160+ Salesforce Acronyms: Explained
Welcome to the world of Salesforce – a place where you’ll find innovation, inspiration… and plenty of acronyms! Just like any specialized technology, Salesforce comes with terminology that can be shortened to a handful of letters to help us communicate faster. However, newbies can sometimes feel like more seasoned specialists are speaking a different language!
Throughout my Salesforce career, I’ve found it helpful to keep a glossary of terms – especially acronyms! I hope that these 160+ acronyms that I’ve collated help you to understand the Salesforce platform (and keep up with the conversation in your next meeting!).
Starter
| AKA | Also Known As | Due to name changes Salesforce has made to some products, and also the slang/pet names the Salesforce community adorn certain functionality, these three letters have crept into our vocabulary. |
| BA | Business Analyst | Business Analysts are the people in your organization who are asking ‘why’ – why a process happens the way it does – to understand what the business needs from its technology. As an organization grows, it typically demands larger and more complex software solutions. That's where BAs come in. READ MORE: How to Become a Salesforce Business Analyst. |
| BAM | Be a Multiplier | An initiative run through Trailhead, BAM encourages members of the Salesforce community to "start a movement. Empower anyone to skill up for the jobs of the future". READ MORE: Be a Multiplier with Trailhead. |
| CTA | Certified Technical Architect | Nope, not 'call to action' as you may have guessed! CTAs are the 'elite' among Salesforce professionals. CTAs have proven they have the knowledge, skills, and capabilities to design and build high-performance technical solutions on the Salesforce platform. The grueling exam is the highest certification and ultimate test; even though it's been around since 2012, only a few hundred professionals have earned their CTA creds. READ MORE: Certified Technical Architect Certification Guide & Tips. |
| DF | Dreamforce | Dreamforce is Salesforce's flagship conference - but, a conference like no other! Tickets to this annual event are highly sought-after because of the learning and networking opportunities available to the 170,000+ attendees (not to mention the legendary parties too!) READ MORE: Complete Guide to Dreamforce. |
| FKA | Formerly Known As | Due to the name changes Salesforce has made to some products, these three letters have started to creep into our vocabulary, to avoid confusion, bringing the person we're speaking to along with us. |
| GA | General Availability | The release status where a feature has been formally released. This happens by its inclusion in a Salesforce release cycle (Spring, Summer, Winter). Support will be available, as technical support teams have been briefed on the functionality. (It comes after the Pilot and Beta phases). READ MORE: Salesforce Product Roadmaps: New Destination for Future Features. |
| IaaS | Infrastructure as a Service | "Self-service models for accessing, monitoring, and managing remote datacenter infrastructures, such as compute (virtualized or bare metal), storage, networking, and networking services (e.g. firewalls). Salesforce does not offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) services. It is a customer of them, primarily Amazon Web Services." (source) |
| KPI | Key Performance Indicator | "A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives" (source). Admins play a key role in KPI tracking, tasked to build Salesforce dashboards that demonstrate business trends. |
| LEX | Lightning Experience | Salesforce revamped the product interface around 2015, after having a relatively consistent look and feel for its 16 years in operation. Salesforce Lightning was designed to be a big improvement in user experience - to boost user productivity and make CRM a pleasure to use. Most organizations have now transitioned to Salesforce Lightning from Classic. |
| LOB | Line of Business | Line of Business could often come up when planning Salesforce projects. For example, Sales, Marketing, etc. When it comes to packaging, you can either split by project (let's say Quote to Cash broadly) or by LOB. |
| MVP | Most Valuable Professional | MVPs are individuals who show exceptional leadership qualities, are lifetime learners, and who go above and beyond to share expertise and help the Trailblazer Community. There is a multi-round selection process each year. There are around 200+ MVPs. READ MORE: What is a Salesforce MVP? How Do I Become One? |
| PaaS | Platform as a Service | "A set of cloud-based services that enable business users and developers to build applications at speed...As it’s a cloud-based service there’s no need to worry about the set-up and maintenance of servers, patching, upgrades, authentication" (source). Salesforce characteristics that make it PaaS include a Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK), managed cloud database, and point-and-click app building. |
| QA | Quality Assurance | QA is a stage of testing/test automation, which are essential to manage risk and deliver quality Salesforce releases on time. The quality of any Salesforce customizations is your responsibility - not Salesforce's! QA teams will stress test the system's functionality and report any bugs that need to be resolved. READ MORE: Salesforce Testing – Everything You Need to Know. |
| SaaS | Software as a Service | Salesforce set out to be SaaS through and through! A third-party provider, like Salesforce, hosts your CRM and related applications for your users to access over the internet. In the case of Salesforce, licenses to access the service are typically billed annually, with a contractual commitment of 1 to 3 years. That's why SaaS was revolutionary in the beginning, as companies were no longer locked into one system, with the possibility to switch providers without investing in the IT infrastructure themselves! READ MORE: History of Salesforce. |
| SDLC | Software Development Lifecycle | "A process that produces software with the highest quality and lowest cost in the shortest time possible" (source). As Salesforce is a platform that businesses extend according to their evolving needs, you may hear this term! |
| SFDC | Salesforce dot com | Salesforce pioneered cloud CRM, so it was always referred to as 'Salesforce-dot-com' in the early days to emphasise its online accessibility, and to distinguish itself from premise offerings. The acronym still sticks today, especially among serving community members. READ MORE: History of Salesforce. |
