What is Salesforce Admin? and How to Get Certified? A Beginner Guide to Certification [2023]
Who is a Salesforce Administrator?
Salesforce Administrators have some experience with Salesforce and know their way around the Salesforce configuration abilities.
They know the platform’s current capabilities and keep tabs on what new functionalities are released in the Salesforce release. This article helps as beginner guide to Salesforce admin certification exam information.
For example, the tasks of a Salesforce Administrator look like
- Set up dashboards for Sales Users.
- Setup Email Alerts when a specific condition is met.
- Scheduling the reports for users.
- Maintaining users.
- Freezing / Resetting user passwords.
In short, they are taking care of the Salesforce sandbox as a whole so that, for example (The sales Team / Service Team ) can do their work without worrying.
About the Salesforce Admin Certification exam :
- Content: There are 60 Questions in the exam.
- Time: The user is given 105 minutes to complete the exam, after which the exam automatically submits.
- Passing Score: You need to provide at least 65 % correct answers to be able to give.
- Costing: The Salesforce Administrator exam costs 200$. If you fail the first attempt, re-attempt costs 100 $ each going forward.
- Maintenance: After clearing the examination, you have to complete the Salesforce Administrator Certification Maintenance module on trailhead once a year to maintain the certification; on failing to do so, your certification will expire.
Asa beginner you need hand-on, instructor led training. If you are looking for an instructor led Salesforce training, you can join our orientation class.
Topics Weightage
- Configuration and Setup: 20%
- Object Manager and Lightning App Builder: 20%
- Sales and Marketing Applications: 12%
- Service and Support Applications: 11%
- Productivity and Collaboration: 7%
- Data and Analytics Management: 14%
- Workflow/Process Automation: 16%
| S No. | Topic | Weightage |
| 1 | Configuration and Setup | 20% |
| 2 | Object Manager and Lightning App Builder | 20% |
| 3 | Sales and Marketing Applications | 12% |
| 4 | Service and Support Applications | 11% |
| 5 | Productivity and Collaboration | 7% |
| 6 | Data and Analytics Management | 14% |
| 7 | Workflow/Process Automation | 16% |
| Total | 100% |
- Configuration and Setup:
Organization Setup
- Understand the information found in the company settings (for example, company settings fiscal year, business hours, currency management)
- Configuring the User Interface. (for example, UI settings, app menu, list views, global actions, Lightning App Builder).
- Setting up Activities
- Configuring search settings
Sample Questions :
- Question: How many corporate currencies can we have?
Answer: We can have only one corporate currency active at a time which reflects the currency of corporate headquarters.
- Question: Do we have to manually keep exchange rates updated?
Answer: Yes, it’s an admin task to keep them updated, or we can get an app from app exchange.
- Question: How many types of pages can be created using the Lightning App builder?
Answer: 3 (App Page, Record Page, Home Page)
- Question: What is the use of business hours?
Answer: It specifies the number of hours a support team is available to support customers that can be used below: Escalation Rules, Entitlement Rules, Cases.
- Question: Can we disable the custom fiscal year once enabled?
Answer: No
User Setup
- Setup and maintain users
- Managing user profiles
- Setting up chatter-free users
- Troubleshooting login issues of users
Sample Questions
- Question: Can a user be created without a profile and Role?
Answer: User can be created without a Role, but a profile is required.
- Question: How can we check how many licenses we have in our org?
Answer: We have a user licenses-related list to see licenses we own and how much is being utilized in the company information.
- Question: What is a User license?
Answer: User license can determine what features users can access; for example, if you want to grant user access to chatter without seeing data in Salesforce, we can use the Chatter Free license.
Security and Access
- Explain and understand the meaning and differences between the various organization Security Controls. (for example, Setup Audit Trail, Login Hours, Session Settings)
- Understand the Salesforce Sharing model (for example, public groups, org-wide default, sharing: roles, subordinates, hierarchy, report, and dashboard folders)
- Creating Role Hierarchy
- Be able to understand the difference between profile and permission set and determine which one should be utilized in any scenario.
- Restricting user login
- Determining object access via profiles/ permission set
- Setting up record access
- Describe how the folders can be used to organize and secure communication templates, dashboards, and reports.
- Understanding field-level security
Sample Questions :
- Question: Two users have the same profile, but one of the users needs additional access. What can an administrator do in this case?
Answer: Make permission set and assign to the user who requires more access
- Question: What will happen if users access Salesforce outside of the login range defined on profile but well within the organization IP range
Answer: User will not be able to access
- Question: What will happen if users access Salesforce outside of the login range defined on the organization’s trusted IP range, assuming no login IP range defined on the profile?
Answer: The user will be able to log in, and he will receive a verification code.
- Question: What will happen if a user is working in Salesforce and log-in hours end?
Answer: User will stay logged in; it’s just he won’t be able to make any changes, i.e., create or update any record. He can only view them.
- Question: Can we check “Grant access using hierarchies” on standard objects?
Answer: No
- Object Manager and Lightning App Builder
- Describe how the standard object architecture and relationship model. I.e., Data model (for example, standard object, parent/child, master-detail/lookup/junction relationships, and record types.)
- Explain how to create. how to delete, and Customize fields
- New custom fields
- Formula fields
- Picklist/ MultiSelect and Lookup fields
- Working with Page layouts
- Working with record types and business processes
- ( Sales and Support Process)
- Maintaining data quality (validation rules)
- Implications of deleting custom fields
Sample Questions
- Question: What is the roll-up summary field?
