How to Pass Salesforce Associate Certification Exam?
- 1. About the Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam
- 2. Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam Outline
- 3. Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam Guide
- 4. Salesforce Certified Associate Exam Trailmix
- 5. Salesforce Certified Associate Exam Practice Questions
- 6. Important Topics for Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam
- 7. How to Pass Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam Short Video
- 8. Additional Resources
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.
2. Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam Outline

3. Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam Guide
4. Salesforce Certified Associate Exam Trailmix
5. Salesforce Certified Associate Exam Practice Questions
6. Important Topics for Salesforce Certified Associate Certification Exam
6.1 Salesforce Ecosystem 32% (13 Questions)

- 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 Values
- Trust
- Customer Success
- Innovation
- Equality
- Sustainability
- Trailhead is the online learning platform.
- Learning topics are organized into modules, which are broken up into units.
- To finish a unit, you earn points by completing a quiz or a challenge.
- Trails are groups of modules that provide guided learning paths suited to specific roles or need.
- Trailblazer Community is where you connect with other Trailblazers
- Trailhead Playground is an org that you can use for hands-on challenges, learning new features, and testing customizations.
- Create a Trailhead Playground
- Salesforce Help: Search Salesforce documentation and help resources.
- 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.
- Key Salesforce Products
Sales Cloud | Sales automation software available as part of Salesforce CRM. Sales Cloud is used for Lead, Account & Contact, Opportunity and Forecast Management. |
Service Cloud | Customer service and support application from Salesforce. |
Marketing Cloud | Marketing automation and customer engagement application. |
Commerce Cloud | Ecommerce solution to create seamless experiences that inspire and convert today’s connected shoppers. |
Experience Cloud | An online social platform that enables companies to connect customers, partners, and employees. |
Health Cloud | Salesforce’s industry specific solution for Healthcare Industry. |
Financial Services Cloud | Salesforce’s industry specific solution for Financial Services Industry. |
Consumer Goods Cloud | Salesforce’s industry specific solution for Consumer Goods Industry. |
Manufacturing Cloud | Salesforce’s industry specific solution for Manufacturing Industry. |
Communications Cloud | Salesforce’s industry specific solution for Communications Industry. |
Education Cloud | Salesforce’s industry specific solution for Education Institutions. |
Nonprofit Cloud | Salesforce’s industry specific solution for Nonprofits. |
MuleSoft | Integration platform to help businesses connect data, applications and devices across on-premises and cloud. |
CRM Analytics | Analytics and business intelligence solution on Salesforce platform. |
Slack | Enterprise collaboration and messaging software |
- Get Started with the Salesforce Platform
- What Does Salesforce Do?
- The Benefits of Declarative Programming vs. Imperative Programming
- Discover the Salesforce Ecosystem
- The Salesforce ecosystem is made up of:
- Salesforce: The World’s No 1 CRM company.
- Customers: Companies that use Salesforce products.
- Partners: Salesforce-certified experts who work with customers across products and industries.
Career Path | Responsibilities |
---|---|
Salesforce Administrator | 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. |
- Trust.salesforce.com is the Salesforce community’s home for real-time information on system performance and security.
6.2 Navigation 28% (11 Questions)

- Accounts are companies that you’re doing business with, and contacts are the people who work for them.
- Accounts & Contacts for Lightning Experience
- AppExchange is the marketplace for Salesforce Apps
- AppExchange Basics
- 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. |
- Scrum and Kanban at Salesforce
- Search Solution Basics
- Salesforce CRM
- Activities
- Activities include tasks, events, and calendars
- Task – Represents a to do list in Salesforce
- Events and Calendars – Represents an event in the calendar
- You can track your activities in the activity timeline
- The activity timeline shows activities associated via the name field (such as contact) and the related to field (such as account)
- You can use filters on the activity timeline to narrow down what’s visible such as
- Date range
- Activities to show
- Activity type
- Sort Order
- 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:
- Organization
- Objects
- Fields
- Records
- Organization–wide defaults
- Role hierarchies
- Sharing rules
- Manual sharing
- 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.
- Group: A group consists of a set of users. A group can contain individual users, other groups, or the users in a particular role or territory.
- There are two types of groups:
- Public Groups
- Personal Groups
- You can use groups in the following ways.
6.3 Data Model 25% (10 Questions)

- Schema Builder is a tool that lets you visualize and edit your data model.
- Data Modeling
- 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.
- There are two main types of object relationships:
- Lookup Relationships
- Master-Detail Relationships

- Leads & Opportunities for Lightning Experience
- Lightning Experience Productivity
- Formulas and Validations
- A Formula field is a ready only field that automatically calculate a value based on other fields or a formula.
- Validation Rules
- Validation rules verify that the data a user enters in a record meets the standards you specify before the user can save the record.
- A Validation rule can contain a formula or expression that evaluates the data in one or more fields and returns a value of “True” or “False”.
- Validation Rules also include an error message to display to the user when the rule returns a value of “True” due to an invalid value.
- Data Security
- Permission Set Groups
- 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.
- Picklist Administration
- 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.
6.4 Reports and Dashboards 15% (6 Questions)

- Reports & Dashboards
- Quick Start: Reports & Dashboards
- Reports & Dashboards for Lightning Experience
- 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.
- 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. |
- Joined Reports
- Create Reports and Dashboards for Sales and Marketing Managers
- Filter Report Data
- Use Summary Formulas in Your Reports
- Categorize Data with Bucket Columns
- 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!
8. Additional Resources

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.
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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!