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An ERD is a data model that stands for entity relationship diagram. These ERDs are important because they allow businesses to see how certain entities in a relationship work together/ relate to one another and the components of each entity. These diagrams are a visual representation of how entities within a system relate to each other. These entities can be people, places, objects, and events in any sort of information technology system. The two notations in an ERD are Chen’s notation and Crow’s foot notation. In Chen’s notation, a diamond is placed to represent the relationship with the relationship name. This notation describes a relationship and cardinality through symbols and lines. The three symbols are rectangles, which represent the entities, circles which represent the attributes, and lastly diamonds which represent the relationship. On the other hand, Crow’s foot notation represents these relationships through boxes and lines. The different shapes placed at the ends of the lines represent the cardinality of the relationship. When we first began learning about ERDs, I was a bit confused about the term cardinality. Cardinality is defined as “the number of elements in a set, as a property of that grouping”, meaning that an entity or many of the same entity can relate to zero, one, or many of a specific entity.   The different types of cardinality are one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. A zero can be placed at the end of the connecting line as well, which means that it can include the option for zero, such as zero, one or zero, and zero or many. For example, if the cardinality is one to zero or many, one entity can exist only as one and is not optional but on the other side, the entity can still exist even if not related to an object, making the relationship optional. Zero or many means that zero, one or many can exist. 

In our Max labs, we created our own ERD, which allowed us to visualize and manipulate one ourselves. We used dynamic dashboards in salesforce. These dashboards are personalized platforms that allow businesses to update and add new business content and data. This allows the creator to share important and specific information with people such as clients, customers, employees, CEOs, etc.  You can personalize the permissions without having to create a separate dashboard for each level of accessibility. 

I have heard stories from many people that they use salesforce as a prominent platform throughout their business careers. Many of those people have stated that businesses they work for “do not use salesforce in the right way” or that they, as an individual “have no idea how to use it”. I was very interested to learn about salesforce and the basics of how to use certain aspects of it because I will be able to use this knowledge through all business opportunities. Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM that helps business leaders market and manage customer data and sales. A CRM stands for customer relationship management, which helps businesses keep track of all of the current, past, and potential customers. These customers’ information is readily available, while also being easy to understand and manipulate.

Swim Lane Diagrams are an example of a process flow chart. These allow people to easily indicate who does what in a particular process by setting up a flowchart with each actor involved placed along the horizontal or the vertical side of the diagram. These diagrams begin at the start of that process, being placed in a circular shape to mark the beginning. These circular shapes are only ever used when starting the process as well as the last ending step in the process. Throughout the process, there are actions that need to be made and they are indicated by a rectangular shape. When a decision has to be made, it is indicated by a diamond shape. Professor answered a question during one of our in-class assignments about how to indicate where in a process a decision occurs and the most apparent one is usually when the word “if” is used when explaining that part of the process. The last shape used in these diagrams is a cylinder which holds stored data. The actors involved can be an individual, a group, a division, or a department. I definitely made the mistake on the first-in-class assignment when we drew a swim lane diagram by writing the name of the actor, which is not correct. The reason there are no names is that this is a general process and the person involved one day, may not be the person involved the next, but the process does not change. Businesses use these swim lane diagrams to identify the problems in the process and also figure out how to remove certain excess steps to make the process swifter and more efficient overall. They can use these diagrams as a foundation and can refer back to them when attempting to manipulate an existing process or when creating a new one. 

To start, your digital identity is all of the information about you that is on the internet for anyone to find and see, and the information can come from any thing you have posted or any thing someone has posted about you with or without your consent. A digital identity is very important because companies will research you when you are looking to apply for a job and if they find questionable posts about you, then that could tarnish your chance to be hired. So when looking to uphold a good digital identity you need to a list of things. For one you need to post appropriate photos, along with appropriate captions, and on those posts make sure to remove an inappropriate comments. Another thing is to not engage in events or places where you could be seen doing things that would not look good if a picture of it was posted online. The easiest way to keep a good digital profile is to keep posting to a minimum and to ensure you are not caught up in any situations that could lead to bad things being posted about you.