A practical architecture review: Customer identity across systems
Why this deserves attention
Identity resolution is the foundation of a coherent customer view across Salesforce and connected platforms. A sound design makes this explicit before implementation begins.
Matching on weak or mutable values creates duplicate people, incorrect merges and privacy risk. On 25 November 2024, this archive entry records the principle as a practical design concern rather than a product announcement.
Review the evidence
Look at customer identity across systems through the questions an architecture review should ask before approving the design. The objective is not to introduce more process; it is to expose the few decisions that determine reliability, ownership and future change.
Use durable identifiers, separate matching from merging, and require traceable rules for high-impact identity decisions. Record the decision close to the solution so that delivery, support and future architecture reviews work from the same intent.
What good looks like
Connected records represent the same real-world party with a defensible audit trail. The team can describe the expected behaviour, the owner, the evidence of success and the response when reality differs from the design.
A useful next step is to review one live implementation against this principle, identify the largest unowned assumption and turn it into a bounded improvement with a measurable outcome.
Official reference
Salesforce Architecture: Integration Patterns