After the last few weeks, I feel quite prepared to discuss “How To Study For The Salesforce Advanced Admin Exam” in that I have now taken the exam twice this month. Also, I was fortunate enough to attend the official Salesforce advance admin class in Denver as well about three weeks ago. This is not an easy exam, however if you already have a Salesforce admin certification, this will not be a big jump for you to pass the “Advanced Admin” exam. What does Salesforce consider an “advanced” exam? Well, this test does take alot of the basics of the Salesforce admin exam and applies real world scenario’s and how as an admin would you troubleshoot or resolve the issues at hand. In addition, you must understand the security, sharing and role hierarchy models to a whole new degree beyond what was learned for the basic admin exam. With this blog post, I will dissect the key elements needed to not only study for the Salesforce advanced admin exam, but also help you successfully pass it. Full disclosure here, I did not pass the exam the first time I took it earlier this month to my dismay. However, I doubled my efforts, studied very specific areas (which will be shared below) and 9 days later, passed this exam and so can you!
About the Advanced Admin Exam
Overall, the exam is 60 questions of which you must get 39 correct (65%) to successfully pass. First, ensure you have downloaded the Advanced Admin study guide as a starting point. Secondly and as I alluded to in this blog post under the “Exam Strategy” section, write out 1-20, 21-40 & 41-60 and gamify the exam to your advantage. This is not hard to do and has really helped me in taking all the Salesforce exams this far. So, what else about the exam itself? Well it relies heavily that you know the following subject areas:
- Change Management (Force.com migration tool, Force.com IDE tool and Change Sets and how this affect metadata)
- Territory Management (Account ownership implications and sharing)
- Collaborative and Custom forecasting
- Social Accounts (just know what you can do with LinkedIn contacts)
- Product pricing (know List, Standard and Sales prices)
- Salesforce Knowledge (not in the advanced admin class, but on the test)
- Joined and Custom reporting
- Many-to-Many relationships and when to use them
- Service Console and the basics and what you can do
- Communities and specifically what customers and partners related to them
- Workflows, Assignment Rules, Escalation Rules (know when to use them)
- Troubleshooting (email log, debug log, system audit trail)
- How to submit a service request via the web
- Salesforce Ideas
- OWD security model
If you have Salesforce premier training in your org, you can learn the above topics within one of may online classes.
Advanced Admin Study Materials
If you can take the official Salesforce advanced admin class in person, as this would best thing to do to ensure passing the exam. The class I attended in Denver was a mix of mostly admins, developers and a few Salesforce employees to make up about ten students for 4 days. As you can appreciate, classroom training allows you to ask questions, do the exercises in person and get a better understanding of what to expect on the exam. With that being said, there were a few key areas NOT in the classroom instruction that were on the advanced admin exam. These sections included, Salesforce Knowledge, Communities, Social Accounts and a few other odd ball questions you just have to think through and answer the best you can. After the taking the class (if you can), by far the next item of which helped me pass this exam was going over two specific set of flash cards on Quizlet. For this exam prep, I eliminated all other flash card sets, other websites and distractions except Quizlet and these two sets of cards. Before I share with you the set of flash cards, a few things about the Quizlet itself:
- I had to travel during my study time, so Quizlet has an audio component which reads the flash cards on your mobile device. The audio is not the best, but when you are driving or jogging (I did this one as well), you can actually get the flash cards read to you!
- Download Quizlet’s mobile application onto your smart phone. This was a life saver in many instances whether I was in a meeting or waiting in line at the store, I could go over a few flash cards to ensure maximum study time.
The two sets of flash cards from Quizlet I would recommend are set one to which there are 225 (*55 cards starred) flash cards and set two to which there are 77 (*39 cards starred) flash cards. I am not going to tell you which questions were actually on the exam, but what I will tell you is you should “star” (an option to favorite a card) the cards that begin with a number. These questions are the gold and should be studied to their full potential. Besides the flash cards with numbers in front of the questions, there are a few others and these ALL involve topics referenced in “About the Advanced Admin” section of this blog post. Why these two vs the others on the Quizlet (there are a few others)? Well, these two had the most relevant information as to what was on the actual exam. Below is a pic of the flash cards I studied on Quizlet.
In Summary
When considering “How To Study For The Salesforce Advanced Admin Exam” ensure you know the basics of Salesforce administration. Once you know this and you follow the guidance above, you should be able to successfully pass the Salesforce Advanced Admin exam. One final piece of advice I learned this month while tackling this certification which came to me towards the end of the second attempt of the exam. When I was mostly finished with my second try at this exam, I reviewed all the questions I was not sure about one more time (there are always questions you should go back and review). What this revealed in the end, is eventually I found the right answer for two of ‘maybe’ questions based on going through the entire exam. What exactly does this mean? In some of the exam questions and they way they are asked, you can yield insights (and answers) to other questions previously or later asked in the course of the exam. Again, strategically take the exam on as one interconnected set of questions and this can get you closer to those 39 questions you must get correct to pass this exam.
Good luck and comment below if you have specific questions.
Hector Perez Jr.
