How to Pass Salesforce Certified Data Cloud Consultant Exam.
The Salesforce Certified Data Cloud Consultant certification is ideal for consultants who have experience implementing and consulting on enterprise data platforms in a customer-facing role, including designing, configuring, and architecting solutions.
1. About the Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant Exam
Content
60 multiple-choice
Time allotted
105 minutes
Passing score
62% (38 out of 50 questions)
Exam Fee
USD 200 plus applicable taxes
Retake Fee
USD 100 plus applicable taxes
Prerequisite
None
For up to date information about this certification please refer to the official exam guide here!
2. Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant Exam Outline
Topics
Weighting
Questions
Solution Overview
18%
11 Questions
Data Cloud Setup & Administration
12%
7 Questions
Data Ingestion & Modeling
20%
12 Questions
Identity Resolution
14%
8 Questions
Segmentation and Insights
18%
11 Questions
Act on Data
18%
11 Questions
Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant Exam Outline
3. Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant Exam Study Course
4. Important Topics for the Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant Exam
4.1 Solution Overview 18% (11 Questions)
A customer data platform (CDP) is a place where a company collects and stores data about its customers.
With Customer Data Platform you can:
Create unified customer profiles across all touch points by connecting identities, engagement data, customer orders, loyalty, and marketing journeys.
Build smarter audience segments using insights and filtering capabilities.
Activate data from anywhere across your organization.
Capture and unify data from anywhere with a high-scale data ingestion service.
Analyze your data using tools like Tableau or Marketing Cloud Intelligence.
Customer 360 Data Model is Customer Data Platform’s standard data model
Data Cloud features cover functionality for enterprise customer data in five key categories:
Connect – Data Cloud offers multiple methods that allow users to connect their data:
Connectors
APIs
MuleSoft
Harmonize – Map data between your connected data sources and the Customer 360 Data Model.
Unify – Link all the different data records that refer to the same real-world entity or object, such as a person.
Analyze and Predict – Aggregate and analyze data across multiple channels and touchpoints, businesses optimize marketing strategies, improve customer experiences, and drive business performance.
Act – Create smart segments and activate them anywhere.
Customer 360 Data Model Terminology
Subject Area – A term used to group similar data objects to aid in data modeling
Data Stream – A data source brought into Customer Data Platform
Data Model Object (DMO) – A grouping of data (made up of attributes) that are created from data streams, insights, and other sources
Attribute – A specific piece of data found in a DMO
Foreign Key – A common link found between data sources that builds data relationships
Data Cloud Capabilities
Ingestion – Consume or activate data to any cloud and any application
Identity – Connect, match and resolve customer data
Segmentation and Activation – Create smart segments and activate anywhere
Insights – Embed your data with intelligence and make it available to analytics systems
Data Cloud Admin—Users with this permission set can access all functionality within Data Cloud, including mapping data to the data model and creating data streams, identity resolution rulesets, and calculated insights.
Data Cloud User—Users with this permission set can view Data Cloud features.
Segmentation and Activation Add-On License Permission Sets
Data Cloud for Marketing Admin—Users with this permission set can manage day-to-day configuration needs, support, maintenance, and improvement and perform regular internal system audits.
Data Cloud for Marketing Data Aware Specialist—Users with this permission set can map data to the data model and create data streams, identity resolution rulesets, and calculated insights.
Data Cloud for Marketing Manager—Users with this permission set can manage an overall segmentation strategy, including creating activation targets and activations.
Data Cloud for Marketing Specialist—Users with this permission set can create segments.
Starter data bundles are pre-modeled standardized data sets and are available for Marketing Cloud Email Studio, MobileConnect, and MobilePush.
Sharing rules can be used on Salesforce Data Cloud to control access
Sharing rules can be applied to the following Data Cloud objects:
Data Stream
Calculated Insights
Segment
Activation Target
Activation
Data Cloud setup process steps order
Configure Admin user
Provision Data Cloud
Create profiles and configure additional users
Connect to relevant Salesforce Clouds
Salesforce Data Cloud home page
Data Cloud Tabs
Data Streams and Data Model provide insight into your selected data model and connected data sources that are created by the data aware specialist user.
Calculated Insights are predefined and calculated metrics that can help you build segments.
Identity Resolutions is where your team creates match and reconciliation rules to unify individual records.
Data Explorer and Profile Explorer are data-viewing tools, allowing you to view your ingested and unified profile data, respectively.
Segments tab is where you create your filtered audience segments.
Activation Targets and Activations are used to manage where segments get exported, for example Marketing Cloud.
4.3 Data Ingestion & Modeling 20% (12 Questions)
Marketing Cloud Connect user requirements
Must have only two roles assigned: Administrator and MarketingCloudAdministrator.
Must have the Enterprise business unit (top level) assigned as default.
Must have access assigned to any other child business unit from which data needs to be ingested.
