlements in Service Cloud are all standard objects.
Custom objects, on the other hand, are user-created and serve as the foundation for building bespoke applications.
One strong selling point of Salesforce is its AppExchange, which functions similar to smartphone app stores. Here, users can download prebuilt applications directly to their Salesforce organization, adding additional functionalities. These include but are not limited to, e-Signature, Document Generation, and Form tools applications.
Another fundamental of Salesforce is the use of Sandboxes for testing changes before deployment to the production environment. These Sandboxes replicate your production configuration, providing a safe environment to test changes and implement new features.
Different Salesforce editions offer varying functionalities. For instance, the Essentials version comes with a basic functionality offering whereas the unlimited edition offers extended functionalities, such as API availability for integration, automation or advanced features like Flow.
Once changes are implemented and tested in a Salesforce sandbox, they may be moved to another sandbox or directly to the production environment. This migration of changes can be achieved using change sets or a next-generation deployment tool, Salesforce DevOps, amongst other methods.
Within the Salesforce environment, it is crucial to distinguish between Data and Metadata. While Data refers to the records leveraged by a business like Users, Accounts, and Contacts, Metadata describes these Data.
One unique feature of Salesforce is the Queue. Unlike other Salesforce objects that must be owned by an individual, Queues serve as a holding area where records await user assignment and processing.
Another facet of Salesforce is the Salesforce Customer 360. It is designed to provide a complete view of customers' interactions across a user's platform including products purchased, queries raised, and issues encountered with products.
Last but not least, Salesforce annually releases three products and conducts routine maintenance, which sometimes involves migrating orgs to different servers. Although rare, Salesforce might also temporarily shut down due to system downtime.
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