| UAT | User Acceptance Testing | Keeping your users productive is the aim of any development project. There are plenty of ways to customize Salesforce's functionality, look and feel, but how do you ensure that what you deploy into production a) functions as it should, and b) is what your users actually want? That's where UAT comes in (also known as beta or end-user testing), for users to stress test the system how they would use it day-to-day. Sometimes carried out using scripted use cases (eg. do this, do that, what was the result?) or let your users roam-free to catch things you may have missed. UAT is covered in the Salesforce UX Designer certification. |
| UI | User Interface | "User interface (UI) is the point of human-computer interaction and communication in a device. This can include display screens, keyboards, a mouse and the appearance of a desktop." (source) |
| UX | User Experience | "User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function" (source). The Salesforce UX Designer certification brings this to the forefront. |
Admin
| CRED | Create, Read, Edit, Delete | Profiles control what users can do in your Salesforce org. This can be referred to as CRED, which enables you to mix and match what a specific user can do with each object. For example, you may want some users in your org to read and edit Leads, but not delete them. READ MORE: Learn Salesforce Roles and Profiles In 5 Minutes. |
| CRUD | Create, Read, Update, Delete | Four actions that a system can take with a record. You'll hear this term used for data loading and when discussing integrations. |
| DLRS | Declarative Lookup Roll-up Summaries | The Declarative Lookup Roll-up Summaries (DLRS) managed package is a must-have for creating roll-up summaries between lookup relationships. Andy Fawcett’s open-source tool is a gift, enabling you to define roll-ups using standard UI declaratively, no coding required! READ MORE: Learn Salesforce Roles and Profiles In 5 Minutes. |
| EAC | Einstein Activity Capture | Einstein Activity Capture enables you to capture the right data from Gmail and Outlook and add it to Salesforce, which is great for syncing data between these platforms. READ MORE: Salesforce Einstein Activity Capture for Gmail or Outlook: Pros and Cons. |
| EPIM | Enhanced Personal Information Managements | Each external user (i.e. anyone using your Experience Cloud site) should only edit and view their own Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data. This setting will be enabled in all orgs in the Winter ‘23 release. READ MORE: Prepare for Enhanced Personal Information Management Enablement Prior to Spring ’23. |
| ERD | Entity Relationship Diagram | Used to map out business processes to communicate both development teams ("what we need to build") and non-technical audiences ("what the technology is doing"). There are standards to ERDs in terms of which nodes (the shapes) and connectors (arrows) to use, and when. Salesforce released "Salesforce Diagrams" to promote design thinking and speed up the process of creating diagrams with pre-made diagrams. READ MORE: Salesforce Diagrams: new addition to an Architect’s toolset. |
| FLS | Field-level security | Field-level security is set by Admins on the field's definition in Salesforce Setup. It determines which fields are visible or editable to certain users. READ MORE: Learn Salesforce Roles and Profiles In 5 Minutes. |
| HML | Handlebars Merge Language | HML is the way to add personalization to emails sent from the Salesforce platform (including Pardot). The most common example would be to add a Lead or Contact's first name in the body of the email. READ MORE: What is Handlebars Merge Language (HML). |
| ISO | International Organization for Standardization code | The International Organization for Standardization country code represents each country by two letters. Admins will come across this when dealing with country fields, country codes in phone numbers and currencies. |
| JTBD | Jobs To Be Done | JTBD is a methodology for determining what problems users are trying to solve, focused on understanding users in terms of functional, emotional and social needs. JTBD is a core concept in the Strategy Designer Certification. READ MORE: Jobs To Be Done (JTBD): Improve Your Discovery Process. |
| OCR | Opportunity Contact Role | Contact Roles are a standard Salesforce object that define the role or level of influence that a contact has in relation to a sales opportunity. READ MORE: Introduction To Contact Roles. |
| OWD | Org-wide Default | The organizational wide default is the baseline visibility set for each object in your org (ie. the CRED). Profiles and permission sets are used to open up access beyond the OWD. READ MORE: Learn Salesforce Roles and Profiles In 5 Minutes. |
| PB | Process Builder | Process Builder is a tool for Salesforce process automation, using clicks not code. Due for retirement, PB is being superseded by Salesforce Flow. READ MORE: Salesforce to Retire Workflow Rules & Process Builder. |
| SOGAF | Salesforce Operating, Governance & Architecture | A framework that "addresses the components of governance at scale through seven distinct capabilities and their end-to-end alignment". READ MORE: |
| UPN | Universal Process Notation | Universal Process Notation (UPN) is a way to document business processes that can be understood by a wide range of different audiences – from business analysts and IT teams, through to end-users, management, regulators and more. Knowing Universal Process Notation is an essential competency for careers within (and beyond) the Salesforce ecosystem, such as Business Analysts, Consultants, Sales Ops, and more. READ MORE: Introduction to Universal Process Notation (UPN) for Salesforce Processes Mapping. |
| WFR | Workflow Rules | Workflow Rules are a tool for Salesforce process automation, using clicks not code. Due for retirement, WFRs is being superseded by Salesforce Flow. READ MORE: Salesforce to Retire Workflow Rules & Process Builder. |
Sales
| BANT | Budget, Authority, Need, Time | A framework that helps sales reps judge how qualified a lead is/their propensity to purchase (how likely they are to purchase). From there, sales reps can focus their attention on the most promising prospects. |
| CQ | Calendar Quarter | A period of three months that is used by organizations in order to calculate their budgets, profits, losses, and sales quotas. The calendar quarters start in January/April/July/October, whereas the fiscal quarters can start at any month (according to the organization), for example, Salesforce themselves start their fiscal year in February, which means their second fiscal quarter starts in May. Salesforce Admins and users will come across this when filtering date fields in the Salesforce report builder. |
