Who can do Salesforce Administrator Certification?

Anyone who is familiar with using any online software product (SaaS as they call it) can earn a Salesforce Admin Certificate. No prior coding or background in technology is needed to be certified as a Salesforce Admin. All you need to know is how any business operates. Who in the organisation should be able to access (create, read, update and delete – CRUD as they call it) records. How work flows from creator to the approver and plenty of common sense related to decision making is what is required to be a successful Salesforce Administrator.

 Even aspiring college students can earn a Salesforce certification, if they spend time learning business operation and how they can be automated in the Salesforce platform.    Before you start working as a Salesforce admin, you must familiarise yourself with the platform. 

Salesforce ADM 201 is a basic salesforce certification for the professionals working in the organisational sphere of a company. 

If you want to start a career as a Salesforce admin, you must familiarise yourself with the Salesforce Platform. Good news is the Salesforce Trailhead is an excellent platform to guide you in every step of the process. 

Benefit of Salesforce Administrator Certification for building a career: 

1. This is the stepping stone to Salesforce Platform which opens up many interesting opportunities like Sales, Service, Customer Experience and other advanced products from Salesforce 
2. Salesforce Trailhead Platform make it as easy as it can get, for users from non-technical background to upskill in technology and configure and maintain multiple products from Salesforce. 
3. Certified Administrators help organizations to maintain the Salesforce Platform and support with useful insights about the operational aspects of the business. 
4. As data is the centre of any modern business, a Salesforce Administrator is a position of responsibility and good administrators become key contributors to organisational success. 

How value does a certified Salesforce Administrator bring to an organisation? 

A Salesforce Administrator job is a highly specialised one. While this job can be performed sub-optimally by a non-certified person, the true value of Salesforce can be realised by hiring a Certified Salesforce Admin. Or an organisation can groom an employee for Salesforce Certification while on the job.

One can learn key aspects of Salesforce Administration by following the Salesforce Trailhead modules. However, it does not give you a rounded view of all the features and options available for solving your business problems. A certification exam is often based on real life organisational problems. So, while doing the preparation for the exam you are likely to experience multiple options and the exam questions prepares you for effective decision making while choosing the right option. 

• Gain practical knowledge of Business Automation. Practical application of knowledge for real-life problem-solving yields better confidence. 
• Better handling of client requirements exploiting knowledge of Salesforce standard rules to address customers business needs. 
• Better access control implementation (Object level access, Record level access, Field-level security the organization using Sharing Access). 
• Salesforce admin can guide sales team members how to use Sales Cloud to keep track of opportunity and close deals. 
• Salesforce Certification gives you an in-depth understanding of the platform and also increases your insight into sales and customer relations in general. 

What was my path to earn my Salesforce Admin Certificate? 

I covered the trailhead modules and then applied the knowledge in the following areas 

User Administration and Setup control:  

In configuration and setup there are basic topics we have to know  

1. Company information:  In salesforce company profile consist of Information about language, currencies, number of licences are available, data storage, file storage, about fiscal year etc. 
2. User management:   There are two sides to user management in Salesforce. First, there’s the general management of user accounts. That is, setting up accounts with correct licenses, roles, profiles, permission sets, active/frozen status, and so on. Secondly, there’s the user experience aspect of designing an interface that serves the needs of users based on their assigned profile, role, and group. 

Security settings:

Here are four key ways that admins can manage security within their org —  

• Control who can see what. 

User permissions within Salesforce specify which tasks users can perform and which features users can access. They are the first and most effective way to control who sees what—and when. Best practice is to start with a private organisation-wide default (OWD) setting and then open up visibility using Sharing Rules, Role Hierarchy, Sales and Account Teams, Manual Sharing, and Apex Sharing. Check out this great Who Sees What video series about all of these rules and how to best use them. 

• Disable the export report permission. 

It’s important to remember there’s a permission that allows users to export reports out of Salesforce into Excel or a .csv file. With this permission disabled, you minimise the risk of data being exported and shared with unauthorised users.  

• Use Salesforce Health Check. 

This tool measures how well your security settings meet either the Salesforce Baseline Standard or your selected custom baseline. It allows you to audit your security settings and expose potential vulnerabilities in your org. This helps you proactively take steps to prevent security issues. 

• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). 

MFA is a very useful tool in any admin’s toolbox. It’s an authentication method that requires the user to provide two or more verification factors to log in to a Salesforce org. MFA is the easiest way to secure your org from unqualified login or phishing attempts. 

Automate Your Business Processes Using:    

Process automation is the technology-enabled automation of complex business processes. Through process automation, we’re able to provide seamless and personalised customer experiences. This is great for customers and the business, Admins mostly configure Salesforce in Setup, customising the platform to meet the needs of the business. However, some requirements and tasks are more complex and may not be solvable using standard setup parameters. Such tasks can be done using low-code automation, also known as “declarative tools,” such as Flow Builder. There are four types of automation tools:  

1. Flow 
2. Process Builder 
3. Workflow 
4. Approval Process 
5. Usage of Auto response rule, Assignment Rule, Case escalation rules. 
6. Set Trusted IP Ranges for Your Organisation using Network Access. 

Data and Analytics Management:  

Salesforce provides all users with the ability to create and run reports and to see dashboards. Salesforce Admins, however, tend to be much more knowledgeable about the underlying data model, the health and utility of the data, and the patterns of use within the system. This makes admins excellent candidates to build out reporting for their organisation. 

1. Data types 
2. Validation rule
3. Data Import Wizard
4. Data Loader – need to understand the Data relationships like Master – Detail or Lookup
5. Recycle Bin – when data can be restored and when it cannot be. 
6. Merge function
7. Mass Transfer
8. Mass Delete
9. Duplicate Matching – very important to de-duplicate and clean data like customer contacts list
10. External ID – when data is to be imported from external sources (even from an external salesforce organisation)
11. Data Export
12. Report creation
13. Custom reports
14. Editing and customising reports
15. Dashboard components
16. Data Sharing
17. Report and dashboard filters

Productivity and Collaboration.

1. Activities : When activities are documented and tracked to closure no lead is dropped or no customer is lost/missed.
2. Chatter: Realtime conversation between colleagues elevates productivity
3. Salesforce mobile app: Work goes on even when you are out of desk. 
4. Compact Layout: Put all relevant instructions, metrics, decision making tools at your desktop. 
5. AppExchange: A store for getting Salesforce Certified apps if your business needs one 

When is the best time to do Salesforce Administrator certification? 

• As you start your Journey to Salesforce. 

• When you have some end user experience and would like to perform advanced configuration and customization tasks. Without Admin knowledge a user cannot learn salesforce platform standard/ custom objects, App, Rules, permissions etc. 
• When you want to implement any business requirement that time you need to know automation process, rules etc. 
• When you wish to have better visibility and reputation among colleagues. Good communication skills to enable you to work across the company and help user adoption. 
• When you are required to build reports, dashboards and workflow rules. 
• When you are required to analyse data and apply information security across your organisation. 

How to prepare for Salesforce Administrator certification? 

• Go to Trailhead and do Admin Super Badges (Business Administration Specialist, Security Specialist, Lightning Experience Reports & Dashboards Specialist), its help to improve your knowledge up to 50-60%. 
• Create your Own developer org, for self-practice. 
•  Create 1 or 2 automation process (Flow, Process Builder, Workflow) and test the concept to practically apply the knowledge. 

• And last take 1-2 months prepare online test materials.