1. About the Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam
The Salesforce Certified Associate Certification exam is for candidates who may be new to the Salesforce ecosystem and have an interest in understanding and using the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform. Salesforce Certified Associate candidates desire to learn the Salesforce platform and common business use cases. They are interested in gaining experience in Salesforce and may want to explore a Salesforce career or may be on the path to becoming a Salesforce Certified Professional.
Content
40 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions
Time allotted
70 minutes
Passing score
62% (25 out of 40 questions)
Exam Fee
USD 75 plus applicable taxes
Retake Fee
Free
Prerequisite
None
For an upto date information about this exam please refer the exam guide.
Salesforce is a customer relationship management solution that gives every business team—from sales and marketing to commerce, service, and beyond—a single, shared view of every customer.
Salesforce Customer 360 is an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps companies transform their businesses by uniting their marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams with a single, shared customer view. It encompasses the full breadth of the Salesforce portfolio—including our core applications, platform, services, and connected ecosystem.
Automating complex business processes using click not code, creating reports and dashboards, and training users on Salesforce.
Salesforce Developer
Automating complex business processes via customization using Apex, JavaScript, Lightning Web Components.
Salesforce Architect
Design, build, and deliver solutions that businesses need to succeed in a demanding economy. Provide technical leadership to the team.
Salesforce Business Analyst
Guide businesses to improve business processes and efficiency in Salesforce. They elicit, document, and analyze requirements around business challenges, and then produce data-driven solutions.
Salesforce Marketer
Drive greater campaign click-through rates, reengage inactive subscribers, and grow your subscriber base with an enterprise email solution.
Salesforce Consultant
Lead and support the customer throughout the entire Salesforce implementation lifecycle, including analysis, design, and development.
Salesforce Designer
Optimize flows, interactions, and visual interfaces for intuitive, human-centered experiences built on the Salesforce Platform.
Salesforce Career Paths
Trust.salesforce.com is the Salesforce community’s home for real-time information on system performance and security.
Scrum is a project management framework which helps people and teams deliver value incrementally in a collaborative manner.
Scrum core values
Focus
Courage
Openness
Commitment
Respect
Scrum Roles
The ScrumMaster
The Product Owner
The Team
The Shared Service Subject Matter Expert (SMEs)
The Technical Program Manager (TPMs)
The Functional Manager
Scrum elements of delivery
Product Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Potentially Shippable Work
Kanban is a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems. This approach aims to manage work by balancing demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of system-level bottlenecks.
Four key traits of Kanban
Visualize workflow
Limit work in progress (WIP)
Incremental and evolutionary change
Kanban includes metrics
Lead time: Average time to complete one item, sometimes called cycle time
Throughput: Amount of work completed in a single period of time
Key differences between the Scrum and Kanban workflow
Scrum
Kanban
Who prioritizes it?
Product owner prioritizes on product backlog
Product owner prioritizes on product backlog
Where does it go?
The product backlog is reordered for the next sprint.
The product backlog is continuously reordered for the next available person with capacity.
When does the work start?
During sprint planning, the team commits to the work in the next sprint.
As soon as there is capacity to work on it.
Why is there a delay?
Scrum focuses the team to deliver on their sprint commitments, and interruptions mid-sprint are discouraged.
Kanban focuses on efficient flow of work, so the top of the backlog is always the next thing to be worked on.
How long does it take to deliver?
It can be 2 weeks or more, depending on sprint status.
As soon as it is completed.
Key differences between the Scrum and Kanban workflow
Every user in Salesforce has a user account. The user account identifies the user, and the user account settings determine what features and records the user can access.
User account contains at least the following
Username: Each user has both a username and an email address. The username must be formatted like an email address and must be unique across all Salesforce organizations.
Email Address
User’s First and Last Name
License: A user license determines which features the user can access in Salesforce.
Profile: Profiles determine what users can do in Salesforce.
Role (optional): Roles determine what users can see in Salesforce based on where they are located in the role hierarchy.
You can configure access to data in Salesforce at four main levels:
Lightning App Builder: Build custom pages for Lightning Experience quickly with point-and-click tools.
Lightning Page Types:
App Page: Create a home page for a third-party app that you can add directly into the Salesforce mobile app and Lightning Experience navigation menus
Home Page: Create Home pages with features relevant to specific types of users, and assign the customized pages to different apps or app-and-user-profile combinations.
Record Page: Create a customized version of an object’s record page, tailoring it to your users’ needs.
Standard objects are objects that are included with Salesforce. Common business objects like Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity are all standard objects.
Custom objects are objects that you create to store information that’s specific to your company or industry.
Object relationships are a special field type that connects two objects together.
A permission set is a collection of settings and permissions that give users access to various tools and functions. Permission sets extend users’ functional access without changing their profiles.
