What is Schema Builder in Salesforce? | All You Need to Know

Schema Builder is a graphical tool in Salesforce that allows you to create, modify, and visualize data models of your Salesforce organization. It provides an intuitive interface for creating, editing, and managing data-storing objects and fields in your Salesforce organization.

Using Schema Builder, you can add new custom object, modify standard object, and create new custom fields, relationships, and validation rules. You can also visualize the relationships between objects and their fields, which helps your organization understand the data model and how objects and fields interact With each other, with the help Schema Builder, you can easily build and modify your Salesforce data model without writing any code, making it easier for administrators and developers to collaborate, maintain a consistent data model and even detect errors or inconsistencies in a data model of the before any changes in a production environment.

Reasons why we use Schema Builder

Schema Builder is used in Salesforce for several reasons.

Data modeling: Allows you to visually model your data, which is especially helpful for those who may not be familiar with writing code. This makes it easy to create, modify, and manage custom objects, fields, and relationships between them.
Collaboration: This is a visual tool that allows multiple team members to collaborate in real time, ensuring everyone is on the same page and constantly making changes
Error testing: This allows you to check your data model and relationships between objects and fields, and identify any errors, inconsistencies, or missing fields that could affect your organization’s data quality.
Customization: Provides an interface to customize your data model without writing any code, allowing you to create new objects, fields and modify existing ones.
Data Security: Enables administrators to control access to data and fields by defining field security and page structure, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive data

Don't forget to check out: The Salesforce Schema Builder — What You Need To Know

Requirements

Required editions:

It is available in both Salesforce Classic (not in all orgs) and Lightning Experience Available in all editions of Salesforce

User permissions needed:

To view objects in Schema Builder: ‘Customize Application’ permission is required.

Tabs in Schema Builder

These are some of the tabs in the Schema builder.

Auto-Layout: Used to layout Objects layout. Click on auto layout to explicitly display and maximize the schema builder.
View Options: In this option we have three filters: Show Element Names, Hide Relationships, and Hide Legend.
Elements: This tab displays all the items, fields and relationships of the sidebar as a drop down.
Object: Here we have a drop-down with options for selected, standard, custom and system features. We can Select filter according to our needs.

Let’s take a closer look at using Schema Builder

Access Schema Builder: To access Schema Builder, log in to Salesforce and go to Setup > Platform Tools > Schema Builder.
Create a new object: Click the "New Custom Object" button to create a new object. You can add fields, define relationships, and configure field-level security and page layout as needed.
Modify an Object: To modify an existing object, click on the name of the object in the Schema Builder interface. You can add fields, edit existing fields, and change relationships between objects.
Add Fields: To add a new field, click the "New" button next to the item you want to add the field to. Select the type of field you want to create (e.g. text, number, picklist, etc.), and enter field descriptions as needed.
Set Relationships: To set relationships between objects, click the "New" button next to the relationship type (e.g., lookup or master-detail). Identify parent child resources and explain relationship issues as needed.
Set Field-Level Security: To control access to fields, click the "Field-Level Security" button of the object whose security you want to configure. You can specify profile or permission groups that can view, edit, or delete fields.
Set Page Layouts: To control the layout of the fields on the page, click the "Page Layouts" button on the object whose layout you want to set. You can add, remove, or rearrange fields on the page as needed.