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Data 360 Glossary of Terms
Learn the definition of terms associated with Data 360.
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | W |
This glossary defines terms that appear throughout the Data 360 user interface and documentation.
A
- Activation
- The process that publishes a segment to activation platforms (targets).
- Activation Membership
- The grouping of fields from different data model objects (DMOs) to include in an activation.
- Activation Target
- The location, including authentication and authorization information, where a segment’s data is being sent to during activation, for example, Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- Allowlist
- A list of email addresses, IP addresses, or domains that are permitted access to a resource. For example, an allowlist controls the IP addresses that can access a Data 360 instance.
- Anonymous Data
- The data that isn’t associated with a specific person or account, such as mobile ad ID, first-party cookies, and hashed email addresses. Sometimes referred to as unknown data. Profiles in Data 360 can be anonymous or known.
- Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service)
- A service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface. Also referred to as Cloud Storage or Cloud File Storage.
- API Access
- The ability to allow calls to or from your instance of Data 360 outside of the user interface.
- API Calls
- Specific operations that client applications can invoke at runtime to perform certain tasks. For example, query data, obtain metadata, run utilities, trigger events, and pull or push data to a data center.
- API Name
- The specific, unique name that identifies a Data 360 object, field, segment, or insight within an API call.
- Attributes
- The information or data found in data model objects (DMOs). For segmentation, Data 360 offers two types of attributes: Direct (1:1) and Related (1:N).
This evaluation originates from the object that was selected for Segment On.
- Direct attributes (1:1): Attributes that have only one value for a record in the Segment On object. For example, if Individual DMO is selected as Segment On, then Individual.First Name or Individual.Gender attributes are listed as direct attributes. Additionally, all attributes from other DMOs that are related to Individual with a relationship cardinality of 1:1 are direct attributes.
- Related attributes (1:N): Attributes that have one or more values for a record in the Segment On object. For example, if Individual DMO is selected as Segment On, then Contact Point Email.Is Active or Sales Order.Grand Total Amount attributes are listed as related attributes.
- Audience
- A marketing term that refers to the collection of individuals (and their data) that can be used for various purposes within an activation target, like Marketing Cloud Engagement. Similar to a segment.
B
- Base Data Type
- The underlying, fundamental data format that represents how data is physically stored and processed. Common base data types include Boolean, Currency, Date, Number, and Text/String.
- Business Data Type
- A semantic layer that describes how data should be interpreted and processed for a specific business purpose. While the underlying storage format is the same, the business data type enables more specialized handling. For example, Email, Phone, and URL are all stored as Text at the base level.
- Business to Business (B2B)
- Businesses that market to other businesses.
- Business to Consumer (B2C)
- Businesses that market to consumers or customers.
- Blocklist
- A list of email addresses, IP addresses, or domains that are denied access to a resource.
- Business Unit
- A hierarchical administrative structure within Marketing Cloud Engagement that allows
control over the access to, and the sharing of, information by defined user roles.
Associated terms:
- Parent Business Unit (EID): A Marketing Cloud Engagement account identified by a unique identifier called an EID.
- Child Business Unit (MID): Business units in the same Marketing Cloud Engagement account. A MID is a unique identifier of a business unit.
C
- Calculated Insight (CI)
- A tool in Data 360 that queries, transforms, and creates complex calculations based on stored data.
- Calculated Insight Object (CIO)
- A data model object created after a calculated insight is processed. CIOs can be viewed in Data Explorer.
- Category
- A data type grouping that is selected when importing data into Data 360. Categories can’t be edited after ingestion. Available
categories include:
- Profile: Consumer, business, account, or employee data.
- Engagement: Time-based data.
- Other: Data that doesn’t fit into either profile or engagement, for example, product data.
- Chunk Data Model Object
- A data model object that stores chunked fields.
- Chunking
- The process of breaking unstructured data into manageable, semantically meaningful chunks that can then be turned into vector embeddings. Chunking strategies vary depending on the context of the content being chunked.