| CY | Calendar Year | A period of twelve months that is used by organizations in order to calculate their budgets, profits, losses, and sales quotas. The calendar year starts in January, whereas the fiscal year can start at any month (according to the organization), for example, Salesforce themselves start their fiscal year in February. Salesforce Admins and users will come across this when filtering date fields in the Salesforce report builder. |
| ECC | Einstein Call Coaching | Einstein Call Coaching gives users insights and trends from sales calls - taking the rich fabric of a conversation and splicing it into key moments. ECC is 'product within a product' of High Velocity Sales (HVS). READ MORE: Einstein Call Coaching Deeper Dive. |
| FQ | Fiscal Quarter | A period of three months that is used by organizations in order to calculate their budgets, profits, losses, and sales quotas. Salesforce Admins and users will come across this when filtering date fields in the Salesforce report builder. |
| FY | Fiscal Year | "A period of twelve months, used by organizations in order to calculate their budgets, profits, and losses." (and sales quotas) (source). Salesforce Admins and users will come across this when filtering date fields in the Salesforce report builder. |
| HVS | High-velocity Sales | High-velocity Sales is a relatively new product that was developed for inside sales/sales development teams that process a high-volume of activities, especially calls. The product comprises of: Sales Cadences, Work Queue, Einstein Lead Score, Salesforce Inbox, Call Scripts and Einstein Call Coaching. |
| YOY | Year-on-year | Comparing the performance in one period of time with the same time period the previous year. For example, comparing January 2022 to January 2021 to see if trends have increased or decreased. |
Quote-to-Cash
| ACV | Annual Contract Value | The annual revenue generated from each customer contract, each year. |
| ARR | Annual Recurring Revenue | The annual revenue generated from all customer contracts (ie. the company-level revenue), a metric used by subscription-based businesses (commonly SaaS). |
| CLM | Contract Lifecycle Management | CLM tools manage the complexities of the contract lifecycle: "the creation of the contract itself, which can range from a simple, single-page agreement to a massive list of specifications and amendments. Then you have the negotiation process and the approval process. And finally, you must carefully manage the post-approval period, which generally consists of administering the contract, enforcing terms, and data reporting" (source). There are CLM providers on the Salesforce AppExchange that can boost your legal team's productivity. |
| CPQ | Configure Price Quote | CPQ tools enable sales teams to quickly and accurately generate quotes. Salesforce CPQ is an add-on product that sits on top of Sales Cloud. Read more about CPQ's objects and data model, and its differences to standard Sales Cloud products. |
| MDQ | Multi-Dimensional Quoting | "Commonly used for quoting with multiple years/terms/segments where you may have a ramp-up in price over the course of the segments and/or a ramp-up in the quantity of the product being sold" (source). |
| SKU | Stock Keeping Unit | "A unique number assigned by a retailer to items in their inventory" (source). |
| TCV | Total Contract Value | The total revenue generated from each customer contract, for all years. For example, a 3-year contract with $1 mil ACV will be $3 mil in TCV. |
General Data Management & Security
| 2FA | Two-factor Authentication | Also an extra layer of security that proves a user trying to login to Salesforce is who they say they are. You will have seen this in action when creating/updating your password, and selecting a question (eg. "City you were born") and a memorable answer. Note: 2FA has now been broadly replaced by MFA. |
| CASL | Canada Anti-Spam Law | "An anti-spam law that applies to all electronic messages (i.e. email, texts) organizations send in connection with a “commercial activity.” Its key feature requires Canadian and global organizations that send commercial electronic messages (CEMs) within, from or to Canada to receive consent from recipients before sending messages." (source). |
| CCPA | California Consumer Privacy Act | Similar to GDPR, CCPA applies to businesses that collect or use personal information of California residents (even if the business is not in California). READ MORE: CCPA Is Coming – What Does It Mean for You? |
| GDPR | General Data Protection Regulation | "A legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information from individuals who live in the European Union (EU)." (source). |
| HIPAA | Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act | "Ensures that individual health-care plans are accessible, portable and renewable, and it sets the standards and the methods for how medical data is shared across the U.S. health system in order to prevent fraud." (source). |
| HMS | Hardware Security Module | "Used to provide cryptography processing and key management for authentication. Shield Platform Encryption uses HSMs to generate and store secret material, and run the function that derives data encryption keys used by the encryption service to encrypt and decrypt data." (source). |
| KMS | Shield Key Management Service | "Shield Platform Encryption uses data encryption keys to encrypt and decrypt data. Data encryption keys are derived on the Shield Key Management Service (KMS) using keying material split between a per-release master secret and an org-specific tenant secret stored encrypted in the database." (source). |
| MFA | Multi-factor Authentication | An extra layer of security that proves a user trying to login to Salesforce is who they say they are. MFA combines something you know (ie. password) with something you own (ie. mobile phone). There are Salesforce approved MFA methods (Salesforce Authenticator app, built-in authenticators, security keys). MFA was formerly two-factor authentication or 2FA. READ MORE: How to Prepare for Salesforce Multi-Factor Authentication. |
| PII | Personally Identifiable Information | "Any data that can be used to identify a specific individual: social security numbers, mailing or email address, and phone numbers have most commonly been considered PII" (source). For auditing purposes, in Salesforce, Admins can indicate that a field contains PII in the field definition in Salesforce Setup. |
