Salesforce in Plain English

I’ve been learning the salesforce platform at work to try to both expand my own skill set and help my team upskill in a new area. Salesforce provides a great set of free resources for learning their platform called Trailheads, but figuring out what Trailhead to start with was a pretty daunting task in itself.

When I first started learning AWS, I found the absolute most helpful guide to be the AWS in Plain English blogpost. In it, the author cuts through the marketing to state plainly what each part of AWS is responsible for. Unfortunately, I was unable to find an equivalent for Salesforce, so here is my best attempt at a similar article. Did I miss a key component of Salesforce? Leave a comment and I’ll add it!

Programming Languages

1. Apex
- Should have been called: SF Backend Language
- Use this to: Interact with Salesforce databases, do background processing
- It’s Like: Salesforce flavored Node.js/Spring

2. Lightning Web Components
- Should have been called: SF Widget Language
- Use this to: Create custom components in the SFDC portal. This lets you create widgets similar to the built-in ones in SF.
- It’s Like: Angular for the SF Platform only.

3. Lightning Web Components Open Source
- Should have been called: SF Frontend Language
- Use this to: Create fully custom front ends the same way you code web components for the SFDC portal.
- Its Like: Angular

4. Aurora Web Components
- Should have been called: Deprecated Widget Language
- Use this to: Create custom components in the SFDC portal, but only if you need to follow the deprecated format.
- It’s Like: Angular.js, related to Angular with some compatibility but its best not to use it anymore.

5. Visualforce
- Should have been called: Salesforce Markup Language
- Use this to: Create custom components in the SFDC portal, but again in an older way. Its best to use LWC now

6. SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language_
- Should have been called: Salesforce SQL
- Use this to: Query Data stored in salesforce as if you’re querying a SQL database.

7. SOSL (Salesforce Object Search Language)
- Should have been called: Salesforce Elastisearch
- Use this to: Do plaintext search across the data stored in SF.

Platforms

1. SFDC (SalesForce Dot Com)
   - Should have been called: Salesforce Core
   - Use this to: Manage customer and sales data in the cloud. This is the main offering of Salesforce and what most people think of when they hear Salesforce.
2. Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2C (SFCC)
   - Should have been called: Salesforce Branded Ecommerce Platform
   - Use this to: power anything and everything e-commerce based. It is not related to SFDC in anyway and was gained through an acquisition. It does not use many of the features of salesforce and is programmed in a different language.
   - It’s like: Shopify
3. Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B
   - Should have been called: Salesforce Ecommerce for Wholesale
   - Use this to: Power e-commerce but while on the SFDC platform. This is a separate product to SFCC B2C and more integrated into the salesforce ecosystem.
4. Salesforce Headless CommerceCloud
   - Should have been called: SFCC Rest API
   - Use this to: Use SFCC to power your website while using another framework to define the layout.
   - It’s like: Shopify’s APIs.
5. Salesforce DX (Developer Experience)
   - Should have been called: Salesforce Cloud Dev Tools
   - Use this to: DX encompasses a lot. This lets you enter the Dev Console, setup CI/CD, test your work in a sandbox environment, and other dev tasks.
   - It’s like: An IDE + Jenkins + VM in the cloud.
6. Salesforce Community Cloud
   - Should have been called: SF Wordpress
   - Use this to: Use data in your CRM to fill in template-based web pages.
   - It’s like: Wordpress powered by a CRM instead of a CMS.
7. Salesforce Marketing Cloud
   - Should have been called: (This is actually a pretty good name)
   - Use this to: Send email/push notifications to your customers based on the metrics you’ve collected.
   - It’s like: Any other marketing tool that lets you engage with customers.
8. Salesforce Einstein
   - Should have been called: Salesforce AI Platform
   - Use this to: Use AI to analyze your data stored on salesforce. It can help do things like predicting what products a customer will buy based on their current profile.