Determining if any integration points create records in Salesforce, running key reports to determine what fields should be required, and reviewing the sharing model to determine impact on duplicate records are three areas of Salesforce that the architect should review before proposing any design recommendation. These areas will help to identify the sources and quality of data, the business rules and validations for data entry, and the access and visibility of data across users and roles. Reviewing the metadata xml files for redundant fields to consolidate, and exporting the setup audit trail to review what fields are being used are not necessary steps for optimizing a data stewardship engagement, as they are more related to metadata management and audit tracking.

To improve the dashboard performance, the data architect should use selective queries to reduce the amount of data being returned, de-normalize the data by reducing the number of joins, and reduce the amount of data queried by archiving unused opportunity records. These options will help optimize the query performance, reduce the query complexity, and free up storage space. Option C is incorrect because removing widgets from the dashboard to reduce the number of graphics loaded will not affect the dashboard performance significantly, and may reduce the usability and functionality of the dashboard. Option D is incorrect because running the dashboard for CEO and sending it via email will not improve the dashboard performance, but rather shift the burden to another user.

Creating an aggregate custom object that summarizes the monthly and yearly values into the required format for the required reports (option D) is the fastest and most effective way for a data architect to solve the time-out issue, as it reduces the amount of data that needs to be queried and processed by the reports. Creating custom fields on opportunity and copying data from order into those custom fields (option A) is not a good solution, as it may create data redundancy and inconsistency, and it does not address the large volume of data. Extracting opportunity and order data from Salesforce and using a third-party reporting tool (option B) is also not a good solution, as it may introduce additional complexity and cost, and it does not leverage the native reporting features of Salesforce. Creating a skinny table in Salesforce and copying order and opportunity fields into it (option C) is also not a good solution, as it may not support all the reporting requirements, and it does not reduce the number of records.

Improving reporting performance by replacing the existing reports in Sales Cloud with new reports based on Analytics Cloud can avoid the time-out issues by leveraging the power and scalability of Analytics Cloud.
Analytics Cloud can handle large volumes of data and provide faster and more interactive reports than Sales Cloud .