| SCV | Single Customer View | The concept of collating every data point and interaction that an individual (customer, prospect, or partner) has with an organization, accessible from one record. Also referred to as a “360-degree View”, Salesforce launched the "Customer 360" messaging to communicate that the tightly connected Salesforce platform can enable organizations to achieve this rich profile of each individual. |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer | "Salesforce certificates and key pairs are used for signatures that verify a request is coming from your organization. They are used for authenticated SSL communications with an external web site, or when using your organization as an Identity Provider." (source). |
| SSO | Single Sign-on | Sign in to one system, and then be automatically signed into all the rest of the applications you need. Fewer passwords, fewer headaches, less tedium and it should enable you to get on with what you actually intended to do, rather than get bogged with admin stuff such as hunting around for where you put your password hint. READ MORE: Set Up Salesforce With Google Single Sign-On (SSO). |
Service
| ACW | After Call Work | Tasks that the agent needs to complete after the customer call has ended. Your job as a Salesforce Admin/Service Cloud Consultant is to make completing these tasks (eg. entering data, call outcome notes), as efficient as possible for the user. You will need to be aware of this service concept when studying for the Service Cloud Consultant certification. |
| AHT | Average Handle Time | The average amount of time it takes for an agent to resolve a customer call/case. You will need to be aware of this service KPI when studying for the Service Cloud Consultant certification. |
| CTI | Computer Telephony Integration | Telephony (phone communication) can be directly integrated into Salesforce. This is a great win for Service (and Sales) departments who rely heavily on their phone, with features such as click to dial, call recording and screen pop available from 3rd party vendors. READ MORE: Salesforce Telephony Integrations - 5 Features. |
| FCR | First Contact Resolution | Measures the % of cases that are solved on the first touchpoint with customer service. READ MORE: Create a Service Metrics Strategy. |
| FSL | Field Service (Lightning) | An extension (add-on product) of Service Cloud that provides a comprehensive view of workforce management. Field Service involves providing services to customers beyond your office or site – which is referred to as in the “field”. Think about mobile employees, like service technicians, who carry out the service in-person; other people involved are service agents, dispatchers, and service managers. Salesforce dropped the "Lightning" from the product name, but the acronym is still widely used. READ MORE: Complete Guide to Salesforce Field Service (FSL). |
| IVR | Interactive Voice Response | An automated telephony system that interacts with callers, gathers information and routes calls to the appropriate recipients (source). People often refer to this as speaking to a bot before they get through to a human agent. |
| KCS | Knowledge-Centered Support | A knowledge base that documents service agents' experiences when solving cases, curated and made accessible to customers for self-service support should they encounter the same question or problem. Salesforce Experience Cloud is praised for encouraging collaboration and improvement between customers and agents in this way. |
| PBX | Private Branch Exchange | System that routes calls to different agents. |
| SLA | Service-level Agreement | A formal or informal contract between an organization and its customers which outlines what service they will receive and how long they will need to wait to receive that service each time. SLAs can be configured into Salesforce to prioritize cases and work orders. |
Marketing
| ABM | Account-Based Marketing | A marketing strategy popular in B2B Marketing, where there are typically long sales cycles with multiple stakeholders influencing a purchasing decision. ABM focuses on prospects at an organization level, meaning that marketers set out to target specific personas in the organization, for example, the Sales Director will receive something different compared to the CFO because they don't share the same motivations, and experience different pain points. ABM may seem simple enough in definition but the reality becomes increasingly complex once you begin mapping out your strategy. |
| AMPSEA | Allow Multiple Prospects with Same Email Address | Pardot feature. Marketing automation platforms typically use email address as the unique identifier in the marketing database - AMPSEA in Pardot changed that! Now that AMPSEA is the norm, the unique identifier for prospects is CRM ID. This gave marketers the ability to add multiple prospects that use the same email address to Pardot, ultimately able to market to them as if they were separate individuals. READ MORE: 10 Pardot AMPSEA Rules. |
| B2B MA | B2B Marketing Analytics | Pardot add-on product. The one-line pitch is: “the analytics app built for the B2B marketer”. In short, Pardot data (such as email engagement, visitor data), is packaged up and sent into the Tableau CRM platform for visualization and exploration. B2BMA is designed to 'plug-in-and-play' and comes with Dashboards, Lenses, and Datasets out-of-the-box to empower the non-technical marketer. READ MORE: B2B Marketing Analytics: What’s Out-of-the-box? |
| BU | Pardot/Marketing Cloud Business Unit | Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot feature (own features, share the same name). Pardot Business Units are separate databases within a single Pardot account that allow you to partition prospects, campaigns, and assets. A common example is an enterprise organization that serves multiple geographies. READ MORE: What are Pardot Business Units? An Overview. |
| CCA | Conditional Completion Actions | Completion Actions are one type of Pardot (Marketing Cloud Account Engagement). Conditional Completion Actions fire only when the prospect making the activity meets certain criteria. When the rule criteria matches (“is true”, “equals value X” etc.) then the Completion Action will fire. READ MORE: How to Use Conditional Completion Actions with Pardot (Account Engagement). |
| CDP | Customer Data Platform | Aggregates every data point about an individual customer across multiple platforms, represented by a unique identifier. Salesforce CDP is a Marketing Cloud product. READ MORE: What is Salesforce CDP | Complete Guide to Customer Data Platforms. |
| CSAT | Customer Satisfaction | Use customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to gauge customer experience. In a CSAT survey, the customer is asked something along the lines of: How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received? Answer choices are graded on a scale, usually from 1-5, where 1 represents very dissatisfied and 5 represents completely satisfied. The responses of your customers are then averaged and the result becomes your overall CSAT score. READ MORE: Measuring Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) With Salesforce. |
