Point
In Salesforce Maps and Location services, a geographic coordinate or location data point represented on a map, used for geolocation features, territory mapping, and field service optimization.
Definition
In Salesforce Maps and Location services, a geographic coordinate or location data point represented on a map, used for geolocation features, territory mapping, and field service optimization.
In plain English
“A Point in Salesforce Maps and Location services is a geographic coordinate or location data point shown on a map. Points are used for geolocation features, territory mapping, and field service optimization, representing physical locations in your data.”
Worked example
Lighthouse Educational delivers educational equipment to 800 K-12 schools across three states, each with a delivery dock at a specific GPS coordinate. The operations team imports each school's address, runs Salesforce Maps' geocoder, and stores the resulting latitude/longitude as a Point on each Account record. The Salesforce Maps interface plots all 800 Points on an interactive map; dispatchers cluster them by region, draw delivery zones, and assign drivers based on the day's Points within their territory. Without Points stored on each Account, the routing engine would have to re-geocode every address daily - with them, the geographic intelligence is precomputed and reusable across reports, flows, and the map view itself.
Why Point matters
In Salesforce Maps and Location services, a Point is a geographic coordinate or location data point represented on a map, used for geolocation features, territory mapping, and field service optimization. Points typically have latitude and longitude coordinates and can represent customer locations, service appointments, sales territories, or any other geographically-relevant data.
Geographic data is foundational to location-based Salesforce features. Field service uses points to optimize technician routing. Territory management uses them for geographic territory definition. Maps visualizes them for spatial analysis. Mature deployments combine geocoding (converting addresses to coordinates) with map visualization and routing optimization to drive efficient field operations.
How organizations use Point
Uses points on Salesforce Maps to visualize technician locations and customer service appointments for routing optimization.
Mapped customer locations as points to visualize sales territories and identify gaps.
Combines point data with routing to optimize field technician schedules.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is a Point in Salesforce Maps?
Q2. What use cases need points?
Q3. How do you create points from addresses?
Discussion
Loading discussion…