Wrap Your Head around HEDA

HEDA (Higher Education Data Architecture) is Salesforce’s biggest win yet for the Higher Ed community. It’s the brainchild of Salesforce, their Higher Ed customers, industry leaders and the Power of Us community.

We at OpFocus have worked with numerous Higher Ed institutions prior to HEDA’s release. Interestingly, HEDA is almost identical to the custom solutions we’ve built for those clients over the years.

HEDA makes it easy for institutions to track the entire student journey. The data model was built with such flexibility that a student’s multiple relationships with people, schools, departments, courses, and organizations can all be tracked:

While this data model looks complicated, don’t let it overwhelm you! It’s really just a few custom objects that allow you to create the many-to-many relationships that Higher Ed institutions want to see.

What Is HEDA?

Contacts are the focus of the data model. While Contacts are associated with Accounts, those Accounts really just represent the Contact. An “Administrative” Account is automatically created and associated with a Contact whenever a new Contact is created.

You can create numerous other kinds of Accounts and associate them with the Contact using the Affiliation object. The Relationships object can be used to link new Contacts with your existing, Primary Contact.

On top of that, you can indicate which of the Contact’s Affiliations are most important, and what the Contact’s relationship specifically is to other Contacts.

Courses and their related objects can all be associated with Contacts, as well as certain Accounts.

Overall, the new HEDA model provides Higher Ed organizations with richer, more dynamic content that can be integrated with existing processes. Hop over to this Salesforce Trailhead to learn more! Interested in other Salesforce strategic models for Higher Ed or other industries? See our strategic consulting and roadmap services.