- Citations
- Citations link AI-generated responses to the grounding sources that the LLM used to generate the response. Use citations to verify the validity of the source data and identify potential inaccuracies or hallucinations in the generated responses.
- Clean Rooms
- Secure, privacy-focused environments designed for data collaboration. They enable multiple legal data owners to securely join and analyze their collective datasets using privacy-enhancing technologies, such as private joins, without sharing the underlying raw data.
- Code Extensions
- A capability that enables developers to extend Data 360 functionality through custom code development. For example, you can use code extension to create custom batch transforms. This enables organizations to implement tailored data-processing workflows to meet specific business requirements.
- Composite Key
- A primary key made up of multiple fields from your source data. Composite keys are generated by adding a formula during data ingestion.
- Consent Management
- The process of capturing and managing consumer consent, including data accessibility, data usage, and deletion.
- Contact Point
- A field or set of fields that represent data points that can be used to contact or engage an individual, for example, email or phone.
- A small amount of data generated by a website and saved by a web browser. Its purpose is to remember information about the website viewer, similar to a preference file created by a software application. While cookies serve many functions, their most common purpose is to store login information for a specific site.
- CRM Analytics
- A data analysis and visualization service for Salesforce CRM that provides users with actionable insights and AI-driven analytics right in their workflow.
- Customer 360 Data Model
- The standard, canonical data model used for Data 360 to help with interoperability across systems. The model defines the standard subject areas, objects, fields, metadata, and relationships to ensure consistency across applications and business processes.
- Customer Data Platform (CDP)
- A platform or software that stores and manages data across systems to create a unified customer database.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- A technology for managing all of a company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers.
D
- Data 360
- A product used to organize and unify data across Salesforce and other external data sources. After data has been ingested or connected into Data 360, it can be used across Salesforce applications and beyond. Previous product branding includes: Data Cloud, Customer Data Platform, Customer Data Cloud, Salesforce CDP, and Customer 360 Audiences.
- Data Cloud Architect
- A standard Data 360 permission set that includes permissions to the Data 360 Setup page where administrators configure data sources and create data kits.
- Data 360 Enrichment
- An enrichment queries or copies the data stored in Data 360 into an org. The two types of enrichments include copy fields and related lists.
- Data Action
- A process that triggers an action based on data received from a streaming insight. Data actions require data action targets.
- Data Action Target
- A record that stores authentication and authorization information for a given platform. Supported targets include webhooks and Salesforce CRM.
- Data Architecture
- A structure for organizing (or the standards that govern) how data is collected, arranged, integrated, and used in data systems.
- Data Bundle
- A collection of data streams that are automatically mapped to data model objects (DMO), for example, a Salesforce CRM bundle. Also called a starter data bundle in reference to Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- Data Capture
- The methodology by which an enterprise captures data from various systems, whether that is through pixel-based tagging, manual upload, or API.
- Data Collection
- The ability to acquire data from many different systems and sources.
- Data Connector
- A specialized data stream that communicates with external sources to transmit data into Data 360.
- Data Explorer
- A tool in Data 360 that allows users to view data from a data model object (DMO), data lake object (DLO), or in a calculated insights object (CIO).
- Data Governance
- The initiative a company takes to create and enforce a set of rules and policies regarding its data. These policies cover issues such as: Assigning accountability to employees responsible for data assets; granting or restricting access to data, as needed.
- Data Graph
- A grouping of data created by combining and transforming normalized table data from data model objects (DMOs) into new, materialized views. You can make fewer calls, and queries respond in near real-time, because the data is precalculated.
- Data Kit
- A portable and customized bundle of packageable metadata, created within Data 360 to streamline the package creation and installation process. Data 360 objects, such as metadata, relationships, and other components, can be wrapped together with a few easy clicks.
- Data Lake
- A repository of all types of enterprise data, including raw copies of source system data and transformed data used for tasks such as reporting, visualization, analytics, and machine learning.
