Configuration Mining: Salesforce documentation in minutes instead of months

Quick Summary

Salesforce customers often build complex, opaque systems – “black boxes”. Lacking clear documentation, they hinder project delivery, block reliable AI Agent deployment, and often mean that critical information is at risk of being lost if certain staff leave the business.

A lack of value for Salesforce is a concern for senior management, who feel powerless to change the status quo. One customer said:

What keeps me awake at night as Vice President is that we have so much stuff we’ve built over time on Salesforce, and I’m super worried that the next person who walks out the door is going to leave us even more vulnerable than where we are today. We don’t have a knowledge base that is accurate. And I don’t want a knowledge base based on what somebody thinks is in their head. I want a knowledge base based on what’s really in the system

This is from a recent call with a Salesforce Product Owner, but over the last 8 years, we’ve heard the same thing from every customer.

People are requesting things for Salesforce. They think they know Salesforce best and they’re they’re coming to us with the solution. We know they are not considering xyz because they (and we) can’t do the impact analysis. And I am about to pull out my hair. This is madness. We’re no longer in the wild west. We are well past drawing Lucidcharts.

And the question is always, “Can’t you take all the metadata and draw the process diagrams that explain how my org works so we can see the implications of making changes?“

The release of Configuration Mining from Elements.cloud is a pivotal milestone that changes the way we think about documentation. It provides an on-demand “blueprint” to visualize, understand, and take action.

Configuration Mining is a family of documentation that can be generated automatically from metadata, and includes:

• Process Diagrams
• Data Models
• Order of Execution Diagrams.

What has been the holy grail of business process management and metadata management for the last 20 years is now a reality.

We’ve just spent $500k and 6 months with (major consulting firm) documenting our system. Configuration Mining has done it in 5 minutes.

Why the industry needs rapid Salesforce documentation

Keeping technical debt at bay

SaaS applications are incredibly easy to configure, “clicks not code”, and this often leads to building the wrong things fast. Salesforce’s power and flexibility is a double-edged sword, resulting in complex, undocumented “Jenga towers” of tech debt.

We are seeing 50% of the objects built in Salesforce Orgs never being used, and 41-80% of custom fields are never populated.

Safer org change and faster project delivery

Most customers operate in a “black box” – they can’t see what they’ve built, how it connects, or if it’s right. This lack of visibility means they can’t trust the underlying data or processes. This kills agility and increases risks for every project.

Every customer we talk to is struggling to make changes to their Salesforce org at the pace that the business is demanding.  A lack of understanding about the org increases the cost of ownership and delays projects that the business demands to stay agile.

Org discovery provides documentation that mitigates this risk, but it’s expensive, manual and time-consuming. This is critically important at the start of every project, particularly if the team is new to the org.  There is a huge demand for automated documentation that is more than superficial “AI-generated descriptions”. 

Documentation is the foundation of Agentforce success

Agentforce is increasing the demand for fast, effective documentation.

Not every project is an agent. But Salesforce is betting its future on AI Agents (Agentforce). You cannot deploy reliable, governed AI Agents on top of an unknown, messy foundation, the “black box”.

This isn’t an engineering challenge AI alone can fix. It requests a deep technical analysis of metadata and dependencies that explain how metadata relates to each other. Trusting AI Agents requires trusting the underlying “black box”. Currently, that trust is impossible for most.

Every Salesforce customer is about to rewire their business processes. Whether your org is 2 years old or 20, it’s full of assumptions that won’t survive the AI era. Before you can transform, you need to understand what you’ve got

Matthew Morris, Salesforce CTO & DCX Innovation Director at Capgemini UK

The true cost of poor documentation

It’s not just the cost of creating and maintaining the documentation. The impact of poor documentation is significantly larger than that:

Kills agility

Every change needs time-consuming analysis to ensure that it won’t impact other functionality and break the org.  That slows down delivery and the ability of the business to stay agile. But has to be done as Salesforce is a strategic application.

