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Platform & ArchitectureA quote is still in flight. The metadata on it still says SBQQ. Around the table everyone already agrees the org should be switched off on Friday, because a keyword report says sunset. The seller who owns the quote can name the customer, the products, and the total the buyer was shown. The keyword cannot. The agreement is the problem. It is easy to reach, and it fits a sales phase, which is not a switch.
A painful quote is compatible with an existing Salesforce CPQ org that still produces the shapes you need next month, a new design that should not be opened as a fresh CPQ build, an opportunity that records a stage and an amount and does not hold the configuration, and a Friday that was chosen before anyone produced the quote on a destination. Only a tested cutover changes where an existing shape is produced. End of sale does not do that test for you.
What follows are the questions that separate those explanations. Each has a good answer and a bad answer, and the difference is whether the answer names something specific: a quote, a prefix, a person who checked a total, a product. A general answer at this stage is what turns into a switch-off.
| Question | Who has to answer it | What a bad answer usually means |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Which quote must still be produced | The seller who owns the quote in flight | Friday is scheduled against a keyword, not a quote |
| 2. Is this a new design or an existing shape | Commercial, looking at next month's book | A fresh CPQ build is being opened for work the record already points elsewhere |
| 3. Has the cutover been tested | Whoever claims the destination can quote | Like for like on a slide is standing in for a checked total |
| 4. What does an opportunity already hold | The administrator who can open the deal | The stage is being asked to carry the configuration |
| 5. What must the plan refuse | Whoever put sunset, a date, or a listing on the sheet | A sales phase is being used as a shutdown |
1. Which quote is actually in the room?
The question is not whether SteelBrick should be migrated. It is which quote must still be produced next month, what the buyer is shown, and where the metadata says SBQQ.
A good answer sounds like one quote the seller can open, with the customer, the products, and the total the buyer was shown, and with the SBQQ prefix visible on the record.
A bad answer sounds like the brand has gone, so the org has gone. If an administrator searches the org and finds SBQQ, the quoting work is still the CPQ org. A slide that says the brand has gone, and therefore the org has gone, has not looked. Open a quote. Read the prefix. Then decide. A programme with no quote to check cannot be judged to have succeeded.
People still say SteelBrick because the word is on old statements of work and in old training. The software is Salesforce CPQ. The rebrand record says the name, the prefix, and the phase, and the sentence is quoted once: "Steelbrick, acquired in 2016, was renamed Salesforce CPQ, though the metadata still references its origins with SBQQ prefixes. Salesforce CPQ is now in an end-of-sale (EOS) phase as Salesforce offers new customers Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing."
Read the phase in that sentence. End of sale, as the record states it, sits beside the offer to new customers: Revenue Cloud Advanced and Revenue Cloud Billing. The destination named here, when the decision is stated, is Revenue Cloud. The longer names are in the sentence. They are not a second fact, and they are not a clock on the org you already run.
2. Is the work a new design, or a shape the org already produces?
Ask first whether the work is a new quote design or an org that already produces quotes. Those are different decisions. A new quote design goes to Revenue Cloud. Do not open a fresh CPQ build for that new design because the old name is familiar. The record already points new customers at Revenue Cloud.
A good answer sounds like a named person in commercial who can separate next month's existing shapes from one design that has not been quoted before, and who marks only the new design for Revenue Cloud.
A bad answer sounds like everything is new because the name changed. New means a design you are starting, not a rename of the quotes you already run. Count the quote shapes you must still produce next month on the current org. Those shapes are not a migration. Count the designs that are genuinely new. A shape you cannot name is not ready to move, and it is not ready to kill.
An existing CPQ org stays until a tested cutover. Switching it off on Friday because a keyword said sunset drops the quote that is in flight. Do not do that.
3. What would count as tested?
Tested means the quotes you must still produce can be produced on the destination and checked against the result you trust today. Until that check passes, the org stays. The date of the cutover is the date the check passed, written after the check, not before.
A good answer sounds like the same quote produced on the destination, with the total and the configuration a named reviewer has compared to the result trusted today.