- Data Lake Object (DLO)
- Storage containers within the data lake for the data ingested into all data streams within Data 360.
- Data Mapping
- The process of associating (mapping) data lake objects (DLOs) to data model objects (DMOs) after data has been ingested into Data 360. Only mapped fields and objects with relationships can be used for segmentation and activation.
- Data Model
- A way to organize and standardize data elements, and to add and edit data relationships. Data model is also a tab within Data 360 where a user can create custom data model objects and view existing data model objects.
- Data Model Objects (DMOs)
- A grouping of data (made up of attributes) created from data streams, insights, and
other sources. DMOs can be standard or can be custom, based on business need. Common
standard DMOs include sales orders, account, party identification, email engagement, and
so on. DMOs can be:
- Virtual: A view into a data lake object.
- Physical: An actual grouping of data found in Data 360.
- A collection of data lake objects (DLOs), data model objects (DMOs), and calculated insight objects (CIOs) that lets you make queries without moving any data out of Data 360.
- Data Source
- Any system with which you can exchange data.
- Data Space
-
A data space is a logical partition to organize your data for profile unification, insights, and marketing in Data 360.
- Data Stream
- A data source brought into Data 360. For example, a Marketing Cloud Engagement customer data extension. These data streams can be based on batched data or streaming data streams.
- Data Transform
- A feature that combines, shapes, cleans, and preps your data directly in Data 360.
- Data Type
- The type and format of source data ingested, specifically text, number, and datetime.
- Database
- An organized collection of structured information (data) typically stored in a computer system. A persistent database stores data for a long time, for example storing customer purchase data for several years.
- Device ID
- The unique identifier used for electronic devices. DMPs and customer data platforms can use these identifiers to relate devices (TVs, connected devices, smartwatches, and others) to a "person-based" ID.
- Dimension
- A qualitative value used to categorize a measure. For example, if you want to see every customer’s total amount spent, the customer ID could be a dimension associated with the measure of the total amount spent.
- Dynamic Filter
- With a dynamic filter, the prompt template specifies the filter value at run time. In Prompt Builder, when you configure a retriever in a prompt template, a dynamic filter in the retriever is mapped to a prompt input that gets resolved at run time.
- Dynamic Retriever
- A dynamic retriever defines a placeholder variable for a value that’s specified in a prompt template at run time.
E
- Endpoint
- Any final system where customer data is sent to, which is usually where that data is used for targeting. Common endpoints include Facebook and other social media platforms, Marketing Cloud Engagement, Demand Side Platforms, and so on.
- Ensemble Retriever
- A collection of individual retrievers. When you run an ensemble retriever, it executes the individual retrievers, combines their results into a single list, reranks the list according to relevance to the search request, and returns the most relevant information to the prompt template or agent.
- Expression
- A combination of clauses, operators, variables, and values. You use a SOQL expression to query the Salesforce data model.
- Extensibility
- An engineering and system design principle that allows for future growth by allowing for the easy development and sharing of key capabilities and functionality.
- External Activation Target
- An activation target that publishes segments to an external activation platform account, including platforms installed from AppExchange, and Google Ads, Meta, or Amazon Ads platforms.
- External Data Lake Object (DLO)
- A storage container with metadata for the data federated from an external data source. An external DLO acts as a reference, pointing to the data physically stored in an external data source.
F
- Field
- A storage
container for data. Used interchangeably with attribute. Associated
terms that are used for field metadata include:
- Field API name
- Field description
- Field type
- Field properties
- First-Party Data
- Data that your company has collected directly from your audience, for example, a customer providing birthday or social media followers who entered a contest with your company.
- Foreign Key
- A field in a table that refers to the primary key of another table. The foreign key links these two data tables together based on a data point, for example, a customer ID.
- Fully Qualified Key
-
A fully qualified key (FQK) is a composite key that contains a source key and a key qualifier. Use FQKs to avoid key conflicts when data from different sources is harmonized in the Data 360 data model.