| CTA | Call To Action | The action you are encouraging your users to take when interacting with your marketing assets, such as emails, website pages, landing pages, or files. The idea is to tempt them with an eye-catching, irresistible button or hyperlinked text, so that they "convert" by sharing their information/indicating their interest. |
| CTR | Click-Through Rate | Click-through rate is the % of prospects that clicked within your email, out of the whole send list. This is a popular metrics it (mostly) proves that prospects are taking the account you intended, whether that be downloading a file, or visiting a landing page. |
| DMP | Data Management Platform | Captures data from any source and device. Analyze billions of profiles and trillions of events to find new high-value segments in order to do 1-to-1 ad targeting across any device the individual uses. READ MORE: Audience Studio (formerly Salesforce DMP). |
| DTR | Datorama | Now known officially as "Marketing Cloud Intelligence", Datorama is the marketing intelligence platform that provides its users with the capability of connecting their entire MarTech stack (standalone from the main SFMC platform). Datorama Reports are powerful and flexible, giving you detailed analysis of emails, push notifications, and journey data at a campaign level. READ MORE: Get Started with Datorama Reports for Marketing Cloud. |
| ECS | Einstein Content Selection | ECS is an email experimentation tool that selects the most engaging content (images) for each subscriber based on the rules you define, subscriber attributes, and what’s been popular in the past. Einstein Content Selection in Marketing Cloud is part of Content Builder - let Einstein take care of the selection! READ MORE: Pardot Renamed “Einstein Content Selection Quick Overview”. |
| EEF | Einstein Engagement Frequency | Einstein Engagement Frequency evaluates your contacts and subscribers, and identifies the optimal number of email messages to send. READ MORE: Pardot Renamed “Marketing Cloud Engagement Splits vs Decision Splits”. |
| EPC | Email Preference Centre | A page prospects/customers use to select which topics they want to be emailed about – a preferences pick n’ mix! Prospects land on when they click “update email preferences” (or similar) from an email. READ MORE: Pardot Email Preference Center Best Practices. |
| ES | Engagement Studio | Pardot feature. Offers advanced segmentation and automation tools that mean you can produce email nurture campaigns that can be effective at all stages of the customer journey. Why it's so attractive, is its visual, intuitive user interface - essentially, you map out the campaign steps on to a blank canvas. READ MORE: 5 Pardot Engagement Studio Examples – and How to Build Them. |
| ESP | Email Service Provider | The software that organizations purchase to create, send, and report on email marketing. Marketing automation platforms are ESPs with much more additional functionality. |
| IPR | Inbox Placement Rule | The preferred metric when measuring deliverability, which is the % of emails that ended up in inboxes where they are actually going to be seen, compared to spam rate, which indicates emails ending up in the spam or junk folders. |
| MCAE | Marketing Cloud Account Engagement | While Salesforce have advised against using this abbreviation, you'll find mentions of this acronym around. Pardot, a Salesforce marketing automation tool, was renamed Marketing Cloud Account Engagement iin 2022 in a move to make products more easy for laymen to understand. READ MORE: Pardot Renamed “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement”. |
| MC Connect | Marketing Cloud Connect | The connector between Salesforce Marketing Cloud and the core platform (ie. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, etc). Gives marketers the ability to utilize the data from their Salesforce standard and custom objects, right within Marketing Cloud. Some of the best use cases for using Salesforce data within Marketing Cloud use Journey Builder, which allows for amazing customization and automation of guided messaging and updates for your target audiences. READ MORE: Power-Up Journey Builder With Marketing Cloud Connect and Salesforce Data. |
| MQA | Marketing Qualified Account | ABM (above) is a marketing strategy popular in B2B Marketing, where there are typically long sales cycles with multiple stakeholders influencing a purchasing decision. While MQL is related to the extent that an individual is likely to purchase, MQA applies this at the account level. This can be calculated in a number of different ways - from rolling up field data (such as engagement scores) to sophisticated behavior and demographic measurements. |
| MQL | Marketing Qualified Lead | Any prospect who has actively interacted with your company and expressed interest in your marketing materials. Traditionally, MQLs are viewed positively by sales and marketing teams because they represent the potential, the ones who’ve “taken the bait.” They’re interested, hot, and ready…but are they? |
| OSP | Object Sync for Pardot | Pardot feature. Pardot have made big moves to transform the marketing assets we manage in Pardot (forms, emails, landing pages, campaigns) into Salesforce records. What this has meant, is that marketing assets have to sync from Pardot to Salesforce (and vice versa) through the Salesforce Connector, just like Prospect records do. READ MORE: What is the Asset Sync Queue in Pardot? |
| SAL | Sales Accepted Lead | Any prospect who has been deemed qualified by the marketing team before they are sales qualified. It's therefore the stage in between MQL and SQL, where the sales team is saying "yes, we will work on this lead". |
| SFMC | Salesforce Marketing Cloud | Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a mouthful to say! With other vendors also having a 'marketing cloud' in their offering (Oracle), it's beneficial for us to always specify we are referring to Salesforce's. SFMC it is! READ MORE: What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud? [Builders and Studios Overview]. |
| SQL | Sales Qualified Lead | Any prospect who has been deemed qualified by the sales team. Not only has the prospect expressed interest, they are a good fit to use your product/service, are ready to buy, and/or have the budget (see: BANT). |
| SSOT | Single Source of Truth | The “holy grail” of data strategy, single source of truth gives you one view of each person, unifying their data across all of your databases. READ MORE: “Single Source of Truth”: A Practical Guide for Salesforce Marketers. |
