Learn About the Financial Services Cloud Data Model
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the Financial Services Cloud data model.
- Define key terms such as database, object, field, and record.
Before You Begin
In this module, we assume you're a Financial Services Cloud (FSC) admin with the proper permissions to complete the step-by-step instructions that follow. If you’re not an admin for FSC, that’s OK. Read along to learn how your admin would take the steps in a production org. Don’t try to follow these steps in your Trailhead Playground. FSC isn’t available in the Trailhead Playground. You can, however, try the steps in a special Developer Edition Trial org that contains FSC and sample data. Get your free trial org here.
How Is a Data Model like a Supermodel?
A supermodel is a person who is paid to make fashion look gorgeous. A data model’s job is to make the information in the database look gorgeous. Well, maybe not gorgeous exactly, but easy to understand.
A data model shows each object in the database and how the objects are related to each other. Sounds straightforward, right? Let’s define some terms to make sure it stays that way, then view the data model.
What’s a Database?
A database is a series of related tables that contain data. If you’re not familiar with database tables, how about spreadsheets? Good. Let’s compare a database to a spreadsheet table.
We took the client data from the Financial Services Cloud trial org and put it into a spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet has columns, like Client name and Category, and rows, like Rachel Adams.
Our database uses different terms.
- Tables are objects, such as the Financial Account object.
- Columns are fields, such as the Client name field.
- Rows are records, such as the Rachel Adams record.
More About Objects
Let’s look at a common object: Financial Account. The Financial Account object contains fields, such as Financial Account Name, Status, and Ownership. Our client, Rachel Adams, has several financial accounts, including an investment account. Here’s Rachel’s investment account.
Financial Services Cloud provides all standard Salesforce objects, plus out-of-the-box financial objects to represent your business data. Specialized objects include Financial Account, Financial Account Role, Financial Holding, Securities, and others. If needed, you can extend the data model to support your business requirements.
Take a Look at the Data Model
We’ve spent enough time talking about the data model. How about we look at a real live data model in the Schema Builder?
The Schema Builder shows the following.
- Objects, such as Account and Contact.
- Fields, such as Account Name, Account Number, and Account Owner.
- Relationships, such as between Account and Contact (hover over the relationship line to see related objects and their relationship type).
First, log in to your FSC trial org and navigate to the home page.
- Click
and select Setup. - In the Quick Find box, enter
Schema Builder. - Click Schema Builder.
Poke around a little. Scroll to see different parts of the data model and how they are connected. Once you have an overview, select objects in the list on the left to display specific objects and their relationships.
Here’s what the Account and Contact objects look like in the Schema Builder.
Now that you know the basic parts of the data model and have examined it yourself, get ready to dive into the details.
Resources