Collaboration and communication

Without a shared view of the state of the org, teams are inefficient or even working at cross purposes. This further delays projects, and the cost is even greater if the teams are expensive consultants. 

Operational risk

There is a technical cost of making a change that breaks the org; the work to roll back and fix. But the operational impact is many times greater; user downtime, corrupted data, and development effort wasted that could have driven the business forward.

Increased tech debt

If it is 100% clear what a metadata item does and where it is used e.g. Flow, then it is risky to reuse it. Instead, a new metadata item, potentially duplicating existing ones, is created. This further adds to the org complexity.

Expensive to maintain

Organizations in highly regulated industries have little choice. They need documentation to support their compliance regimes. This comes at a huge cost in the maintenance of documentation.

How Elements automatically generates documentation in minutes

The power of reverse engineering Salesforce metadata

The Org Discovery process can now be fully automated with Elements.cloud, allowing months’ worth of work to be carried out in minutes.

Configuration Mining (CM) from Elements.cloud generates a current, accurate view of how your org really works. 

• Not how you all thought it worked
• Not how the documentation (if you have any) claims it works
• Not how people remembered it works
• Not how the design documentation says it works

This new capability enables a transformative new approach of “documentation on demand”, making painful manual documentation – that is created, gathers dust and quickly gets out of date – a thing of the past.

At TDX25 one of the most oversubscribed sessions came from Elements.cloud, a ISV with a tool that struck a nerve...Elements.cloud describes it as AI-powered, and yes, there’s a natural language interface that’s impressive. But the real breakthrough is the reverse engineering of business processes from Salesforce metadata

Matthew Morris, Salesforce CTO & DCX Innovation Director at Capgemini UK & Salesforce MVP Hall Of Fame

Configuration Mining by Elements.cloud is so much more than a clever AI prompt

We invested 300 FTE-years of effort to build the application that syncs and analyzes all of an org’s metadata in minutes. This is foundational for automated Configuration Mining.

There are so many metadata types, and more are added every release: Industry Clouds, Data Cloud, and most recently Agentforce. For every metadata type, we need to analyze every possible metadata dependency. Not just if it exists, but how it is used.

Then, to build the process diagrams and data models, we need to run a huge sequence of analysis programs. The specification for Configuration Mining was 60 pages, and it took 6 months of development by our most senior development team.

What types of documentation does Configuration Mining produce?

Configuration Mining is a family of documentation that can be generated automatically from metadata:

Process Configuration Mining

Draws UPN process diagrams that describe how Salesforce is configured

Data Model Configuration Mining

Draws ERDs using the Salesforce Diagrams notation

Order of Execution Configuration Mining

Draws UPN diagrams that show the order that automations are triggered

Configuration Mining uses our AI model to take a user’s request for a specific view of the system. It then takes the 100,000s of metadata items in the Salesforce org – objects, fields, record types, security permissions, automations, validation rules, metadata dependencies, field analysis, and complexity scoring.

It runs a sequence of deep analysis to build the data that our AI model uses to draw a very detailed process diagram and data model, putting all the metadata in context.

This is changing how we think about documentation.

Instead of creating documentation and leaving it on the shelf to gather dust, you create it on demand when you need it, from a specific perspective.

What’s the difference between Process Mining and Configuration Mining?

Configuration Mining is different, and far more powerful, than Process Mining.

Think of Configuration Mining as the map of the city with all the dark alleys and cut throughs. Process Mining shows the most popular routes (where there are sensors) over a set period of time.

• Configuration Mining tells you every possible path that any user could take based on the Salesforce configuration. The ability to quickly visualize the operational, compliance, and adoption impact of changes is huge.
• Process Mining tells you what paths users have been taking through application screens based on tracking users when they are updating fields over a set period of time. It is an incomplete picture which limits its value.