UPDATED AMENDMENT: I received some good feedback from Nathan in the comments section and it seems the quizlet cards I recommended have changed a bit and the numbers were removed for some reason. If you notice now, there are links added to the *55 and *39 set of cards. These are word docs to the questions I used. Hope this clarifies it a bit more. Thanks for your feedback!
- Tags: Administration, Salesforce, Salesforce.com, Training
24 Comments
Hi Hector, thanks a lot. Your post is extremely informative. But I have a couple of questions, the first quizlet flashcard set you linked to has 225 flashcards, whereas in the pic you submitted just after that, it shows 294 terms meaning 294 flashcards, which is a different flashcard set. Can you please clarify on which flashcard set you were referring to? Also in the 225 flashcard set, there aren’t any questions starting with numbers but you mentioned 55 starred cards in your post, whereas if you meant the 294 flashcard set, the questions with numbers in front of them are the same questions from the 77 flashcard set. I’m a little confused.
Hi Nathan, thank you for the comments. Much appreciated.
Yes, the picture (now that I see it) can be misleading (will update that). Here is what I meant. The set that has 225 (the link works in the word) is the one I used and would stay with. No need to review at the 294 set as it alot of the same and value add it provides is really not there.
In regards to the flash cards starting with numbers, wow, that has changed since I posted this blog! I just noticed the the numbers are removed. Let me send you an email directly (I saved the questions) that highlight these ‘numbered’ ones.
Lastly, looks like I need to update this blog now, thanks again for you the feedback!
Email coming today.
Hector
I too am a little lost with the numbers and the ‘stars’ as the Quizlet’s suggested don’t have either. I always worry that the questions are inaccurate as I’ve found with some other questionnaires.
Thanks in advance
Yes, thank you for your feedback, I have updated the blog to provided some more context. The questions in the word doc with a number before them are GOOD questions to study for sure.
Thank you very much.
Thank you!
Hi Hector, I am preparing for advanced admin exam. if i click the above 255 flash card link i cant see the numbers. Please confirm that did u follow this or is any other link for 255 flash cards.
Thank you
Hector,
Do you still have these docs?
I do, email me at hectorperezjr@gmail.com
This is one of the best blogs I have read with SF. Thank you for being so informational. Much appreciated. Taking Advance Admin test very soon.
WOW, thank you Becky! I am so glad you found it useful 🙂
Thanks for putting this together! Hoping your suggestions will help when I take the Advanced Admin exam in the morning.
Thank you! Good luck today, let me know how you do!
As nervous as I was this morning, when I sat down and started the exam I was totally calm. The study materials you linked to were extremely helpful. And the good news is…I PASSED! Thank you!
That is sooo cool! Am very happy for you and congrats! That one is a tough one If there is any way you can spread the word about my blog on social media or elsewhere, that would be appreciated!
Hector
Hi Hector,
First of all, thank you so much for putting together these wonderful series of blogs for all of us. This blog is really informative, useful, and very to the point. I have completed three certifications myself (Admin, Developer & Sales Cloud Consultant) and I am looking forward to the fourth one now, the Advanced Admin one.
You very rightly mentioned that there are so many Quizlet sets available, it is very easy to get lost. I have used quizlet for my earlier certifications as well and one thing I noticed is that we can’t blindly trust all the answers to the questions on the sets. I had to go back and do some research to find the correct answer to many Quizlet questions. So with the two sets that you mentioned on your blog (Set 1: 225Qs and Set 2: 77Qs), if you could kindly share your experience with those as to the correctness of the answers, it will be really helpful.
Apart from the study materials since you used these sets for your exam prep, you would be the best judge to validate the correctness of the two sets. I thank you again and appreciate your feedback!
@arindamsutradhar:disqus, thank you for the comments. I would say this. The two samples that are on this post are pretty much what was on the test when I took it earlier this year. Now the test may have changed or these may be different now, but those questions are solid.
Hi Hector, Thanks for your response. So what I understand from your response is, the answers marked on those questions are all accurate. I am so sorry if I am reiterating the same thing. I know the questions are valid and good ones, I am just concerned about the options marked as answers. Sometimes on these flashcards the answers are not correct. But in this case looks like the two sets that you have shared have all correct answers marked. Kindly share your thoughts if otherwise. Thanks again!
@arindamsutradhar:disqus, the answers on the 2 forms are correct and the ones I used to study and are exactly as they were on the test when I took it 6 months ago. As I mentioned, things may have changed since then, but these 2 documents are solid. Answers are correct as well.
@hectorperezjr:disqus: Thanks so much for confirming that. Now I am feeling much better 🙂
Hector,
Do you still have those docs with the starred questions?
Hi Hector,
Great info. I have a exam next week and recently came across your blog. I have a Advanced admin exam next week and was wondering if above link to quizlet still helpful? Question looks great but this post was written in 2015? Do you have any recommendation?
Hector,
Thanks for the advice! I took the exam last Thursday and passed thanks to your recommendations. I lucked out though as probably 15-20 questions from your starred word docs were on my exam! If I was in Texas I would buy you a drink! The test still requires a person to study, given there are quite a few new questions as well. Again I thank you!
Great to hear Brent! Really appreciate the update. Share this on your twitter account if you can, it helps us. @merivistx