Become an Advanced Salesforce Administrator - Exam Notes

Become an Advanced Salesforce Administrator [Exam Notes]

Have you ever doubted your skills of becoming an Advanced Salesforce Administrator? Most of us would have walked down that road, I’m sure. Whilst, some of us would have even debated through this thought whether this certification caters best only for Administrators and not much for consultants or developers. Well, you are wrong!

In Salesforce ecosystem, no certification confines you to a particular certification path. Certifications are done to augment and imbibe more skills in Salesforce platform, eventually aligning us towards our desired career path. Hence, anybody can pursue any certification in Salesforce to keep the learning going, at your comfortable pace.

So, what is the sole purpose of this certification? What do I gain from this certification when I am already a Certified Administrator? It’s like one mind right, lol.

Well, the answer is pretty straightforward. This certification levels up from Administrator certification with more in-depth conceptual about the setup and administration of Salesforce Org.

If you have a suggestion for a scenario - you're an Administrator, but if you have a recommendation for a scenario then you're an Advance Administrator! (in setup and administration of Salesforce Org).In the interest of time, I would not hold you more. Let us dive into the content.

Pattern - Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ):

  • 60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions
  • 120 minutes allotted to complete the exam (time allows for unscored questions)
  • 63% is the passing score

What to prepare? (Only from my remembrance. You may not want to miss the official study guide as well)

ImportantDon’t Forget To Study The Sample Questions Given in Official Study Guide.
Topics to go through:

  • The first step - Go over all the menus under Setup->Administrtion, Platform Tools, Settings. (in Lightning Exp).
  • Go over the setup menus in Salesforce classic and know the available and unavailable features in Salesforce lightning and classic.
  • Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunity - Basics of these CRM concepts.
  • Sharing Rule - When and where to use sharing rules.
  • Sharing Rules - Types of sharing rules - Scenario-based questions.
  • Manual Sharing of records and when to use them
  • Data loader basics
  • VLookup matching in Data loading
  • Go through the Permission Set->System Permissions (some scenario-based questions)
  • Setting up Audit trails, Email Logs, and Debug logs
  • When to use Email Logs and When to use Debug Logs.
  • Refining the log levels in Debug Log setup.
  • Profile and Permissions (Do a deep dive and some differences as well)
  • Workflows and process builders (basic differences between them)
  • When to use workflows and when to use Apex Triggers
  • Email deliverability issues (you may need some experience in resolving issues. If not connect with people who
  • worked on it and know the usual/unusual challenges)
  • Validation rule (practice some validation rules and try to think an optimized way of defining the validation formula - Char limit)
  • Forecasting basics - Importing Quota and few other data load basics
  • Collaborative Forecasting
  • Reports - a deep dive
  • Types of reports and their challenges
  • Dashboard - Deep Dive
  • Territory management - (scenario-based on account sharing while using territory management)
  • Service cloud concepts - Knowledge articles, tagging, auto-complete, synonyms, Service Contracts, Contract LineItems, Setting up Entitlement with service contracts, Omni-channel, Live Agent
  • Salesforce Object modelling - Objects, Relationships, fields, page layouts, validations
  • Types of fields and formula fields (Restrictions in converting field types, and data loss)
  • Types of Migration tools, Deployment strategies
  • Types of deployments (how and when to use each of them)
  • Duplicate management
  • User administration (resetting password, security standards in user record)
  • User License Types and their limits.
  • Assignment Rules and Approval processes (Some scenario-based questions)
  • Organization-Wide Defaults (Scenario-Based questions with reference to OWD and Sharing rule)
  • Sandbox management and sandbox types.
  • Enabling chatter and various other scenario-based chatter related questions
  • Types of price books
  • Role and Role Hierarchy (Some scenario-based questions)
  • Salesforce CRM content settings (Know what is feasible and what is not)
  • Types of tagging in Content
  • Scenarios based on active and inactive users
  • AppExchange package installation and related issue resolution
  • Email and Email alerts - related questions

On a very high level:

  • Be strong in Release management (Deployment & Deployment strategies, Sandbox Management)
  • Be strong in the salesforce configuration (Objects, fields, validation rule, workflows, process builder, approval process, Apex trigger usage, picklist, global picklist)
  • Have a good understanding of Territory Management (Territory Management with Account sharing related questions)
  • Have a basic understanding of Forecasting
  • Be strong on the Salesforce application security model (Profile, Permission sets, Roles & Role Hierarchy) - When and where to use them.
  • Have a good understanding of Email Administration - Email templates and email deliverability settings and issues
  • Have a good understanding of Logs - Audit trails, Email logs, Debug logs - "When to look up and what to look up"
  • Have a good understanding of Reports and Dashboards (Questions were easy for me but not sure that is all they had)

Hope you had an idea of all the areas to cover. In addition to these, go through the Official Study Guide to see the weight of topics for the exam. Also, I advise to go through the following references to read on the additional study notes:

  • Study Guide
  • Trailhead Modules
  • Tips from Salesforce Ben

Final Tip: Try to eliminate all the wrong answers / unrealistic answers. It will help you boiling down to fewer options to choose.

All The Best! Waiting to hear your success stories! ?Please post your experience/study notes as a blog post so that it can help aspiring Admins and certified Admins around the world. Let’s grow helping each other!

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