| STO | Send Time Optimization | Send Time Optimization taps into AI to determine when Marketing Cloud/Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) emails should be sent based on past engagement data from your database. The idea behind it is that by optimizing the time the email is sent, your audience is most likely to open and click. |
| VAC | Visitor Association Change | Pardot feature. "In prospect audits, you may occasionally notice entries with Type = Visitor Association Change, followed by a link with the name of another prospect...a VAC happens when one prospect's visitor record and activities become associated with a different prospect." (source). |
Commerce
| BNPL | Buy Now Pay Later | How customers can buy products on credit and pay for them later. Commerce Cloud has partnerships with PayPal and Klarna. READ MORE: Breaking News: NFT Cloud, Marketing Cloud CDP, Commerce Cloud. |
| CDN | Content Delivery Network | A highly-distributed platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading web page content by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user (source). |
| CMS | Content Management System | A content management system (CMS) is an application that is used to manage web content, allowing multiple contributors to create, edit and publish. Content in a CMS is typically stored in a database and displayed in a presentation layer based on a set of templates (source). |
| eCDN | Embedded Content Delivery Network | Salesforce Commerce Cloud provides digital customers an embedded content delivery network (eCDN) designed to accelerate site speed access and content delivery. The end result is a more secure, reliable online shopping experience for the consumer (source). |
| ERP | Enterprise Resource Planning | These enterprise-level systems take care of manufacturing, finance, master data, and accounting aspects (versus CRM applications that typically handle sales, marketing and support functions). READ MORE: An Admin’s Guide for Getting Started with a Salesforce and ERP Integration. |
| GMV | Gross Merchandise Value | The total value sold through an e-commerce site over a defined period of time. Commerce Cloud is a leading commerce solution that aims to “make every transaction more profitable”, and therefore, increase your GMV. |
| OMS | Order Management Software | Any tool or platform that tracks sales, orders, inventory, and fulfillment as well as enables the people, processes, and partnerships necessary for products to find their way to the customers who bought them (source). |
| PIM | Product Information Management | A set of processes used to evaluate, identify, store, manage and distribute product data or information (source). |
| PRM | Partner Relationship Management | "Simplify every step of your channel sales process, from onboarding to selling. Give your partners the same tools that make your internal team successful. Give channel managers step-by-step directions to quickly configure lead distribution, deal registration (and more...)" (source). |
| SFRA | Storefront Reference Architecture | A reference architecture (a blueprint) that combines industry best practices and expected out-of-the-box commerce functionality in a web storefront that can serve as the foundation of your new Salesforce Commerce B2C site (source). |
Developer
| ALM | Application Lifestyle Management | "How changes and enhancements are rolled out to Salesforce instances. Having a solid ALM process ensures the org continues to work properly and delivers the most value to end-users. Within the ALM process there are three separate development models: change set development, org development, and package development." (source). |
| API | Application-Programming Interface | An intermediary that allows two systems to be integrated together. APIs enable us to make two systems "talk" to each other, to successfully exchange data when and how we expect. Salesforce has multiple types of APIs, depending on what your integration requirements are. READ MORE: Ultimate Introduction to Salesforce Integration. |
| BYOK | Bring Your Own Key | When setting up Salesforce Shield, you can use Salesforce’s encryption keys, or bring you own if you already have a key management infrastructure in place. READ MORE: Complete Guide to Salesforce Shield. |
| CI/CD | Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment/Continuous Delivery | A software development practice that refers to different automated processes. Continuous integration (or “CI”) is about automatically moving work items along a release pipeline, through environments for combining and testing packages, before promoting them to production. Continuous deployment is about immediately deploying changes to a downstream environment in your release pipeline as soon as a change or work item has been approved and merged into version control. Continuous delivery is the ultimate goal of CI/CD. It’s a culture or way of working (rather than a type of workflow), which is about releasing added value and new functionality to your end-users as soon after the completion of the development or customization work as possible. READ MORE: How to Build a CI/CD Pipeline for Salesforce. |
| CLI | Command Line Interface | A text-based user interface (UI) used to view and manage files. The Salesforce CLI simplifies development and building automation by 1. aggregating all the tools you need to perform commands against your Salesforce org, 2. Synchronize source to and from scratch org, 3. Create and manage orgs, 4. Import and export data, 5. Create and execute tests, 6. Create and install packages. READ MORE: Salesforce CLI. |
| COOP | Cross-Origin Opener Policy | "Shield your custom Visualforce pages from external attacks. When you enable COOP, each top-level custom Visualforce page opens in a new browsing context group. This process prevents direct access between other browser tabs and your Visualforce page and the page’s content." (source) |
| CORS | Cross-Origin Resource Sharing | (source) |
| CPU | Central Processing Unit | A common computing term that refers to the component that processes instructions based on software and user input. In Salesforce terms, you'll hear "Apex CPU". The Salesforce platform imposes a CPU usage governor limit to any given execution context, which is approximately 10 seconds. It means that Apex Code, declarative tools or a combination in a transaction, must not exceed a ~10-second limit. READ MORE: What Is ‘Apex CPU Time Limit Exceeded’ & How Do You Solve It? |
| CSP | Content Security Policy | The Lightning Component framework uses CSP to impose restrictions on content. The main objective is to help prevent cross-site scripting and other code injection attacks. READ MORE: Manage CSP Trusted Sites. |