See also the definition for Key Qualifier Fields.
H
- Harmonization
- The process of mapping ingested data into the Customer 360 Data Model.
- Hashed Email (HEM)
- A type of anonymous email that includes a unique key to anonymize email via a "SHA" or secure hash algorithm. There are various types of SHAs used for this purpose, including SHA-1 and SHA-256.
- Hashed Phone
- A type of anonymous phone number that includes a unique key to anonymize via a "SHA" or secure hash algorithm.
- Hybrid Search
- The process in which the results from a keyword search and vector search are merged and ranked to generate the most relevant response. Hybrid search generates two result sets, one based on keyword matching and the other based on semantic similarity. A hybrid search fusion ranker model then reranks these results into a single ranking to be used in Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).
- Hybrid Search Autodrop
- Hybrid search autodrop dynamically filters out results that show a sharp decrease in relevance scores for a search query. This increases the precision of search results for your prompts and RAG use cases.
- Hybrid Search Fusion Ranker
- A fusion ranking model that reranks the merged results retrieved from Data 360 hybrid search to surface the most relevant results for a search query.
I
- Identity Resolution
- The process of identity management by means of matching and reconciling data about people into a comprehensive view called unified profiles. Identity resolution is powered by rulesets and creates unified and link objects.
- Identity Resolution Rulesets
- Rulesets are a combination of match and reconciliation rules used to combine source records to resolve identity and create unified profiles.
- Ingestion
- The process of importing data from multiple sources into Data 360.
- Insights Builder
- A tool that allows users to create insights with limited knowledge of SQL.
- Installed Package
- A managed or unmanaged package that has been uploaded into an org from another org or from AppExchange. A package is a collection of components and applications that are made available to other organizations through AppExchange or in another instance of Salesforce.
- Instance
- The cluster of software and hardware represented as a single logical server that hosts an organization's data and runs its applications.
- Interoperability
- The ability of systems to easily connect and communicate with one another.
J
- Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)
- An application programming interface for the programming language Java, which defines how a client accesses a database.
- JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
- JSON is a lightweight format for transferring data.
- Journey Builder
- A Marketing Cloud Engagement feature that helps marketers create, send, track, and optimize the effectiveness of cross-channel customer journey campaigns.
K
- Key Qualifier Fields
- Key qualifier fields are schema fields that are automatically added to DLOs and DMOs
by Data 360. Key qualifier fields contain key qualifiers. Key
qualifiers are values configured for key qualifier fields to identify the data source.
Create and configure key qualifiers for each DLO field that contains either a primary
key or a foreign key.
See also the definition for Fully Qualified Key.
- Known Data
- Data that most companies have about their customers such as postal addresses, mobile numbers, or email addresses. Often related to profiles.
M
- Managed Package
- A collection of application templates that you can bundle and distribute on AppExchange. Salesforce partners use managed packages to sell and deliver Data 360 applications to customers.
- Marketing Cloud Intelligence
- An AI-powered marketing intelligence engine formerly known as Datorama. Helps customers make smarter decisions by connecting and acting on all of their marketing data, investments, and KPIs. Acquired by Salesforce in 2018, part of the Marketing Cloud.
- Marketing Cloud Personalization
- A personalization and interaction management tool used to create relevant customer experiences. Formerly known as Interaction Studio and Evergage.
- Match Rules
- A set of rules used to link multiple records into a unified individual within identity resolution rulesets.
- Measure
- An aggregated value of attributes, like a customer’s total amount spent or an average order amount.
- Metadata
- Data that describes other data. Data 360 metadata relates to the fields, configurations, and code that make up your environment. Metadata can be imported into other instances of Salesforce, modified in the product interface, or edited via the Salesforce Metadata API.
- Mobile Advertising Identifier (MAID)
- A unique ID provisioned by mobile platforms such as Apple and Google's Android to assign a specific device ID to each device. Often used in external activation platforms, referring to a specific data field.