A bad answer sounds like the slide says like for like. A slide is not the test. The test is the quote, the total, and the configuration a reviewer can see. If the check has not happened, mark the shape stay. If you have no new design, say so. An empty move list, plus a living CPQ org, is a valid outcome. Do not invent a switch-off so the meeting feels decisive.
End of sale for new customers is not a switch-off date. Read it as a statement about who is offered the older product. It is not a clock on the org you already run. No clock is invented here. If a plan needs a date to feel finished, the plan is ahead of the test. Remove Friday.
4. What does an opportunity already hold?
On the core platform, an opportunity is a deal. It has a stage and an amount. Line items can take products from a price book and place those products and prices on the deal. A seller can move the stage as the conversation moves. Those objects already do that work. They do it whether or not anyone says SteelBrick.
They do not hold the quote configuration the CPQ org already runs under the SBQQ prefix. A stage is not a quote. An amount is not the configured total a buyer was shown on a CPQ quote. If the comparison starts from the opportunity, write that limit before anyone compares anything. The opportunity is the deal. The quote is the configuration.
A good answer sounds like an administrator who has opened the opportunity, named the stage and the amount, and said plainly that the SBQQ quote is a different record.
A bad answer sounds like we will use opportunities. Replacing the CPQ org with that sentence drops the configuration. The opportunity can still record the deal. It is not the quote that is in flight. No feature list for Revenue Cloud is invented here. The fact that changes the decision is the direction: new design there, existing org here until a tested cutover. End of sale does not, by itself, empty the opportunity or the quote.
Keep three lines apart. Opportunity: a deal with a stage and an amount. Existing CPQ: stays until a tested cutover, prefix SBQQ. New design: Revenue Cloud. A plan that cannot keep the three lines apart is not ready. There is no score.
5. What is the plan using instead of a checked quote?
The substitutes are a keyword, a date, and a listing. Each one is a way of not opening the quote.
A good answer sounds like a refusal, written by the seller who owns the quote in flight, of three things: sunset as a switch-off, a Friday with no test, and an AppExchange listing as the cutover.
A bad answer sounds like the listing or the keyword will turn the org off. No listing is invented here. An app, a publisher, a review count, and a price are not in the record being cited. A listing found independently is still not the decision. The decision remains the quote shape, the SBQQ org you already run, and whether a new design goes to Revenue Cloud. An app does not know which quote is in flight. End of sale is not a retirement notice that a listing can reverse. The existing org is not treated as switched off. An AppExchange search will not do the tested cutover, and it will not turn a keyword into a date.
Other quoting tools exist. They are not ranked here, and they are not named in an order. A destination that is only a score is not a destination. Choose a tool only when the quote shape is named and the check against today's result is described. If a slide arrives with ranks, replace the ranks with the quote you must produce next month and the mark, new or stay.
What staying actually looks like
All five answers are measured against an alternative, and the alternative is usually left unstated, which flatters the Friday switch-off.
State it. Staying means the existing shapes keep being produced on Salesforce CPQ, by the people who already produce them, until a named reviewer has checked the same total on a destination. The word SteelBrick remains on an old statement of work. That is a glossary problem. The quote in flight is not. The cost of a false move is a silent org on Friday and a buyer whose configuration nobody can reproduce.
There is a version of staying that is simply the correct decision. If the book is existing shapes, and no design is new, the work is to keep the org and to write down what the buyer is shown. An organisation that does that first reaches any later cutover with a shorter list of shapes and a test it can actually run.
A good answer sounds like a list of shapes marked stay until tested, and a separate list of new designs marked for Revenue Cloud, produced by commercial rather than by the keyword report.
A bad answer sounds like we cannot stay on this forever. Possibly true of a phase. Not a reason to switch the org off this Friday.
Where the neighbouring questions live
What it costs to change a quote shape you have actually named sits on the SteelBrick implementation page. The purchase, and the end-of-sale wording as history, sits on what happened to SteelBrick. The objects, and what you do when a quote does not match, sit on integrating SteelBrick with Salesforce.
