Frequently asked questions about Salesforce.com Certification Exams

Force.com Certification FAQ

Which all certificates are offered by Salesforce?

 

Salesforce.com offers Six certification exams 

1. Certified Force.com Developer
2. Certified Force.com Advanced Developer
3. Certified Administrator
4. Certified Advanced Administrator
5. Certified  Sales Cloud Consultant
6. Certified  Service Cloud Consultant

One has to pass the Developer exam (DEV401) before he can take the Force.com Advanced Developer exam. (DEV 501)

 Similary Administrator certification is a prerequisite for the advanced administrator and Consultant certifications.



How many questions are there in the Force.com developer exam? What is the pass percentage?
There are sixty multiple choice questions in the exam. You need to complete these questions in 90 minutes. The pass percentage is 68%. which means 41 corect answers are required to clear the exam. If you know the course material, you will find the time sufficient.


How much time is required to prepare for the Force.com Developer certification?
If you are a seasoned Salesforce administrator or an experienced Force.com developer, you should be able to prepare for the exam in 3-4 weeks. However if you do not have prior experience, you should plan to spend couple of months going through tutorials and working on Salesforce platform before going for the exam. These are just reference timelines, you may need more or less time based upon your specific experience, how much time you spend per day on preparation and whether you take any formal training.


How do I register for the exam? How much does certification cost ?
To register for the exam visit http://www.webassessor.com/salesforce . Create a new account. Once you login to your account, you can register for the exam you wish to take and a location closest to you, You can pay the fees via the credit card. Testing centers are world wide across all major cities
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The exam fees for Force.com Developer exam is $200.


What type of questions are there in the exam?
Force.com developer certification has multiple choice questions. They may have one correct answer or multiple correct answers. In case there are multiple correct answers, exam mentions the number of correct answers.


Try to develop an understanding of when various features of Force.com are used. As an example make sure you know

1. When to use workflow vs approval process vs validation rule
2. When to use System Log vs Debug Log

Is there any negative marking in the exam?
There is no negative marking in the exam. 


Will the certification help me find a job?
Certifications from Salesforce are highly valued in the market. Although certification does not gurantee a (better) job, certification will definitely help you in landing up more interview calls.


What percentage of people pass the certification exam?
For the Admin Essential ADM 201 exam a survey was done in March 2010, where 48% of first time test takers passed without taking the class while the pass rate of first time test takers who took the certification class from Salesforce was 68%.


How often do the certification exams change?
Salesforce has three annual releases - Summer, Spring and Winter releases. Along with each of these releases, Salesforce also updates the certification exams.


What are the requirements for maintaining the certification?
To maintain your certification status, you will need to pay an annual fees of $100. Along with the three releases every year, Salesforce also launches release upgrade exams. You get one year to clear each of these release upgrade exams. You need to clear them to maintain your certification status.

How do I learn Salesforce ? and How do I get started on the platform?

  

I heard this question couple of times “ How do I learn Salesforce ? and  How do I get started on the platform? ”

So I thought about giving some notes for newbies who might be interested in these steps.

I come from a Mechanical Engineering background, and my interests are web based startups, building web applications. Since my interests’ lie in web application development, the learning pace was quick for me. However I think one does not need a background in Software engineering or Information Technology to get started. That is the beauty of the platform. Any person interested on the platform can come to speed very quickly.

You can quickly get started with these tips:

1.    Time Allocation: Allocate dedicated learning time every week. You could schedule it on a calendar and setup reminders. Plan it like an event. Make sure that you have some uninterrupted allocated time

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  2. Free Developer account: Any one can signup for a free developer account on Salesforce. You can sign up here: 

     Once you have a free account, you are free to configure your salesforce application.

3.    Help and training menu online: Login with your developer account. Once you are logged in you see the help menu as shown in the figure below. Click on help to find the complete online help guide on the force.com platform.

Once you click on help, you can see a lot of documentation. Also you can also download a printable a user guide as well from the image shown below.

  

4.    Check out AppExchange: 

AppExchange is portal where you can find many pre built applications for the force.com platform. It is a place where you can look for applications and install it in your account. Isn’t it a good idea to just use off  the shelf application when it available already than build it all yourself ? If you are familiar with apple’s App Store or Android Store where you can download applications, AppExchange is a store like place where you can search, & install applications. Some of the applications are free and some of them paid.

  

5.    Customer Stories: One would be very keen to know about the existing implementations and how saleforce really solved a companies problem. You can check out the CRM case studies and success stores right here. Here you can find different customers talking about how different products of Salesforce helped them solve problems in their companies.

6.    Training: Salesforce.com officially provides classroom and online training. You can find more information here. The training for just ADM 201 module costs $3000. and $4000 for Developer training.The training sessions last 8 hrs each day for 3 or 4 days. However, I find this back to back training not so effective because, one cannot absorb so much content in a day. 

7.    However, when a trained professional guides through the step by step process the learning becomes easier and faster. I also do offer trainings online. There would be 20 sessions and each session lasting 1.5 hr. Mornings /Evenings. Please email me for more information. It would cost way less compared to salesforce offering. Training is geared towards certification. To find out more click here

   

8.    Like any other skill, More time and effort you put in, the more proficient one would become. So I guess these steps will help you get started on the platform.