MC Connect connection is established at the account level (Enterprise Business Unit)
Marketing Cloud supports one-to-one (1:1) and one-to-many (1:M) connections with Data Cloud.
Connections from multiple Marketing Cloud accounts to a single Data Cloud instance (M:1) are not supported.
CRM orgs connectable by the Salesforce CRM connector
Home Org – Org where Data Cloud is installed
External Org – Orgs that are external to the org where Data Cloud is installed
Sandbox Org – Sandbox CRM orgs that are external to the org where Data Cloud is installed
Data Cloud and Loyalty Management must be installed within the same org to support Activation to Loyalty Management.
Salesforce CRM supports 1:1, 1:M, and M:1 connections with Data Cloud.
The data stream with the Engagement Category has a limit of 2000 unique dates at the date granularity per single ingestion.
If the Refresh Mode is set to Full Refresh, Marketing Cloud only exports the data set on a daily (24 hours) cadence.
Marketing Cloud starter data bundles – Provides access to the messaging and engagement data, including campaign and journey details, and message template metadata.
Email Studio – Includes engagement events, including opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, unsubscribes, Einstein Engagement Scores, campaigns, journeys, and enterprise profile attributes
MobilePush – Includes engagement events, such as sends, opens, displays, undelivers, geofence entries and exits, Einstein Engagement Scores, campaigns, journeys, push message template metadata, and contact point (app).
MobileConnect – Includes engagement events such as sends, delivers, undelivers, opt-ins, and opt-outs, campaigns, journeys, SMS message template metadata, and the contact point (phone).
The Full Refresh option can only be used for a data set with 50 million records or less. For larger groups, use one of the delta extract options.
There are two options for Refresh Mode: Upsert and Full Refresh.
Last 90 days of the data will be exported and ingested into Data Cloud for the initial historical load.
The initial extraction of historical data from Marketing Cloud may take up to 24 hours.
If the wrong Data Extract option is selected during initial setup, it can’t be changed post creation.
The starter data bundle can not be ingested multiple times.
Access to the objects and fields, must be explicitly granted via the Salesforce Data Cloud Salesforce Connector Integration permission set. Failing to do this results in an Insufficient Permissions error message.
During data stream configuration, Field Name and Field API Name of the CRM object field can be updated at the schema review step.
Data Model Object, also called DMOs (Groups of Data)
Attributes (Data About Your Contacts)
Customer Data Platform, the system can only unify profiles if they are mapped correctly to the individual object and one other element: a contact point object or a party identifier object.
Individual Object – All the personal information you know about your customer.
Contact Point Objects – Contact points (things like email, phone, address, device, and social) all have associated objects that can be used for identity resolution.
Party Identification Object – Party identifier matching allows you to use your own customer-supplied identifiers.
Identity Resolution Rulesets – Allow you to configure match rules and reconciliation rules about a specific object, such as individual.
Two types of rules that make up a ruleset:
Match Rules – Used to link together multiple records in a unified customer profile.
Reconciliation Rules – Determine the logic for data selection
Match Rules match methods
Exact
Fuzzy
Normalized
While setting up new data stream Field Label and Field API Name can be edited
Segement – Filter your data to create useful segments to understand, target, and analyze your customers.
Publish – Process of searching and building a segment based on the filter criteria. You can publish your segments on a chosen schedule or as needed.
Activation – Process of moving audience segments to an activation target.
Individuals: A specific person or customer from a specific data source, like Marketing Cloud.
Unified individual: A customer profile whose data has been merged based on multiple sources using Identity Resolution rules.
Once an attribute path has been selected in a container, it can’t be changed.
Customer Data Platform segments can be used in Journey Builder.
You need to go to Activations to activate a segment in Customer Data Platform
Data Source Object (DSO) – The object that underpins the data object.
Data Lake Object (DLO) – The target destination for the records from the data streams.
Data Model Object (DMO) – The entity within the Data Cloud data model the consolidates data of the same nature from numerous data sources through the data lake objects.
Customer 360 Data Model – Used to be known as Cloud Information Model (CIM), refers to the foundation of the Marketing Cloud Data Cloud standard data model.
Harmonization is the process of mapping the ingested data in alignment with the Customer 360 Data Model.
Data Explorer is used to inspect the data in data source objects, data model objects, and calculated insights objects.
The Customer 360 Data Model is organized into subject areas that represent a major business activity, such as customer information, product, or engagement data.
Subject areas consist of data model objects (DMO).
A DMO is a grouping of data created from data streams, insights, and other data sources. The DMO includes attributes (also called fields).
An attribute is a specific piece of data stored in Customer Data Platform, for example, a customer’s first name.
Data mapping requirements
When you’re mapping a data model object (DMO) in the Profile or Other category, you map the primary key field. You can save the data mapping only after mapping the primary key.
When you’re mapping a DMO in the Engagement category, you map the primary key field and the Event dateTime field. You can save the mapping only after mapping both fields.
