01 · What is a Salesforce org?

Instance, org, environment — the words everyone uses and nobody defines. Fifteen minutes to a mental model that sticks.

The org is the unit of everything

Your org is one tenant on shared infrastructure: its own data, its own metadata, its own users. Sandboxes are copies of the metadata; Developer Editions are free standalone orgs — sign up for one now, it is your lab for this whole course.

Setup is home

Almost everything an admin does starts from the Setup gear. Learn the Quick Find box first: typing beats navigating, every single time.

Practice in your org

• Open your Developer Edition org and follow along step by step
• Change one thing at a time and note what happens
• When something breaks, read the error before searching for it