Learn How Data Cloud Works

Learning Objectives

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

Explain key features of Salesforce Data 360.
Understand how data is used across Salesforce products.

As of October 14, 2025, Data Cloud has been rebranded to Data 360. During this transition, you may see references to Data Cloud in our application and documentation. While the name is new, the functionality and content remains unchanged.

What Is Salesforce Data 360?

Data 360 is a data platform that combines the power of the Salesforce Platform with the scalability of an infrastructure that allows for processing real-time data. Salesforce Data 360 offers a bridge to harness data split across many orgs, Marketing Cloud, web engagement, across warehouses and lakehouses—to be used for AI, analytics, and automation. It can also handle tremendous scale—and we mean tremendous. Data 360 can process trillions of records, petabytes of data, and thousands of requests per second per customer.

Data 360 expands Salesforce capabilities by using the best pieces of the developer-friendly Salesforce Platform and adding a highly scalable infrastructure. Data 360 is an evolution of Customer Data Platform (CDP)—which was originally designed for marketers but now caters to broader use cases beyond marketing.

In this badge, we demystify Salesforce Data 360 through the view of a product expert. This module is a video-based module with President and CTO, Agentforce, Data 360, MuleSoft, and Tableau, Muralidhar Krishnaprasad, ready to help you understand Data 360 capabilities.

How It Works

So how does Data 360 really work?

[Alt text: Data 360 data and functionality diagram.]

Connect any type of data from all your data sources, whether batch, streaming, or real-time data.
Prepare your data through transformation and data governance features.
Harmonize your data to a standard data model.
Unify data with identity resolution rulesets.
Query and analyze data using insights.
Use AI to predict behavior.
Ground your data for use with Agentforce.
Analyze, expand, and act on your data across any channel.
Segment audiences and create personalized experiences.
Output data to multiple sources to act on data based on your business needs.
Continue to review, measure, and optimize data.

Connect and Ingest Data

It all starts with bringing data into Data 360.

Follow along with the video using this PDF transcript.

Data 360 connects to any data, structured or unstructured. It can also connect to a variety of Salesforce and external data sources, including:

Salesforce sources: Sales, Service, Commerce, and Marketing Cloud Engagement connectors
Third-party sources: Amazon S3, Google storage connectors
Zero-copy sources: Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery
Ingestion API and Salesforce Interaction SDK
Web and Mobile connectors
MuleSoft connector
And more!

Overall, Data 360 makes it easier to bring all your data, whether streaming or batch, together into your Salesforce applications.

Learn more about connecting and ingesting data in the Data 360 Connectors and Integrations module.

Transform and Model Data

If you’ve ever spelled your name wrong in a form field, you might understand why data needs to be transformed. The good news is Data 360 allows customers to prepare, cleanse, and transform data before it is used. Data is diverse and can look different in various sources—for instance, a product order, a contact in Sales Cloud, or an anonymous web browser. With Data 360, harmonize data from those different sources into a standard data model—the Customer 360 Data Model.

Explore data transforms in Batch Data Transforms in Data 360: Quick Look and learn more about mapping in the Customer 360 Data Model for Data 360 module.

Unify and Enhance Your Data

Once you have data in Data 360, you can unify customer data into one profile and enhance the data using insights and AI.

Unify Data

Identity resolution creates comprehensive customer and account views by consolidating data from various sources. It uses matching and reconciliation rules to link data about people or accounts into unified profiles. Once required data is mapped to the Customer 360 Data Model, rulesets are created in the Identity Resolution (IR) feature to identify how to find matches. For example, a rule might specify that all records of individuals with the same email address and name should be combined into one profile. Data 360 allows you to choose and reconcile which information is used in the unified profile for that customer.

The Data and Identity in Data 360module focuses on unifying data using Identity Resolution.

Enhance Data with Insights

With a unified, normalized, and harmonized view of a customer’s information, you can enhance that data with Calculated Insights (CI). Create powerful metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) based on batch or streaming data. Batch calculated insights create metrics such as “total customer value” or “products over $500.” Streaming insights are created based on a rolling time window. For example, you can identify the click-through rate of all the products in an online storefront in the past 30 minutes.

Find more information about building insights in the Data 360 Insights module.

Use AI Models

You can also create AI models or connect existing models in Einstein Studio with clicks, not code. Train your models, evaluate its quality, and activate your models. Once activated, your models analyze your data and generate AI powered predictions or insights based on machine learning.

Once you have a working model, use its output to optimize processes. Use real-time predictions in Flow Builder to automate actions, transform DMOs with your output, and more.

Find more information about building AI models in the Build AI Models in Einstein Studio module.

Analyze and Act on Data

You can create useful metrics with insights and optimize processes for AI. You can also group your data, analyze it using different analytics tools, and then use that data in and out of Salesforce. The magic of Data 360 is in creating experiences that wow customers. Data 360 offers many ways for users to do that.

Segment

Marketers create audience segments in Data 360 that are used for personalized marketing campaigns within Journey Builder. Data 360 segments can also be activated to a rich ecosystem of advertising partners, including Facebook (Meta) and Google.

Learn how to build segments in Data 360 in the Segmentationmodule.

Analyze

Since Tableau is integrated with Data 360, all the standard data model objects and relationships are viewable in Tableau. By using the Direct Query functionality, you can analyze insights or any other data with a single click in CRM analytics.

Act on Data

Data 360 data can be used to create experiences in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud Personalization, and more. With Data 360, streaming events drive actions in various locations or targets. Data actions then use events, streaming insights, and data changes to trigger flows. For example, an automotive company uses a data action to trigger an alert to create an automatic service call, when a customer’s vehicle crosses the 75,000-mile mark.

In the next unit, we discuss how Data 360 powers use cases across Salesforce along with ethical considerations before implementation.

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