A permission set group streamlines permissions assignment and management. Use a permission set group to bundle permission sets together based on user job functions. Users assigned the permission set group receive the combined permissions of all the permission sets in the group.
Salesforce provides several standard fields in each record. You can create a custom field if you may want to capture important info that’s not covered by a standard field.
A report is a group of data that meets a set of criteria.
Report Type
A report type is like a template that makes reporting easier
A report type determines which fields and records are available for use when creating a report
This is based on the relationships between a primary object and its related objects
Reports display only records that meet the criteria defined in the report type
Out of the box, Salesforce provides a set of predefined standard report types
Report Formats
Tabular(Default) – Similar to a spreadsheet, they consist simply of an ordered set of fields in columns, with each matching record listed in a row
Summary – Summary reports are similar to tabular reports, but also allow you to group rows of data, view subtotals, and create charts
Matrix – Matrix reports allow you to group records both by row and by column
Joined – Joined reports are report blocks that provide different views of your data
Report Folders
Every report is stored in a folder
Report folders determine how reports are accessed, and who can access them to view, edit, or manage
Folders can be public, hidden, or shared
Dashboards offer a visual display of your data around a common theme.
Dashboard
A dashboard is a visual display of key metrics and trends for records in your org.
Each dashboard component is based on a single source report
You can use the same or different source reports for the various components in a dashboard
Dashboard Folders
Like reports, dashboards are stored in folders.
If you have access to a folder, you can view its dashboards.
To view the individual dashboard components, you will also need access to the underlying reports.
Dashboard Components – Come in various chart types, tables, metrics, and gauges, and you can customize how data is grouped, summarized, and displayed for each component.
Reports and dashboards are stored in folders.
For reports: You can control who has access to the contents of the folder based on roles, permissions, and more.
For dashboards: Each dashboard has a running user whose security settings determine which data to display to the dashboard’s viewers.
With dynamic dashboards, the running user is always the logged-in user, which means that viewers only see the dashboard data according to their own access level.
A report chart gives users a visual way to understand the data in your report.
Popular Interview Questions
Key Dashboard Component Types
COMPONENT TYPE
IMAGE
DESCRIPTION
Chart
You can use a chart when you want to show data graphically.
Gauge
You can use a gauge when you have a single value that you want to show within a range of custom values.
Metric
You can use a metric when you have one key value to display.
Table
You can use a table to show a set of report data in column form. .
Key Dashboard Component Types
Report Chart Types
Bar charts
A bar chart shows values as horizontal lengths, so this format can be good for comparing distance or time. Use a bar chart when you have a summary report with a single grouping, or you only want to display one grouping.
Column charts
A column chart is very much like a bar chart, but it can be a better format for showing relative counts of things, such as leads or dollars. Use a column chart when you have a summary report with a single grouping, or you only want to display one grouping.
Line Charts
Line charts are good for showing changes in the value of an item over a series of points in time, such as week to week or quarter to quarter. Use a line chart when you have one important grouping representing an ordered set of data and one value to show.
Pie Charts
Use a pie chart when you have multiple groupings and want to show the proportion of a single value for each grouping against the total.
Donut Charts
Use a donut chart when you have multiple groupings and want to show not only the proportion of a single value for each grouping against the total, but also the total amount itself.
Funnel Charts
Use a funnel chart when you have multiple groupings in an ordered set and want to show the proportions among them.
Scatter Charts
Use scatter charts to show meaningful information using one or two groups of report data plus summaries.
You can categorize report records without creating a formula or a custom field by bucketing them.
When you create a bucket column, you define multiple categories (buckets) used to group report values.
Like any other column in your report, you can sort, filter, and group by bucket columns.
7. How to Pass Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam Short Video
Please watch this brief video for useful tips to pass the Salesforce Certified Associate Exam. Please subscribe to the DYDC YouTube channel for more videos like this!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author in his private capacity and are not a reflection of the views of his employer or Salesforce.
Besides a singular 11$ Udemy course, this was the only other blog I took excerpts from before passing the test at noon today. As a former BA in previous Salesforce projects, this was the perfect encapsulation of all introductory concepts before diving back into SFDC. Highly underrated- including the links to Trailhead. so make sure you get pretty comfy by clicking your way through the apps. Good luck, fellow blazers!
Thanks for sharing, very helpful!
How can I get voucher for associate Certification?
Hi Anwar,
Right now there are no vouchers available for Associate Certification.
Found this note very valuable & passed, thanks.
Congratulations on passing the exam!
Besides a singular 11$ Udemy course, this was the only other blog I took excerpts from before passing the test at noon today. As a former BA in previous Salesforce projects, this was the perfect encapsulation of all introductory concepts before diving back into SFDC. Highly underrated- including the links to Trailhead. so make sure you get pretty comfy by clicking your way through the apps. Good luck, fellow blazers!
Congratulations for passing the exam!