Dedicated CRM

Salesforce Sales Cloud

CRM

Every verdict, with its evidence

Core objects

In full

Salesforce ships Opportunity, Contact, Account and the two activity objects (Task and Event) as standard objects. Contacts attach to an opportunity through Opportunity Contact Roles, which also record the part each contact plays in the deal. Tasks and events relate to accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities and appear on the record's activity timeline. Note: Salesforce documents Account Name as a required field on the Opportunity, so association to an organization is presented as mandatory rather than optional.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.opp_fields.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sales.sales_core_opp_contact_roles.htm&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.activities.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=xcloud.lex_pro_tips_activity_timeline.htm&language=en_US&type=5

Verification: Verified

Pipeline stages

In full

The Opportunity carries a required Stage field driven by a picklist of ordered stage values. Each stage value is assigned a stage type of Open, Closed Won or Closed Lost, plus a probability and a forecast category, and admins add or edit stage values in Setup. A Path component can be configured to guide reps through the stage sequence on the record.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.opp_fields.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewSolution?id=000176852, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.opportunities.htm&language=en_US&type=5

Verification: Verified

Status

In full

The opportunity itself carries an IsClosed checkbox. Salesforce's own guidance for locking down settled records writes a validation rule against PRIORVALUE(IsClosed) on Opportunity, so the open-versus-closed answer is readable as an attribute of the record. Stage values are separately typed Open, Closed Won or Closed Lost in Setup, and report Status filters read those stage types, but a reader does not have to look the stage up.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000385070&language=en_US&type=1, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000385922&language=en_US&type=1

Verification: Verified

Resolution

In full

An IsWon checkbox sits on the opportunity alongside IsClosed. Salesforce's documented win rate recipe builds a summary formula that sums Opportunity.IsWon over a row count, which only works because IsWon is a field on the record. The stage picklist independently types each value as Closed Won or Closed Lost, and the article on stage types in reporting shows those types driving the Status filter.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000397091&language=en_US&type=1, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000385922&language=en_US&type=1

Verification: Verified

Actual close date

In full

Salesforce ships one Close Date field, documented as the date you plan to close the opportunity, and no separate field for the date it actually settled. The vendor also documents that moving an open opportunity to a stage of type Closed/Won rewrites Close Date to the current date in UTC when the stored value was in the future, and leaves it untouched when the stored value was already in the past. The shipped field is therefore stamped by the platform at close rather than left purely as a forecast, and the documented stamping behavior is described for the Closed/Won stage type.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000384954&language=en_US&type=1, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.opp_fields.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000392275&language=en_US&type=1

Verification: Verified

Record preservation

In full

A settled opportunity stays an ordinary record. Salesforce documents report Status filters of Any, Open, Closed and Closed Won that select on the stage type, so closed work is a first class reporting population. Stage history is also kept: entries are added whenever Amount, Probability, Stage or Close Date change, and the vendor states that opportunity stage history data is not automatically deleted.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000385922&language=en_US&type=1, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.opp_history.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000392663&language=en_US&type=1

Verification: Verified

Structured lost reasons

In part

There is no standard lost reason or close reason field on the Opportunity. The published list of standard Opportunity fields contains no such field; the only native place to type a reason is the free-text Description field, which alone would be partial. Salesforce's own Trailhead guidance instructs administrators to create a custom Lost Reason field on the Opportunity, treating it as a new addition requiring manual setup. A custom picklist created that way is fully structured and reportable, so the capability is reachable with buyer-side configuration but is not shipped.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.opp_fields.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/competitor-tracking-in-salesforce/configure-the-system

Verification: Verified

Email sync

In full

Users send email directly from any activity-enabled record (leads, contacts, person accounts, opportunities, cases, custom objects) and the message is logged to the activity timeline of that record and related records. In the other direction, Einstein Activity Capture connects the user's Microsoft or Google mailbox and automatically captures messages sent and received there, matching them to contacts, leads, accounts and opportunities, so mail composed in the native client reaches Salesforce without a BCC address. With Sync Email as Salesforce Activity enabled, captured mail is stored as standard EmailMessage and Task records visible to standard reports and the API; without it, captured mail appears on the activity timeline as virtual activity that is not editable and not available in standard reports. A BCC dropbox (Email to Salesforce) also exists as a separate, older mechanism.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sales.send_email_directly_from_crm_record.htm&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.aac_how_it_works.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sales.eac_email_activity.htm&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.aac_guidelines.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.email_my_email_2_sfdc.htm&language=en_US&type=5

Verification: Verified

Calendar sync

In full

Einstein Activity Capture syncs the Salesforce Event object with Microsoft Office 365, Exchange or Google calendars, and the sync direction is configurable as external-to-Salesforce, Salesforce-to-external, or Both Ways, with the external calendar winning on simultaneous edits. Documented constraints: custom fields are not synced between the two systems, the sync ceiling is 50,000 events per user, Salesforce-to-external propagation is slower than the reverse, and the connected mailbox must be the user's primary account in UPN format (aliases are unsupported) with one user syncing to one org only. Lightning Sync offered the same directional options but is closed to new customers and Salesforce states it retires in 2027, which leaves Einstein Activity Capture as the supported sync path; the Outlook and Gmail side panels are manual logging rather than sync.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sales.email_integration_admin_eac_vs_lightning_sync.htm&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sales.aac_event_sync_how_it_works.htm&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.aac_limitations.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.email_int_user_overview.htm&language=en_US&type=5

Verification: Verified

Schedulable activity types

In full

Tasks and events are created and scheduled from the activity composer on the record itself, covering to-do work, logged calls and meetings, and events appear on the Salesforce calendar. The Type picklists on both Task and Event are standard editable picklists: Salesforce documents administrators adding their own values via Object Manager, and the predefined Subject picklist for tasks and events is likewise defined by the admin. So internal operational work such as preparing a quote can be given its own activity type.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.activities.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.cg_task_add_task_type_picklist.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.activity_subject_picklist.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=xcloud.lex_pro_tips_activity_timeline.htm&language=en_US&type=5

Verification: Verified

Opportunity reporting

In full

All three are reachable from native reporting and forecasting, and two of them are reports the buyer assembles rather than canned metrics - which the platform supports, because the report builder can express a ratio and the data is captured. Stage conversion: the standard Opportunity History report type exposes From Stage and To Stage with timestamps, so stage transitions are held as rows, and custom summary formulas can express one group against another. Win rate: Salesforce documents building it in the report builder with custom summary formulas, WON:SUM over CLOSED:SUM for a rate against closed deals or WON:SUM over RowCount against all created deals. Forecast: Collaborative Forecasts ships as a purpose-built feature, rolling opportunity Amount up by period and forecast category on the first-class Close Date field, with alternative measures and date fields configurable per forecast type. Base Sales Cloud ships no packaged stage conversion dashboard - the standard reports are distributions and the funnel component has no conversion setting; the packaged Sales Stage Analysis Conversion dashboard sits inside the Revenue Intelligence add-on and is not counted here. Ruled 31 Aug 2026: a rate the vendor documents how to build in the platform's own report builder, over data the platform captures itself, counts as native reporting. Salesforce documents both the stage-transition data (the Opportunity History report type) and the formulas (WON:SUM over CLOSED:SUM), so nothing here rests on a third-party tool or an export.

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=analytics.reports_opp_history.htm&language=en_US&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sf.reports_builder_charts.htm&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000387867&language=en_US&type=1, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sales.forecasts3_forecast_types_overview.htm&type=5, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.Stage_analysis_conversion.htm&language=en_US&type=5

Verification: Verified