When you don’t have time for all this, you would hire a consultant on the Force.com Platform.

Flow Designer on Salesforce

Have you all checked out the new tool on Salesforce.com "Flow Designer" ? A tool that gives more hands control to the consultant /business analyst. This has been enhanced in the latest release in summer 11. From a consultant stand point, without having to ask the developer to write code to enhance the business process flow one can use the drag and drop interface to build the process flow. Creation of forms (for the end user) to enter data , validations, business logic, and mathematical logic can also be built in.

One can design flows using the Flow designer tool on your desktop and these flows can quickly be imported onto Salesforce.com. Note that you can actually connect to your application on the cloud using security token, username and passwd.

One can actually check out the two videos here:

I dont want to code /nor would I like to code. but, I want to make a career in IT

Is it for me?  I get many questions from prospective developers and consultants. There are questions like "I come from from Financial Background, good communicator, have no idea on software development, do I have a role to play on Salesforce.com platform ?"  The cloud is relatively new for everyone. Salesforce really shot up in user adoption in the last couple of years. The platform is very new compared to others like ORACLE or SAP which have a giant market share.

There is a lot happening inside Salesforce.com. The product line is very fresh with new and amazing products with great functionality. Experience does count, but there aren't many experienced consultants on the platform as well. One can quickly get on pace with the Salesforce.com Platform. The demand is very high compared to the available consultants. 

One can build a decent application without writing a single line of code. All using the declarative syntax (Point and Click methodology) in a span of days.  

 To get an idea about different roles one can play on the Salesforce.com platform, click here

Is Salesforce Career for me

"Are there good job opportunities? "  Salesforce is a multi-billion dollar company growing at an amazing pace featured in the top 10 fastest growing companies in the US. There are really few number of salesforce consultants. I believe that cloud consultants are really well compensated in the industry. Check out monster jobs and business week  and search for Salesforce, don't feel surprised if there is a lot of requirement. I guess that will give you a fairly good idea of how the opportunities are like.

"How is this platform different ?"  Salesforce.com is an innovative business model in itself. Think about yourself running a small company. You will either be selling products or services. You want to be professional branded and look like any other company offering high quality professional service. Now you need a CRM to do that (CRM -Customer Relationship Management). You cant afford to go buy Servers, Software costing a million dollars and managing the whole ecosystem. The business owner would think, "I wish I had all this at fraction of cost." This is what exactly salesforce is doing, all you need is a computer with internet and a browser. The licensing model is per user per month. That is a miracle come true for any business owner.
You can buy as many licenses when you need to scaling up, at the same time you can cut down on the licenses when you dont need them. The flexibility you get is amazing. Choosing Salesforce.com is a no-brainer now for any small to mid-size companies. (5 to 500 users). There will always be many Small and mid-size companies sprouting up, they all need CRM . Once they would like to go beyond and build their own apps on the platform, they can do so on salesforce.

For prospective Salesforce Developers & Functional Consultants

With many people interested on the force.com Platform, and not knowing where to start from.

There are three roles :

1. Consultant

2. Developer

3. Administrator.

Consultant: A person who understands the force.com platform with good communication skills and capabilty to understand and translate business processes of the customer to objects on the force.com platform. There are quite a few products on the salesforce.com like the Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, jigsaw, etc. One needs to be aware of the complete product line of Salesforce.com. The person needs to be a good team player, with a strong , and brief the customer how salesforce can meet their requirements.
Sales Cloud is built around products and Service cloud is built around services with telephony integration.

Developer: Developer would build a sophisticated application from start to finish, including designing applications for the cloud, create custom objects, use workflow and rules to automate processes and build the user interface. 

Administrator: The administrator takes care of the Sharing and security settings in the organization, best practices on how to set up, configure, and maintain your Salesforce sales, support, and marketing functionality.

Salesforce Offers certification tracks for the three roles:

Why Choose Salesforce (From a Company's Standpoint)

The 4th fastest growing company in the US with a market cap of close to 18 billion USD, Salesforce evolved beyond the client server architecture like SAP or Oracle Apps. Its pay per user per month license model is easily scalable, and makes it easy for small to midsize companies opt for a software tool for their business. The customers can avoid huge upfront license and hardware costs. Access anytime, anywhere with automatic upgrades.

No concept of buying new version of the software. Any company using Salesforce platform is always on the latest version.

The sweet spot for Salesforce platform lies between small to midsize companies. However there are also large corporations like HP, Japan Post and Avon using Salesforce platform. It is nice to see HP ditch Oracle for Salesforce.

I don't see growth in the number of large corporations, however one my notice the number of small to midsize companies are growing rapidly. There is lot of growth and new technology adoption which is the sweet spot.

Salesforce started with on demand CRM. Noticing the high adoption rate and listening to its customers, it opened up its platform (Force.com) for developers. Now developers are free to develop apps on the platform. Currently salesforce is offering 3 products SalesCloud, Service Cloud and Force.com Platform.

SalesCloud and ServiceCloud are the two products built by salesforce. The customer can buy the license for the product and customize the app for their organization.