| DML | Data Manipulation Language | "Provides a straightforward way to manage records by providing simple statements to insert, update, merge, delete, and restore records." (source). |
| DOC | DevOps Center | Salesforce DevOps Center is the place to manage releases and to give low-code and pro-code development team members a single set of configuration and code to work with bringing closer collaboration. READ MORE: Salesforce DevOps Center: A Deeper Dive. |
| E2E | Ecosystem to Ecosystem | A test automation concept, E2E testing involves your entire IT stack, no longer testing in silos (one vendor at a time) as was traditionally the case. The complexities of modern-day hybrid cloud architecture can touch hundreds even thousands of upstream and downstream endpoints. READ MORE: Busting Test Automation Myths [Interview]. |
| ETL | Extract, Transform and Load | A category of tools that extract data from one platform, transform the data’s format, and load it into another platform. They have a widely varying set of capabilities, and which you choose will depend on your integration or data migration challenges. READ MORE: Salesforce ETL Tool Market Overview. |
| GTL | Guide Template Language | GTL is a Marketing Cloud script language that "provides a declarative syntax used for creating personalized, dynamic, data-driven messages, as well as constructing cross-channel templates and layouts." (source). |
| GUI | Graphical User Interface | "A form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation." (source). |
| IDE | Integrated Development Environment | "For heavy development work, you need a professional IDE that offers features like integration with source control, syntax highlighting, auto-completion, debugger, offline editing, etc." (source). Popular examples include Visual Studio Code and the Developer Console. |
| LWC | Lightning Web Component | An updated web standards-based framework method for creating components on the Salesforce Platform. They are simpler to define and develop because they are in line with updated web standards (like CSS, HTML, and updated JavaScript without requiring a set framework). READ MORE: [GUIDE] Lightning Web Components vs. Lightning Components. |
| MEL | Mule Expression Language | "A lightweight, Mule-specific expression language that you can use to access and evaluate the data in the payload, properties, and variables of a Mule message." (source). |
| MVC | Model–view–controller | An application design model made up of three parts: model = an entity representing data or activity, view = visualization of the state of the model, and controller = a facility for changing the state of the model. |
| NACL | Not Another Configuration Language | NACl is the language Salto has developed especially for readability. Anyone who is familiar with Salesforce will be able to understand the logical display of the XML content in order to understand the purpose of a component, what changes are planned, and even dependencies. READ MORE: Analyze Impact and Rapidly Deploy Any Salesforce Changes [In-Depth Overview]. |
| OData | Open Data Protocol | A set of best practices for building and consuming RESTful APIs (source). Salesforce Connect calls out to external OData endpoints to surface data that's stored in external objects. |
| PD1 | Platform Developer 1 | The Platform Developer 1 certification is a foundational exam for anyone on the path to become a Salesforce Developer, and covers a broad range of platform, declarative and programmatic topics. |
| PMD | Programming Mistake Detector | "An extensible cross-language static code analyzer." The site hosts documentation, and suggested code quality improvements can be surfaced within DevOps platforms. |
| RAML | RESTful API Modeling Language | "Makes it easy to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. It's concise - you only write what you need to define - and reusable. It is machine readable API design that is actually human friendly." (source). |
| SDK | Software Development Kit | A "kit" is a great way to think about it like "putting together a model car or plane. When constructing this model, a whole kit of items is needed, including the kit pieces themselves, the tools needed to put them together, assembly instructions, and so forth" (source). On the Salesforce platform, you'll find Mobile SDK, Mule SDK, and other platform SDKs. |
| SFDX | Salesforce Developer Experience | The user experience for Salesforce developers. In the past, pro-code developers were stretching the limits of a platform that hadn’t been designed with their workflows in mind. Salesforce DX was their answer to that problem. Salesforce’s overarching aim for DX was to support source-driven development, and this benefits everyone building on Salesforce. READ MORE: What is Salesforce DX? The Definitive Guide. |
| SFXD | Salesforce Discord Community | sfxd.github.io/ is a community for Salesforce Developers, curated by Salesforce Developers. Connected by a Discord community, there is also a wiki (a "glorified collection of HTML files") and searchable implementation files. |
| SLDS | Salesforce Lightning Design System | "Helps you build applications with the look and feel of Lightning Experience without writing a single line of CSS. SLDS is a CSS framework that gives you access to the icons, color palettes, and font that our developers use to create Lightning Experience" (source). |
| SOSL | Salesforce Object Search Language | "Used to perform text searches in records. Use SOSL to search fields across multiple standard and custom object records in Salesforce" (source). |
| SOQL | Salesforce Object Query Language | Used to search your organization's data for specific information. SOQL can be embedded in Apex code and various other places in your Org to grab specific information in a programmatic way. READ MORE: SOQL Cheat Sheet. |
| SSJS | Server-Side JavaScript | "The Marketing Cloud uses JavaScript code processed by Marketing Cloud servers. Instead of using the browser to render the JavaScript on the client-side computer, Marketing Cloud executes the JavaScript on the server when rendering." (source). |
Analytics & Prediction
| EA | Einstein Analytics | The former name for Tableau CRM (see above). You may still come across EA in outdated documentation. |
| NBA | Einstein Next Best Action | An AI-driven Salesforce product that makes recommendations to users when they are working with records in Salesforce. It appears within a Lightning component, that's typically placed on the record page sidebar. The user can choose to Accept or Reject the recommendation. |
| SAQL | Structured Query Language | "Use SAQL to access data in Tableau CRM dataset. Tableau CRM uses SAQL behind the scenes in lenses, dashboards, and explorer to gather data for visualizations." (source). |