- Mobile App
- An application on iOS or Android.
- MuleSoft
- Software for easily connecting disparate software applications within an enterprise so that they can share data and provide a unified view of the customer. Part of the Salesforce organization since 2018.
N
- Next Best Action
- A customer-focused marketing paradigm that considers the different actions that can be taken for a specific customer and then decides on the ‘best’ one. This next action could be an offer based on both the customer’s interests and the marketing organization’s business objectives.
- Next Best Offer
- A customized offer that delivers the merchandise, services, or information the customer wants, at the right time, at the right price, and by their preferred communication channel.
- Node
- A UI option found in Insights Builder after Selecting Objects.
O
- Objects
- A general term that references data found in a database. Within Data 360, used in relation to data model objects.
- Object Manager
- An admin tool for creating custom objects, using the schema builder, and viewing all objects stored in Data 360.
- Org (Organization)
- A deployment of Salesforce with a defined set of licensed users including a collection of data and metadata tied to a specific customer. It’s accessible by a defined set of Salesforce users. Each org is considered its own deployment of Salesforce.
P
- Package Manager
- A tool in Salesforce Setup that packages components. See also installed package.
- Party
- A term that can refer to a subject area or a field in Data 360. Party reflects a unique identifier, like a driver’s license number or a contact ID in Salesforce.
- Permission
- A setting that grants a user access to a specific tool, function, or area in Salesforce.
- Permission Set
- A collection of permissions and settings that gives users access to specific tools and functions.
- Population Count
- The number of records or contacts identified in a segment within Data 360.
- Point-of-Sale (POS)
- A system that manages transaction data at the point of purchase, such as a retail store or grocery.
- Primary Key
- An object’s unique identifier of a record, such as a customer email address or a product SKU. The relationship is made by matching the values of the foreign key in one table with the values of the primary key in another.
- Process Definitions
- Within data governance, process definitions refer to standardized workflows that manage data operations such as data streams, transformations, insights, segments, and identity resolution.
- Profile Explorer
- A tool within Data 360 in which a user can view Unified Individual profiles.
- Push Notifications, Mobile
- Push notifications are alerts that apps render on mobile device home screens when users aren’t using the app. These alerts can consist of text, icons, and sounds, depending on the device type.
R
- Real Time Interaction Management (RTIM)
- Enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually relevant experiences, value, and utility at the appropriate moment in the customer via preferred customer touchpoints. Salesforce offers this functionality in Marketing Cloud Personalization.
- Reconciliation Rules
- User-defined rules that determine which source the system uses when creating unified individual profiles. Options include: last updated, most frequent, or source priority.
- Relational Data
- Data whose organization is based on the relational model of data. This model organizes data into one or more tables (or “relations”) of rows and columns, with a unique key for each row.
- Relationships
- A connection between two objects or sets of data. Relationships include:
- One-to-one (1:1): A link between the information in two tables, where each record in each table only appears one time. For example, a one-to-one relationship between employees and the cars they drive. See direct attributes.
- One-to-many (1:N): A relationship between records in which one record in a table can be associated with one or more records in another table. For example, each customer can have many sales orders. See related attributes.
- A related object of a Data Model Object (DMO) shares defined cardinality relationships with the DMO. These relationships connect the DMOs in the Data 360 data model, making it easier to reference and organize data across different DMOs.
- Retriever
- A logical layer between the search service and knowledge retrieval-powered solutions, such as RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) implementations. It defines the runtime search and retrieval configuration for an application, agent, prompt templates, and other solution components. A retriever serves as a reusable, versioned, and packageable artifact that simplifies the setup of knowledge retrieval with search-based grounding for agents, Agentforce data libraries, prompt templates, with Apex, or in Flow.
- Ruleset
- A user-selected combination of match and reconciliation rules used to combine source records to resolve identity and create unified profiles. See identity resolution rulesets.
