Recent Salesforce Products & Acronyms Decoded

Salesforce has built a vast and ever-evolving ecosystem where new names and Three-Letter Acronyms (TLAs) seem to emerge constantly. Keeping up with these changes can be overwhelming, but it’s crucial when making informed decisions about the right products for your business.

If you're finding it difficult to decipher the latest terminology or feeling pressured to make a choice, you're not alone. Here’s a curated list of recent, common Salesforce acronyms, products, to help you navigate the Salesforce ecosystem with confidence, we’ve also included a few insights on navigating contracts.

Below we are highlighting some of the newer/popular Salesforce product offerings and acronyms. For more information on all of their products, you can view product and pricing information here.

Essential Salesforce Terms & Insights

Quote to Cash & Revenue Solutions

CPQ - This stands for Configure, Price, Quote. It is used both as the name for a category of enterprise software, as well as for Salesforce’s own CPQ product which was acquired from Steelbrick in 2015. This is an add-on, installed package that has become a best-in-class solution, although Salesforce has recently rolled out its successor, Revenue Cloud.

RCA - This stands for Revenue Cloud Advanced, which is the on-platform, Salesforce-native successor to CPQ. You can read more about RCA and the differences between the products here.

RLM - This stands for Revenue Lifecycle Management, which is both a business concept as well as the original name of what is now Revenue Cloud Advanced. It is no longer the official product name, but you still might hear it thrown around.

Revenue Cloud - This was formerly used as the umbrella term for a suite of standalone products in CPQ, Billing, Customer Asset Lifecycle Management (CALM), Subscription Management, etc. As a brand, it has recently been repurposed and now refers to Salesforce’s net new CPQ offering.

Data & Development Tools

Data Cloud - A data platform that helps businesses connect, unify, and manage data from multiple sources in real time. By centralizing information from Salesforce, external systems, and third-party applications, it creates a complete and up-to-date view of customer data. This allows teams to gain deeper insights, personalize customer interactions, and make data-driven decisions more efficiently.

Full Sandbox - As opposed to the Partial Sandbox that comes with your Enterprise Edition, a Full Sandbox is a …. Full copy of your Production environment - the point of comparison here mostly being that it copies not just all of your metadata, but also all your data as well. Investing in this additional environment most often generates a return when teams develop in parallel, integrations need to be tested, there’s a large volume of data we need to validate, etc. NOTE: If you have an Unlimited Edition or Enterprise 1 Edition, you don’t need to purchase a Full Sandbox—it's already included in your subscription!

Partial Sandbox - A type of Salesforce sandbox that includes a portion of your production data (based on a sample you define) and all of your metadata. It's useful for testing and development with some real data but without the full dataset.

Developer Sandbox - A smaller, lightweight sandbox that includes only your metadata (like configurations, customizations, and code) but no real data. It's ideal for individual development and unit testing.

Editions & Licensing

Edition - Salesforce describes this as a “bundle of features and services,” and is essentially your subscription tier for an entire org. It dictates what bells and whistles you have access to with your licenses, and therefore your price as well. You can read more about them here.

UE - This stands for Unlimited Edition, and is (you guessed it!) one of the Edition options available. This is a license strategy for larger organizations with more sophisticated needs pursue, helping to save costs vs. purchasing various upgrades (e.g., a Full Sandbox) a la carte. 

E1E - this stands for Einstein 1 Edition,  and is (wow! You guessed it again?!) one of the Edition options available. While the scope of what a license entitles here is always subject to change, we generally think of this as “UE + Agentforce.”

AI & Automation

Einstein - Various products have been named with this moniker at times, such as Sales Cloud Einstein, but in general this is Salesforce’s brand and mascot for all things AI.

Copilot - You may see references out there to “Einstein Copilot,” which was the original branding of Salesforce’s initial Gen AI capabilities. This has since been deprecated in favor of…

Agentforce - Salesforce’s redefined definition of AI Agents beyond the traditional Service Cloud Agents. Now, they envision autonomous assistants that can be set up across various clouds within the Salesforce ecosystem—like SDR Agents, Sales Coach, and Campaign Agents. Admins can configure these agents using clicks, not code, by assigning them a purpose, providing relevant data, setting goals, defining guardrails for what the agents can or cannot do, and deploying them across channels like websites, Slack, or a Salesforce org.

AI Agent - Your customer service experts who never sleep! Powered by tools like Agentforce, they use machine learning and natural language processing to handle everything from answering basic questions to handling more complex issues like predicting customer needs.They are described to have continuous self-learning, indicating they should get smarter over time and wouldn’t need human input for most tasks.

Chat Bot - An AI-powered conversational agent designed to guide the customer experience through text or voice interactions. They can provide 24/7 support by answering FAQs, walking users through key processes, and assisting with troubleshooting in real time.

Flow - An automation tool using declarative (point and click) components to help you create guided processes and automate business tasks. Some popular uses for the feature is to streamline workflows, update records, send emails, and more.

Sales & Marketing Insights

Rev Intel - Shorthand for Revenue Intelligence, this is an add-on product that provides sales users and management insights into the sales pipeline. Good to know: customizing this works differently than traditional Reports & Dashboards, as it is instead built on Tableau CRM / CRM Analytics / Salesforce Analytics Query Language (SAQL).

Pardot - The maiden name, so to speak, of Salesforce’s B2B marketing automation platform they picked up in acquiring ExactTarget in 2013. This has since been renamed to “Account Engagement” so that it falls under the broader Marketing Cloud umbrella brand.

Collaboration Tools

Chatter - A communication tool within Salesforce that enables users to collaborate by sharing files, post updates, and engage in discussions directly on records. Chatter ensures that all users with access to a Record have the most up to date information, as it is updated and shared by others in real-time.

Slack - A business communication platform that provides real-time messaging, file sharing, and collaboration tools for teams. Salesforce acquired Slack in 2021 to enhance its Customer 360 platform and expand its collaboration tool offerings

If you’d like more guidance, don’t hesitate to drop us a line. We’re always happy to share our knowledge, suggestions, and what we’ve found to be the most helpful along our own journeys.