What is a Connected App in Salesforce?

A Connected App in Salesforce is primarily designed to facilitate integration between Salesforce and external applications using APIs. This allows developers to connect third-party applications or services to Salesforce, enabling data sharing and enhancing the functionality of both systems. Connected Apps can securely authenticate users via protocols such as OAuth, ensuring that access is granted only to authorized users and applications.

The nature of a Connected App is focused on integration and external communication, rather than being a standalone feature or a specific application limited to offline use. Additionally, while a Connected App can be part of the ecosystem that supports customer relationship management, it is not exclusively for that purpose; its main role is to enable external applications to interact with Salesforce securely and efficiently.