| TCRM | Tableau CRM | Tableau CRM is a self-service data visualization and business intelligence (BI) platform that integrates Salesforce data with external data. Formerly known as Einstein Analytics, this product boasts some of the most powerful data analysis capabilities in the market. Read more: Tableau vs. Tableau CRM. |
| XMD | Extended Metadata | "Enables you to customize the formatting of dataset fields and their values in Analytics dashboards and lenses." (source). |
Industries: Financial Services, Education Cloud, Nonprofit Success Pack
| AAR | Account-Account Relationships | A feature of the Financial Services Cloud to relate households with businesses and organizations. For example, it can be a relationship between a household and their trust. READ MORE: Financial Services Cloud vs. Sales Cloud. |
| ACR | Account-Contact Relationships | A feature of the Financial Services Cloud to build Account-Contact Relationships between their clients and households. For example, it can be a relationship between a household and a member of the household. READ MORE: Financial Services Cloud vs. Sales Cloud. |
| AUM | Assets Under Management | "The total market value of the investments that a person or entity manages on behalf of clients" (source). AUM is featured in the pre-defined reports and dashboards within Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. |
| CCR | Contact-Contact Relationships | A feature of the Financial Services Cloud to relate members of the household with other contacts. For example, it can be a member of the household related to their attorney or accountant. READ MORE: Financial Services Cloud vs. Sales Cloud. |
| EDA | Education Cloud Architecture | Salesforce developed a set of industry products to enhance and extend the functionality of its core products - the Higher Education Cloud is one example. The EDA is a "flexible data architecture designed to configure Salesforce for education. Easily see the relationships learners have with advisors and family members" (source). |
| FSC | Financial Services Cloud | Salesforce developed a set of industry products to enhance and extend the functionality of its core products - the Financial Services Cloud is one example. This Salesforce managed package enhances and extends the functionality of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud combined to meet the needs of wealth management firms, insurance companies, and banks. READ MORE: Financial Services and Salesforce – What You Should Know. |
| NPSP | Nonprofit Success Pack | The Nonprofit Success Pack was specifically designed to meet the “unique” needs of Nonprofits, aka NGOs or charities, to aid them in being successful with their mission. There is a lot to unpack just in the name itself! It’s a “Pack” because it consists of several puzzle pieces to meet those needs, sitting on top of Sales Cloud. READ MORE: What is the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) from Salesforce.org. |
Salesforce Inc.
| AE | Account Executive | The representative at Salesforce who sells you licenses and often supports in matching you with a consulting partners to ensure you get the most out of Salesforce. Post-sales, you are supported by a representative from the Customer Success Group (CSG). |
| APAC | Asia Pacific | Salesforce splits their customer base geographically to localize their messaging and services. |
| CBU | Commercial Business Unit | Salesforce splits their customer base by size in order to cater to organizations of all sizes. The smaller customers (in terms of employees/Salesforce licenses) are categorized as "commercial"; Account Executives will have multiple accounts. |
| CSG | Customer Success Group | The representative/s at Salesforce who supports you post-sales. This team also creates onboarding content and developing practice guidance for the services teams. |
| EBU | Enterprise Business Unit | Salesforce splits their customer base by size in order to cater to organizations of all sizes. The largest customers (most employees/Salesforce licenses) are categorized as "enterprise"; Account Executives will have fewer accounts (even dedicated to one account). |
| EMEA | Europe, Middle East, and Africa | Salesforce splits their customer base geographically to localize their messaging and services. |
| ESMB | Emerging Small Business | Salesforce splits their customer base by size in order to cater to organizations of all sizes. Part of the "commercial" business unit, these customers are the smallest in terms of employees/Salesforce licenses (approx. <10). |
| GB | General Business | Salesforce splits their customer base by size in order to cater to organizations of all sizes. Part of the "commercial" business unit, these customers are one step up from MM but smaller than Enterprise (in terms of employees/Salesforce licenses). |
| LATAM | Latin America | Salesforce splits their customer base geographically to localize their messaging and services. |
| MM | Mid-Market | Salesforce splits their customer base by size in order to cater to organizations of all sizes. Part of the "commercial" business unit, these customers are one step up from SMB but smaller than GB (in terms of employees/Salesforce licenses). |
| SE | Sales Engineer/Solution Engineer | SEs create tailored demos that speak to your use cases, and are on hand to answer technical questions during the sales process. This role is not exclusive to Salesforce, with many partners also using the term (sales/solution is interchangable in most cases). |
| SMB | Small-Medium Business | Salesforce splits their customer base by size in order to cater to organizations of all sizes. Part of the "commercial" business unit, these customers are one step up from ESMB but smaller than MM (in terms of employees/Salesforce licenses). |
Dave Ge
Outstanding:) There is way too much obfuscating pedantic language in our IT industry and it gets used way too much. It is nice and convenient to have a single source of reference for so many acronyms and their definitions and meaning. Thank you.
Tim Combridge
Hey this one is super handy! I’ve pinned it for future reference – I always come across an acronym here and there that I get a mental blank on or haven’t seen before!
Arun
Awesome work for entry level or fresher in Salesforce this article is going to be very helpful to understand and get going thanks for the great work done.
Uma
Awesome, I am new to Salesforce world and I found this article very informative and useful.
Thank you.
Brandon
Very well done. Thank you for sharing.
Seshagirirao Vaka
Very good information, all useful acronyms available in one article really good idea.
simple reference thanks for sharing.
Christine Marshall
Thanks for reading!