Here is an excerpt from a recent customer conversation that echoes what we hear from customer after customer:

We are well past drawing Lucidcharts. I cannot think of a better way to do it personally than Configuration Mining. They will ask for an enhancement. We will take this autogenerated diagram and pinpoint where they’re asking for changes, and then visually show them during the conversation that this is the impact that it will have, and the other changes we need to make.

Best ways to use Configuration Mining for Salesforce

Configuration Mining from Elements.cloud offers huge benefits for Salesforce professionals at every level:

CIO / VP / Platform Owner

• Reduce the risk of your org
• Drive up team productivity and collaboration
• See where to prioritize your resources to get the biggest bang for your buck. Saves on cost of weeks of manual analysis by SI
• More accurate bids from SIs you are inviting for proposal

Architect / Admin / Developer

• Make informed decisions on optimization and change planning
• Unparalleled insights into the current state of the org
• Ask natural language questions to drive the scope and perspective of the diagram
• Architect, design, and implement better solutions, more quickly, with confidence

Consultant

• Avoid time lost to manually documenting client orgs
• Drive more value for clients
• Easily scope work and produce more accurate bids to avoid under-quoting
• Produce more competitive bids and win more work
• Make recommendations with greater confidence

Ever since we showed people how to map UPN process diagrams in workshops at Dreamforce in 2017, they have been asking, “I assume that these diagrams are drawn automatically?”  That has been our north star. I’m so excited we are now able to say, Yes

Richard Parker, Co-founder & CCO at Elements.cloud

Demonstrated use cases for Configuration Mining

Configuration Mining has a number of leading use cases already, with more emerging as customers and consultants adopt it more widely:

Highlights potential scope for agents

Once the processes are understood, the diagrams make it very easy to see what could be outsourced to an AI Agent, what permissions it needs, and which actions (Flow, Apex Prompt Template, API) it needs to access. This is the time to optimize the process before you apply an agent to it. The diagrams make it obvious where the simplification opportunities are. 

Provides data to estimate the risk / effort of any changes

The dependencies between metadata are easily understood. A change to one metadata may require changes to others, which can impact how that metadata affects other areas of the business. This makes it easier to estimate the risk of making the changes and the effort involved. Too often, a simple change has far-reaching, unintended effects because dependencies were overlooked.

Visibility of data governance/data quality issues

You can see the end-to-end lifecycle for an object and how and where data can be created and updated. This enables you to redesign the security profile and the workflows to provide more robust data governance.

Uncovers security/compliance vulnerabilities

Each process step shows the teams that have access. Suddenly, you can see the impact of the complete profiles and permissions and how access has inadvertently been given to teams that don’t need it.

Shows process improvement opportunities

Whether you are implementing agents or not, the diagrams clearly show where there are process opportunities. They also make it easier to estimate and communicate to teams the changes that need to be made.

Identifies need for critical documentation

The Salesforce org probably has integrations with 3rd party apps. These are often undocumented. Reviewing the diagrams identifies missing documentation that is critically important, and that can now be manually added as metadata dependencies.

Prioritizes Salesforce optimization activities

Teams often embark on tech debt or data cleanup activities. The diagrams help you understand what will make the most difference. It is frustrating to spend valuable time in areas that are changed very little, are not used, or will be eliminated by process improvement or agents. The diagrams can help prioritize the clean-up activities.

Start automating your Salesforce documentation today

Configuration Mining is a core feature of Elements.cloud, the Change Intelligence Platform for Salesforce and Agentforce.

If you want to see Configuration Mining in action, you can watch a 2-minute demo of its functionality here. If you’d like to have a personalised demo and discuss configuration mining in more detail, get in touch to organise a call at a convenient time for you.

Salesforce orgs are complex. Years of configuration, integration, customisation, not all of it well documented. Modernising this isn’t just a clean-up job. It’s essential. And history tells us that the teams who adopt tools early move faster and smarter...This is the foundation of modern Salesforce delivery—and the future of how we build. Advanced tooling isn’t just an upgrade. It’s a strategic capability.

Matthew Morris, Salesforce CTO & DCX Innovation Director at Capgemini UK