Learn What’s New in Data Cloud Setup and Administration for Winter ’25

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Summarize the changes that streamline Data Cloud Setup.
Build a strong foundation with BYOL data federation.
Refine access to data spaces with feature permissions.
Control which users can view specific data lake objects.
Manage encryption keys for Data Cloud.
Do more with new data types in Data Cloud.

Maintain Your Certification

If you hold the Data Cloud Consultant credential, keep in mind that you need to complete this module by the due date to maintain your certification. Another important part of maintaining your credential is ensuring your Trailhead and Webassessor accounts are linked.

Interested in learning more about getting certified? Check out the Data Cloud Consultant credential.

While anyone can earn this badge, this module is designed for those who hold the Data Cloud Consultant certification.

Protect the Integrity of Your Certification

The quality of our certification exams and the value that our credentials provide are our highest priority. Protecting the security and confidentiality of our exams is essential to providing our customers with credentials that are respected and industry-leading.

As a participant of the Salesforce Certification Program, you’re required to accept the terms of the Salesforce Credential and Certification Program Agreement. Please review the Salesforce certification exam-taking policies in the Salesforce Credential and Certification Program Agreement and Code of Conduct Trailhead Help article for more details.

The Data Cloud Consultant credential indicates that a person has experience implementing and consulting on enterprise data platforms in a customer-facing role, including designing, configuring, and architecting solutions. Consultants are proficient in Data Cloud capabilities and solutions and have broad knowledge of Salesforce technology.

Salesforce introduced new feature enhancements over the past year. Let’s take a look at some of the more important ones for Data Cloud Consultants.

Data Cloud Setup Is Streamlined

New Data Cloud users will find it easier to get started with a more streamlined setup. Now, any Salesforce user with a system admin profile on an org with a Data Cloud license can access Data Cloud Setup. Salesforce removed the requirement to assign the Data Cloud Admin permission before accessing Data Cloud Setup.

System admins can use the guided setup, which walks you through common setup steps. Data Cloud Setup navigation has been updated to help you quickly access new guidance sets, complete setup tasks, and track your progress.

This change applies to Data Cloud in Developer, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions.

Build a Strong Foundation with Bring Your Own Lake Data Federation

Use Bring Your Own Lake (BYOL) data federation to securely view and consume data from external data platforms. With access to trusted, governed, and customer-rich information from external data platforms, you can build in-depth, accurate profiles to establish a single source of truth and eliminate expensive integration processes.

Data Federation

Data federation uses zero-copy integration to seamlessly access external data without copying it into Data Cloud. Let’s review how data federation works. When you deploy a data stream, an external data lake object (DLO) is created. The external DLO is a storage container with metadata for the federated data. The DLO acts as a reference and points to the data physically stored in the partner’s data warehouse or data lake. You can also opt for caching to improve performance.

You can use partner data with many Data Cloud features. After you process a job, the resulting data persists in Data Cloud. For example, when you query data from a partner and build a calculated insight based on that data, the resulting calculated insight objects are stored in Data Cloud features.

Before using the data in Data Cloud features, you must map the fields listed in the external DLO to the semantic data model. For more information, review data mapping best practices.

Refine Access with Data Spaces Feature Permissions

Refine user access to data spaces in Data Cloud. Data security within Data Cloud data spaces is being improved to align with CRM access control and enforce security across all access methods.

Data space access control is now integrated into permission sets, and all Data Cloud orgs (except those with Marketing Cloud Growth enabled) received the new permission sets in April 2024. Now, admins can directly associate multiple data spaces to a permission set. Admins can also assign the new permission sets to Data Cloud users, then enable enhanced security data spaces. Use new feature permissions to further restrict access to data space-aware features for each data space within the permission set.

With this upgrade, permission sets for a data space are no longer created automatically when the data space is created. Instead, an admin can associate data spaces in the Data Cloud Data Space Management settings for a Data Cloud standard permission set or custom permission set. After a data space is associated with a permission set, select the data space link to access feature permissions. Sharing is no longer supported on data space-aware feature objects.

Control Which Users Can View Specific Data Lake Objects

Increase data security with improved permission settings for data lake objects (DLOs). To reduce unauthorized access, Salesforce removed the View All and Modify All object permissions on DLOs from the standard Data Cloud User, Data Cloud Marketing Manager, and Data Cloud Marketing Specialist permission sets. Data Cloud admins continue to have View All and Modify All object permissions.

Permissions have also been removed from objects that have a foreign key relationship with the MktDataLakeObject. Users with standard permission sets can still view data streams but can’t access DLO metadata components without the necessary data space permissions. To grant users permission to view specific DLOs, assign them to a permission set associated with the data spaces where the DLO lives.

This change applies to Data Cloud in Developer, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions.

Manage Encryption Keys for Data Cloud

Working with data at scale is a big job that can come with extra compliance and regulatory requirements. Now, you can make your key control more manageable. Control the keys that encrypt your data at rest in Data Cloud with a single manageable root key. With Platform Encryption for Data Cloud, simply turn on key management for Data Cloud, and Salesforce generates a root key for you. The root key secures the data encryption key that’s used for encrypt and decrypt operations. You can rotate your root key and view root key details for easy auditing.

Platform Encryption for Data Cloud was made available in September 2024. This change is available to customers who purchase Shield Platform Encryption and Platform Encryption for Data Cloud add-on subscriptions. Platform Encryption for Data Cloud doesn’t support Government Cloud.

To provision Platform Encryption for Data Cloud, contact your account executive. Then, in Setup, on the Encryption Settings page, turn on Manage Data Cloud Keys. Salesforce generates a root key for you. When it’s ready, you can see it on the Key Management page under the Data Cloud tab.

Do More with New Data Types in Data Cloud

To enhance flexibility, you can now use the email, URL, phone, percent, and Boolean data types in Data Cloud. These data types expand data compatibility and interoperability with external systems that interface with Data Cloud.

Data Type	Description
Email	Stores email addresses. The email data type is modeled on the text data type. You can use any valid text value for ingestion into an email data type field. Data Cloud doesn’t validate the format.
URL	Stores URL values. Data Cloud doesn’t parse or interpret the ingested URL value. It also doesn’t validate the value for correctness. Data Cloud doesn’t store any metadata related to the URL.
Phone	Stores phone numbers. Data Cloud doesn’t validate the format of the phone number. The phone data type is modeled on the text data type. Any valid text value is accepted for ingestion into a phone data type field.
Percent	Holds percentage values. The percent data type is modeled on the number data type. Only valid numeric values are accepted for ingestion into a percent data type field.
Boolean	Possible values are true, false, and blank.

This change applies to Data Cloud in Developer, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions. To view a list of all data types and their properties, refer to Data Types in Data Cloud.

You’ve learned about updates in Data Cloud Setup, data federation, access to data spaces and data lake objects, encryption keys, and new data types in Data Cloud. In the next unit, find out what’s new in data ingestion and identity resolution.

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