To use identity resolution, segmentation, and activation, map the required fields and relationships for the party area data. You must also map the Individual object and either a Contact Point or the Party Identification object must be mapped in data streams.
The values for the individual.Id field must be unique across all data sources that map to the Individual DMO
Contact Point and Customer Profile must be mapped to the Individual DMO to enable the unification and activation process to work.
In a data model the Individual Object referenced in other DMOs via Party Attribute
Customer 360 Data Model Subject Areas
Case Data Model – Groups and defines recorded issues, such as laptop connectivity problems or support tickets.
Engagement Data Model – Defines interactions with a party. Example interactions could be speaking to a customer over the phone or receiving a customer email.
Party Data Model – Groups data model objects (DMO) that reflect contact information (personal or business) for a specific customer or account.
Privacy Data Model – Tracks and stores certain data privacy preferences. Keep in mind that deciding how to honor customer privacy preferences is up to you.
Product Subject Area – Defines anything you plan to sell or any part of a product to track for service purposes.
Sales Order Data Object – Defines the future revenue or quantity for an opportunity by product family and rolls it up by territory, management (role), or hierarchy.
Customer Data Platform, the system can only unify profiles if they are mapped correctly to the individual object and one other element: a contact point object or a party identifier object.
Individual Object – All the personal information you know about your customer.
Contact Point Objects – Contact points (things like email, phone, address, device, and social) all have associated objects that can be used for identity resolution.
Party Identification Object – Party identifier matching allows you to use your own customer-supplied identifiers.
Identity Resolution Rulesets – Allow you to configure match rules and reconciliation rules about a specific object, such as individual.
Two types of rules that make up a ruleset:
Match Rules – Used to link together multiple records in a unified customer profile.
Reconciliation Rules – Determine the logic for data selection
Match Rules match methods
Exact
Fuzzy
Normalized
While setting up new data stream Field Label and Field API Name can be edited
Segement – Filter your data to create useful segments to understand, target, and analyze your customers.
Publish – Process of searching and building a segment based on the filter criteria. You can publish your segments on a chosen schedule or as needed.
Activation – Process of moving audience segments to an activation target.
Individuals: A specific person or customer from a specific data source, like Marketing Cloud.
Unified individual: A customer profile whose data has been merged based on multiple sources using Identity Resolution rules.
Once an attribute path has been selected in a container, it can’t be changed.
Customer Data Platform segments can be used in Journey Builder.
You need to go to Activations to activate a segment in Customer Data Platform
COALESCE – Returns the first value from the list that isn’t empty
CONCAT – Returns the values linked in a series
6. Salesforce Data Cloud Limits
6.1 General Guidelines and Limitations
WHAT FEATURE/FUNCTION
GUIDELINES/LIMITATIONS
Location of Data Storage
Data residency is supported in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) only for customers whose Marketing Cloud instance is in EMEA (Stack 50).
Number of Anonymous Profiles
Data Cloud Total Number of Known Profiles x5
Number of Customer Data Platform Permission Set Licenses
500
Unsupported Features
Data Kits: Marketing Cloud data streams aren’t installable.
Unsupported Orgs
Professional Edition orgs Government Cloud
6.2 Activation Guidelines and Limitations
WHAT FEATURE/FUNCTION
GUIDELINES/LIMITATIONS
Scheduled Activation Publish Frequency
Minimum: 12 hours Maximum: 24 hours
Number of Activation Targets
10 external activation targets
Total Number of Attributes
100
Number of Segments to an Activation Target
1
Total Number of Activation Targets
Corporate and Enterprise Editions: 300
Total Number of Activations
Total Number of Contracted Segment Publishes x 4
6.3 API Guidelines and Limitations
NOTE The concurrent request and query limits of Customer Data Platform APIs are independent from the concurrency limits governing the Salesforce platform APIs.
API Queries
WHAT FEATURE/FUNCTION
GUIDELINES/LIMITATIONS
Data Size of Query API Response
8 MB
Maximum Timeout
5 minutes
Total Number of Concurrent Queries
5
Total Number of Queries per Day for Query API and Insights API
I am also preparing for the Data Cloud Accredited Professional exam and your blog is very helpful. I wanted to know if there is any way to create a data cloud trial org which will help me practice instead of just theoretical knowledge. A response will be appreciated.
Hi Dinesh, thanks for sharing these notes/ I have same question as Saloni asked above. Can we create a Data Cloud sandbox?
Hi Balmukund, You can get access to Data Cloud org using partner learning camp. I will create an article with steps and share the link.
great post, Thanks for the valuable Information!
This is such a helpful post, thank you kindly
great post. Thanks for the details.
Hi Dinesh,
I am also preparing for the Data Cloud Accredited Professional exam and your blog is very helpful. I wanted to know if there is any way to create a data cloud trial org which will help me practice instead of just theoretical knowledge. A response will be appreciated.
Congratulations, Dinesh. Great post.
Thank you Andy!