S
- Salesforce Advertising Studio
- A product that helps you engage with your customers and prospects. It includes three applications: Advertising Audience, Journey Builder Advertising, and Lead Capture. You can use Advertising Studio to coordinate campaigns with social, mobile, sales, and customer service efforts.
- Salesforce CRM
- Within Data 360, Salesforce CRM refers to Sales Cloud and Service Cloud accounts.
- Salesforce Data Pipelines
- A product that can clean, transform, and enrich large volumes of data at scale.
- Search Index Configuration
- A process in Data 360 that generates chunks and vector embeddings from unstructured data.
- Second-Party Data
- Data provided by a partner or as the result of a relationship.
- Secondary Index
- A data structure built on top of a DLO to speed up data retrieval by creating shortcuts to specific data. It organizes data based on specified fields and allows the database to find records much faster, similar to how a book's index helps you find a topic quickly.
- Segment
- A set of objects (for example individuals in B2C) that share some set of characteristics. Similar to an audience, you can learn more about their differences in this internal resource. Related to an audience and population count.
- Segments
- A tab in Data 360 where marketers can create segments to send to activation targets.
- Segment On
- Within segmentation, segment on defines the target object used to build your segment.
- Segmentation
- The ability to query data and split it out into groups based on different attributes or characteristics. For example, customer’s who have bought shoes in the last 30 days.
- Streaming Insights
- Calculations and queries based on near real-time data. Streaming insights can be used to create data actions.
- Structure Query Language (SQL)
- Pronounced as either "sequel" or "S-Q-L”, SQL is a query language used for accessing and modifying information in a database. Insights are created using SQL in Data 360.
- Structure Object Query Language (SOQL)
- Similar to the standard Structured Query Language (SQL), SOQL is used to query the Salesforce data model. Data insights are created using SOQL in Data 360. SOQL is pronounced "so-quel" or "S-O-Q-L."
- Structured Data
- Information with a specific, consistent format that adheres to a schema. This data is organized into predefined tables, rows, and columns, making it easy to store, query, and analyze in a relational database. Common examples include CRM records (accounts, contacts, leads), e-commerce transactions, and other customer profile data.
- Subject Area
- A term used to group similar DMOs to aid in data modeling. Data 360 subject areas include party, engagement, loyalty, and so on.
T
- Tableau
- Acquired by Salesforce in August 2019, Tableau is a powerful, secure, flexible data analytics platform.
- Tenant
- An organization in our service. Our multi-tenant architecture means that we have multiple orgs residing on the same app servers.
- Tenant-Specific Endpoint (TSE)
- A unique system-generated subdomain assigned to your tenant.
- Third-Party Data
- Any information collected by a group that doesn’t have a direct relationship with a user’s data.
U
- Unified Profile
- A profile that contains customer data reconciled across multiple sources as a single record using identity resolution rulesets.
- Unmanaged Package
- A collection of application templates that you can bundle and distribute as open-source projects. Use unmanaged packages to move Data 360 metadata between orgs or to provide a starting point for developers.
- Unstructured Data
- Data that doesn’t have a specific, consistent format and can’t be easily stored in a typical relational database. Common forms of unstructured data include chat transcripts, audio files, websites, legal documents, and other large texts, such as books.
- Unstructured Data Lake Object (UDLO)
- A data model object that references unstructured data stored in files within an external blob store, such as Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage.
- Unstructured Data Model Object (UDMO)
- A grouping of data (composed of attributes) created from unstructured data lake objects. Workloads in Data 360 consume unstructured data through UDMOs.
V
- Vector Data Model Object (VDMO)
- A data model object that stores generated vector embeddings.
- Vector Embedding
- A numerical representation of unstructured data that machines can read. Vector embeddings measure the semantic similarity of different pieces of text, enabling accurate and relevant results in generative AI prompts and searches.
- Vector Search
- Also known as Semantic Search, involves retrieving semantically similar documents (or document chunks) given a search query. This is done by searching for vector embeddings that are close to the vector belonging to the query.
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