Salesforce.com is a CRM package as well as a Platform as a Service (PaaS). PaaS means the Salesforce platform can be used to build custom applications apart from a CRM. Salesforce.com is a SaaS plus PaaS. Software as a Service (SaaS) is used because of its ability to provide an out-of-the-box ruleset to manage CRM core functionalities, and PaaS is used because of the platform that can be used to build business logic through the provided components. The core of any CRM package is the ease with which it provides its administrators the ability to manage a user's profile. As we walk through this chapter, we will explore how easy it is to create, manage, and profile users in the Salesforce.com CRM.

The first common task of an administrator in Salesforce is to create users who will be the end users for the applications. An application in Salesforce is developed by developers, with the help of a design provided by an architect depending on the business requirement gathered by a business consultant. The scope of this book is to discuss the admin capabilities provided by the platform for an administrator and the day in and day out activities of a Salesforce administrator.

For a better understanding of the topics, I would recommend readers to sign up for a free developer account with Salesforce at Salesforce Developers (https://developer.salesforce.com/en/signup) and get hands-on with the concepts explained in this book.