Objects, fields & records
The Salesforce data model is simpler than it first appears. An object is like a database table — Account, Contact, Opportunity, and Case are all standard objects that come with the platform. A record is a single row in that table, such as one account named "Acme Corp". A field is a column, such as the account's Phone or Industry. When the standard objects do not fit your business, you create custom objects and custom fields; custom items get a __c suffix in their API name, for example Project__c.
Fields come in types that control what they store and how they behave. Common ones include Text, Number, Currency, Date, Checkbox, Email, Phone, Picklist (a fixed dropdown), and Formula (a read-only calculated value). Choosing the right type matters because it drives validation, reporting, and automation downstream. A phone number stored as free Text cannot be validated or dialled the way a Phone field can.
Every object also has a system Name field and a unique Id that Salesforce assigns automatically. The Id is how the platform and the API refer to a record unambiguously — you will see 15- and 18-character Ids throughout your career.
You inspect and edit all of this in Setup under the Object Manager. There you can open any object to see its fields, page layouts, and relationships, and create new custom fields with a guided wizard. As an exercise, open Object Manager, choose Account, and add a custom picklist field called "Account Tier" with values Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Then create an account record and set the value.
Internalise this three-part vocabulary — object, record, field — because every later topic, from automation to security to reporting, is described in these terms. Next we look at how objects connect to one another through relationships.
