New Data Models on architect.salesforce.com

We announced the new Salesforce data models on architect.salesforce.com at the first-ever Architect main show at Dreamforce ’21, which is available for you to watch on-demand on Salesforce+. We shared what diagrams you’ll find today, as well as how our partnership with Lucidchart also means you’ll find resources like a Salesforce shape library and data model templates in Lucidchart.

Going forward, architect.salesforce.com will be the single destination for all Salesforce data models. We will retire existing data model sources (in various communities, documentation sites, etc.) as we make data models for all our products and industries available on the Digital Home. The 6 data models below are now live in the architecture gallery.

• Sales Cloud Overview Data Model
• Product & Price Book Data Model
• Service Cloud Data Model
• Tasks & Events Data Model
• Retail Execution Data Model
• B2B Ad Sales Data Model

We currently support accessible PDF and Lucidchart template formats. Let’s look at what you’ll find in each format and how you can use them to simplify your own data modeling work.

Accessible PDF

The accessible PDF format has key features like entity formatting and relationship meaning to help differentiate Salesforce data models from other ERDs, and provide context to help you understand how the data model is organized and to read it more easily. You can read more about the notation on the data model notation page. Let’s look at entity formatting and relationship notation here quickly:

Entity formatting

Every data model details Salesforce entities with the lens of a specific “focus” cloud such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, or Marketing Cloud. The color scheme of the diagram aligns with the branding of the cloud in focus, as shown in the Sales Cloud data model above. The entity color and border also has a specific meaning, which is detailed in the diagram legend. An entity with the colors matching the focus cloud signal that the object or entity is included with a license for that focus cloud. Read more about the entity formatting here.

Relationship meaning

Relationship meanings help you read the data model more easily. The visual cues that show cardinality, optionality or the labels of a relationship can be “read” like a sentence, which describes the key facts about the relationship. For example, reading the relationship notation above, from left to right, makes the sentence: “Each Contact must be primarily a contact for one and only one Account”. You can read more about relationship meaning and other notations here.

Lucidchart templates

Every data model has a link to open a template version of that data model in Lucidchart. Every data model template provides a spot for your company logo and is pre-loaded with the Salesforce shape library complete with cards and icons. The templates also include the entity formatting and relationship meaning labels we discussed above to help start you off with the same best practices our product teams use.

Some of you may already notice that we removed the focus cloud colors from the data model templates. We did this for a few reasons. One, we want to make it easy for you to focus your own diagrams on the customizations and functionality relevant to your companies. Two, our cloud colors — along with other pieces of our branding, like icons — are subject to change. So we wanted to minimize the places that different teams across Salesforce would have to push branding updates. Last, and most important, we want your diagrams to be long-lived assets for your company and for you to be able to trust that you’ll always get the latest, most up-to-date resources directly from us at architect.salesforce.com.

What’s next?

We will release new data models to the architecture gallery every month. Our long-term goal is to have the full portfolio of Salesforce products and industry clouds represented in the gallery, so be sure to check in regularly.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the new data models, which data models you’d like to see next, and which diagramming tools you want us to partner with next. Please fill out this form to give us your feedback.

And, of course, follow @SalesforceArchs and Salesforce Architects on LinkedIn for all the latest updates on this data models, diagrams, and more.

Our thanks

These Salesforce data models are the work of many individuals and teams across Salesforce. It is an honor to share their work with you — and to pass on our deepest thanks here: