Salesforce terms starting with Q

Quantity Forecasting is the Salesforce Sales Cloud forecast type that rolls up units (rather than revenue) from opportunity line items into a forecast per rep and per period. It answers the question "how many of each product will we sell" instead of "how much money will we book", and runs in parallel with Revenue Forecasting on the same forecast hierarchy. Quantity forecasts use the same forecast machinery as revenue: forecast categories (Pipeline, Best Case, Commit, Closed) roll up by the role hierarchy, managers can override their team's number, and quotas can be set in units. The numbers come from the Quantity field on each Opportunity Line Item, summed by category. Customers with hardware products, license counts, seat-based subscriptions, or finite physical inventory rely on quantity forecasts to plan production, fulfillment, and capacity ahead of bookings.

A Quantity Schedule in Salesforce defines how the quantity of a Product on an Opportunity is delivered or recognised across time periods. The schedule splits the total quantity into installments, each with its own date, so finance and operations teams can track when each portion of the order is fulfilled. Quantity Schedules are configured on the Product record under Product Schedules and applied automatically when the Product is added to an Opportunity with a quantity above one. Quantity Schedules sit alongside Revenue Schedules as the two scheduling types Salesforce supports. A Quantity Schedule answers "when is each unit delivered?" A Revenue Schedule answers "when is each dollar earned?" Both can be enabled on the same Product, producing per-installment records that combine quantity and revenue in one schedule. The schedule is generated as a list of OpportunityLineItemSchedule records, one per installment, attached to the parent Opportunity Product.

Quantity Without Adjustments is a Salesforce Collaborative Forecasting measure that represents the raw forecast quantity rolled up from opportunities before any manual adjustments from managers or forecast owners have been applied. The figure is the bottom-up, unadjusted total, calculated directly from the underlying Opportunity records and their Forecast Category assignments. It sits alongside the adjusted Quantity column to give managers a clear comparison: what the data says versus what the manager's judgment overlay says. The measure matters because Collaborative Forecasting supports two distinct views of the same data. The adjusted Quantity reflects the manager's calibrated judgment after considering deal-specific context the raw numbers do not capture (a customer that is verbally committed but has not signed, a known risk on a major deal, a sandbagged forecast that needs a haircut). Quantity Without Adjustments is the floor, the pure data view. Reviewing both together is a standard part of every forecast call and helps the org distinguish between the model's prediction and the judgment of the people closer to the deal.

Quantity Without Manager Adjustment is the field on a Salesforce Collaborative Forecast that shows the raw unit-count rollup from a sales manager's team before the manager has applied any adjustment. It captures what the platform calculates from the underlying opportunity line items, untouched by the manager's commentary or override, and exists as a sibling field next to the manager-adjusted version so leadership can see both the system view and the human view side by side. The field is part of Salesforce's broader forecast-adjustment model. Reps roll up to managers, managers can override the rollup with their own number (Best Case, Commit, or Pipeline) and add an explanatory comment, and the platform preserves the original rollup as the Without Adjustment field. Sales ops dashboards typically chart both lines to track manager bias over time: a manager who always adjusts up by 20 percent is signaling something different than one who adjusts down by 20 percent, and the gap between Quantity Without Manager Adjustment and Quantity is the measurement.

Quantity Without Owner Adjustment is a Salesforce Collaborative Forecasting measure that shows the forecast quantity (or revenue equivalent) calculated from the underlying opportunity records and any manager adjustments, but excluding any adjustments the forecast owner themselves made on their own forecast. The figure isolates two distinct sources of judgment in the forecast: the manager overlay (preserved) and the owner's self-overlay (removed). Comparing it against the fully adjusted Quantity reveals how much the rep is moving their own number on top of what their manager has signed off on. The measure matters in calibrated forecast cultures. Most enterprises distinguish between a manager-blessed forecast (signed off by leadership) and a rep-adjusted forecast (the rep's personal view layered on top). Quantity Without Owner Adjustment is the manager-blessed view; Quantity is the rep's view; the difference is the owner overlay. Healthy forecast organizations watch this gap because consistent self-adjustment by a rep beyond what their manager has signed off on usually signals either an alignment problem or a calibration opportunity.

A query locator is a server-side cursor that Salesforce returns from the Database.getQueryLocator() method in Apex. It holds the definition of a SOQL query and lets a Batch Apex job stream through the matching records in chunks instead of loading them all into memory at once. Because the platform manages the cursor, a single query locator can span up to 50 million records. That ceiling is the reason the feature exists. A normal SOQL query in a synchronous transaction stops at 50,000 retrieved rows. A query locator handed to a batch job lifts that ceiling by a thousandfold, so jobs can sweep an entire object even when it holds tens of millions of rows.

A query string parameter is a key-value pair appended to a Salesforce URL after the question mark character, used to pass data into a page when it loads. The browser sends these values to the page so it can pre-fill fields, filter a report, set a return location, or otherwise shape what the user sees. A simple example looks like ?Name=Acme&Phone=5551234, where each parameter is separated by an ampersand. In Salesforce you meet query string parameters in two common places. The first is record create pages, where an encoded defaultFieldValues string pre-populates fields on a new record. The second is HTML lead and case capture forms, where hidden inputs and URL values carry context such as the org Id, a return URL, and campaign tracking data from a marketing source into the new record.

A Question in Salesforce is a feed post type used in Chatter and Experience Cloud sites where a person asks for help or information and other users reply with answers. It behaves differently from a plain status update. A Question supports answer-thread semantics, which means it can collect many answers, surface one Best Answer at the top, and let people follow the thread for updates. Under the hood a Question is a FeedItem record whose Type is QuestionPost. Each answer is a FeedComment tied to that item, and the chosen best answer is referenced by the BestCommentId field. Questions can stand on their own in a community or, when nobody resolves them, be escalated into a Case through the Question-to-Case feature so a support agent can pick them up.

A Private Question is a Salesforce Chatter Answers question that the asker chose to keep visible only to themselves and the moderators of the community, not to the rest of the membership. It surfaces in the Q and A feed as a redacted entry with a lock icon; the body is visible only to the original poster, support agents with the right permission, and community managers monitoring the moderation queue. Private Question is a legacy feature tied to the older Chatter Answers component. In Lightning Experience Cloud and the modern Q and A topic-based discussion model, the equivalent capability is fulfilled through Cases and Knowledge: a customer who needs a private answer files a case rather than a public question, and the agent's reply is bound to the case rather than the community feed. Most orgs that still rely on Private Question are on a Salesforce Communities or Customer Portal estate that has not migrated to Experience Cloud yet.

A queue is a Salesforce ownership and routing mechanism that holds records and makes them available to a defined group of users until one of them takes ownership. It is the platform's answer to the question: "Who works this record next?" when the answer is "whoever from the team grabs it first." Queues are commonly used for Leads, Cases, Tasks, and custom objects where the work needs to flow to a pool of people rather than a single named owner. Each queue has its own list of members (users, public groups, roles, role-and-subordinates), and the queue itself acts as the record owner until a user manually accepts ownership or an assignment rule routes the record out. Queue members see the records in the queue's list view and can take ownership with one click. Reports can filter by queue ownership, so it stays visible who is sitting on backlog. Queues support multi-object assignment, so the same queue can hold Leads, Cases, and custom records together, although most teams keep one queue per object for clarity.

A Queue Member in Salesforce is a User who has been added to a Queue, granting them the right to claim ownership of records assigned to that Queue. Under the hood, Queue membership is stored as Group Member records (with the parent Group having Type = "Queue"), since Queues in Salesforce are a specialized type of Group. Each Queue Member has visibility into all records currently owned by the Queue, can change their ownership to themselves (claiming a record) or assign them to other team members, and is included in any Queue-targeted notifications, email alerts, or routing rules. Queue Members are the operational core of any work-distribution model in Salesforce - Service Cloud queues for Cases, Sales Cloud queues for Leads, and custom-object queues for any team-shared workload. Adding or removing Queue Members directly affects who can act on the queued work, making roster management one of the most frequent admin tasks in service-heavy and high-volume sales orgs.

A Salesforce CRM Call Center queue is the holding area within Salesforce CRM Call Center (the Classic CTI telephony product) where inbound calls wait until an available agent can take them. The underlying telephony platform places callers in line, applies the routing rules configured for that call center, and connects each caller to an agent through the softphone embedded in Salesforce. This is a legacy concept. Salesforce CRM Call Center is built on Open CTI, which is now in maintenance mode and scheduled for retirement on February 28, 2028. Newer implementations use Service Cloud Voice, where call queuing and distribution run through Amazon Connect (or a bring-your-own partner) and feed directly into Omni-Channel for unified routing.

A Quick Action in Salesforce is a configurable button that runs a specific operation: create a record, log a call, send an email, launch a Flow, open a Visualforce page, or invoke a Lightning Web Component. Quick Actions appear as buttons on record pages, in the Lightning header, in mobile screens, in the Case Feed, and inside other Quick Action containers. They are the primary mechanism for adding admin-configurable buttons to the Salesforce UI without writing code. Quick Actions come in two flavors. Object-Specific Quick Actions are tied to a specific sObject and appear on records of that object, automatically populating the parent record's context (a New Task on Account creates a Task already linked to the Account). Global Quick Actions are context-free and appear in the Lightning header and mobile launchpad. Beyond the two flavors, Quick Actions support six Action Types: Create a Record, Log a Call, Send Email, Custom Visualforce, Flow, Lightning Web Component. Together they cover most admin-configurable UI patterns on the platform.

Quick Text is the Salesforce feature that lets users insert pre-built text snippets into email replies, chat messages, posts, and other text fields with a keyboard shortcut. The snippets are stored as Quick Text records with a name, body, and category, organized into folders for sharing. When an agent is typing in a supported text field, pressing a configurable shortcut (Ctrl-period or a custom binding) opens a picker that searches the Quick Text library and inserts the chosen snippet at the cursor position. Quick Text is the response-template layer underneath Service Console productivity. It pairs with Macros (which automate multi-step actions) to make agent responses fast and consistent. A typical Quick Text library covers the team's most common customer responses: greeting templates, refund explanations, escalation language, closing signatures. The library supports merge fields, so a snippet personalizes with the contact name, case number, or account details when inserted. Quick Text is the difference between a team that writes the same paragraph fifty times per day from scratch and a team that inserts and edits.

Quick Text Settings is the Setup page in Salesforce where an administrator turns on the Quick Text feature and decides how its snippets are organized and shared. Quick Text is a library of pre-written messages that users insert into emails, chat replies, tasks, events, and other text fields, so they do not retype the same wording for every customer. The settings page itself is small. Its main job is to enable folder-based sharing through the option labeled "Share and organize quick text in folders." Once enabled, the day-to-day work moves to creating QuickText records, granting users access through permissions, and building folders that match how your teams actually respond to customers.

Quip is Salesforce's collaborative document, spreadsheet, and project-management product, acquired in 2016 for $750 million. It combines real-time co-authored documents with embedded Salesforce data, structured spreadsheets, project boards, and team chat. Quip was originally a standalone productivity startup and remains available as a separate product, but its strategic role since the acquisition has shifted toward Salesforce-embedded use cases: deal collaboration documents inside Opportunity pages, runbooks attached to Cases, account plans that pull live Salesforce data. After Slack''s acquisition in 2021, Quip''s role in Salesforce''s collaboration stack narrowed. Slack handles conversational collaboration; Quip handles document-centric collaboration with embedded structured data. The two products coexist with overlapping but distinct use cases. Quip is licensed separately, with Quip for Customer 360 included in some Salesforce editions for embedded document use cases. Adoption has slowed compared to standalone Quip''s peak, but the embedded-in-Salesforce use cases remain valuable for organizations that need structured collaborative documents inside their CRM workflow.

A Quota in Salesforce is the target sales amount or volume assigned to a user or territory for a specific forecast period (monthly, quarterly, or annually). Quotas drive the Forecasting feature: each user's pipeline and closed opportunities are measured against their quota, and the resulting attainment percentage shows in Forecast dashboards and reports. Quotas are stored on the ForecastingQuota object, with one record per user, period, and forecast type. Quotas are not the same as sales goals at the company or team level. The platform's Quota system is per-user, time-bound, and forecast-type-aware. A sales manager might have separate quotas for Revenue, Quantity, and Custom Number forecast types in the same quarter. Quotas can be loaded through the Data Loader, the Forecasting Quota API, or the Collaborative Forecasts UI for managers managing their own teams. Importing quotas at scale (hundreds of reps across multiple periods) is a Data Loader job; managing 5 to 20 reps can be done through the UI.

A Quote in Salesforce is the formal proposal you send to a customer to close a deal. The Quote object captures the products, quantities, prices, discounts, shipping terms, validity period, and any custom fields your org needs to communicate a specific commercial offer. Quotes attach to Opportunities (one Opportunity can have many Quotes) and ultimately generate the PDF or HTML proposal a customer sees, signs, and returns. The Quote sits between the internal forecasting view on the Opportunity and the customer-facing legal commitment on the Contract. Quote exists because Opportunity is an internal record and customers do not see internal records. The Opportunity is your forecast; the Quote is your offer. The same deal can have three Quotes (a high-end option, a middle option, a budget-friendly option) while the parent Opportunity has a single Amount that reflects the most-likely scenario. Quote Line Items can diverge from Opportunity Line Items as you negotiate, and the relationship between the two is bidirectional but selective: only the primary Quote syncs its line items back to the parent Opportunity, and the sync covers product additions and price changes but not every field on every line. Understanding the sync direction is one of the first things any deal-desk operator learns the hard way.

A Quote Line Item is a record on the standard Salesforce QuoteLineItem object. It represents one product on a quote, along with the quantity, unit price, discount, and the calculated totals for that single line. Each quote can hold many line items, and together they make up the priced proposal a sales rep sends to a customer. A Quote Line Item links a quote to a specific product through a price book entry. It stores how much of that product the customer is buying and at what price. The object has been part of the platform since API version 18.0, and it powers the line-level detail behind every quote total, every quote PDF, and the sync between a quote and its opportunity.

A Checkout Quote in Salesforce B2B Commerce is the priced summary a business buyer reviews on the way to placing an order, or the formal Quote record they request from the cart when they need negotiated pricing before they commit. It pulls the cart contents together with the prices, discounts, taxes, and shipping that apply to that buyer. The phrase covers two related moments. One is the cart summary shown during the standard checkout flow, where every line is priced for the buyer's account before payment. The other is the Request for Quote path, where the buyer sends the cart to a sales rep as a Quote, the rep adjusts pricing, and the approved quote is bought or copied back to the cart.

Quotes Settings is the Setup page where administrators turn on the standard Quotes feature in Salesforce and configure how quotes behave across Opportunities, Products, Price Books, and the document generation pipeline. The page itself is small, but the decisions made here ripple through every Opportunity-to-Quote workflow in the org and determine whether sales reps can produce a customer-ready PDF in two clicks or have to copy data into a manual document. The Setup page lives under Setup, then Quotes, then Quote Settings. The page exposes a single primary toggle to enable Quotes, plus a related setting to enable Quote Templates, which controls whether reps can generate branded PDFs directly from quote records. Once Quotes is enabled, the Quote object becomes available for layouts, reports, and automation, and a Quotes related list appears on the Opportunity page layout.