Answer: Rollup summary fields aggregate child records information on the parent record.
- Question: Can we convert the lookup relationship to a master-detail relationship?
Answer: Yes, but before converting, we need to make sure we have populated the value into the lookup fields for all existing records.
- Question: Can we create roll-up summary fields on lookup relationships, and how many roll-up summaries fields can we have on each object?
Answer: No, they can be created only in master-detail relationship, and we can have only 25 rolls up fields per object
- Question: We have multiple teams working on custom object ABC, and both teams collect different information during the creation of the record. How can we make sure teams only see fields relevant to them?
Answer: We can create two record types and two-page layouts and assign them to record types so all relevant information stays in one layout.
- Question: Are validation rules triggered even if the user deletes the record?
Answer: No
- Question: Can we assign different page layouts to different users viewing the same record type?
Answer: Yes, page layouts are assigned in the combination of record types and profiles, so different profiles can have different layouts even for the same record type.
- Question: Can we make a standard picklist field as a dependent picklist?
Answer: No
- Question: Can we make a multi-select picklist as a controlling field?
Answer: No
- Sales and Marketing Applications
- Good understanding of sales process and its capabilities (for example, sales process, Opportunity, path, and forecast impact.)
- Be able to apply sales productivity features using opportunity tools.
- Understanding of product and price-book and how they can be leveraged in the system.
- Describe the capabilities of campaign management and lead automation tools.
Sample Questions :
- Question: Can we capture leads directly from lead? How many leads can we capture in 24 hours?
Answer: Yes, using the web to lead functionality, we can capture max 500 leads per day
- Question: Companies have different pricing strategies for their customers depending on their loyalty; there are three types of customers: gold, silver, and bronze. How can we maintain products with all the prices?
Answer: We can create multiple price books for each type of customer.
- Question: Can a user add an inactive product under Opportunity?
Answer: No
- Service and Support Applications
- Describe the capabilities of case management.
- Given a scenario, automate case management identification.
- Understanding of Salesforce knowledge
Sample Questions
- Question: Why do we use queues?
Answer: We use queues to share the workload between users.
- Question: How can we automatically assign a case depending on the type of case?
Answer: Case Assignment rules.
- Question: On which objects can we create auto-response rules?
Answer: Only leads and cases.
- Question: Are auto-response rules triggered if I have created a record via UI?
Answer: No, they are triggered only if records are created, for example, from the web to case or email to the case or custom portal
- Productivity and Collaboration
- Describe the capabilities of activity management.
- Describe the features of Chatter.
- Identify use cases for AppExchange applications.
- Explains the capability of the Salesforce Mobile App.
- Setting up Chatter groups.
Sample Questions:
- Question: Do mute posts feature mutes even if the user is mentioned in the post?
Answer: No, if the user is mentioned in the post, the post is unmuted
- Question: Is it possible to automatically update currency rates?
Answer: Yes, there are third-party apps available in-app exchange.
- Question: Is it possible to create or update records via the Salesforce Mobile app even if you are offline?
Answer: Yes, we can enable offline edit features to allow users to make changes to records.
- Data and Analytics Management
Data Management
- Describe the considerations, especially during importing, updating, transferring, mass deleting, exporting, and backing up data. (e.g., CSV Files, data quality, field mapping, record ID’s, external ID’s, duplicate records)
- Identify tools for managing data (Data Loader, Import Wizard)
- Describe data validation tools implications and capabilities
- Understand Data.com
- Mass Delete and what is Recycle bin
- Importing clean data in Salesforce
Sample Questions
- Question: How can we load 10 million records in Salesforce?
Answer: Dataloader can only load a max of 5 million records, but we have 3rd party tools available on the app exchange
- Question: How many records can be uploaded via import wizard?
Answer: Maximum 50,000
- Question: For how many days do records stay in the recycle bin?
Answer: Records stay in the recycle bin for 15 days, after which they are deleted forever
Analytics – Report and Dashboards
- Describe the available options when creating a report ( for example, report type, report format, charting)
- It describes the sharing model on reports’ impact.
- Describe the options available in dashboards (e.g., dashboard components, data sources, chart types, Subscribing, running user).
- Printing, exporting, and emailing reports
- Working with Report filters
Sample Questions Salesforce Admin questions for beginner
- Question: What are report formats available in Salesforce.
Answer: 4 formats are supported – Tabular, Summary, Matrix, and Joined reports.
- Question: Manager wants to generate a list of contacts to generate a mailing list? Should he use a summary or tabular report?
Answer: He should tabular report; summary reports is used if you want to group rows of data and display total
Question: Can we have all Dashboards with settings run as logged-in users?
- Answer: No, there is a limit on it which is different in different editions of Salesforce. For example, in the Enterprise edition, we can have a max of five dashboards with setting enabled.
- Workflow/Process Automation
- For Given a scenario, identify the appropriate automation solution on the basis of the capabilities of the tool. (Workflow, process builders)
- Understand Email templates
- Describe capabilities and use cases for Flow.
- Describe capabilities and use cases for the approval process.
Sample Salesforce Admin Certification Questions and Answer:
- Question: Can we use workflow to update child records?
Answer: No
- Question: Can we have multiple approval processes active for the same object?
Answer: Yes, we can have up to 300 per object.
- Question: Can we assign approval requests to the queue rather than assigning them to the user?
Answer: Yes.
- Question: Can we send custom notifications using workflows?
Answer: No, we can only send them using process builders or flows.
Read the full list of Salesforce Interview questions here.
