Unfollow to Finish Quest

Completed Salesforce Quest Incomplete

Every month I check to see what’s new at https://trailhead.salesforce.com/quests (which doesn’t seem to update monthly anymore, but randomly following marketing events).  Once in a while, I will complete all of the steps of a given quest and it still shows less than 100% complete.

In previous cases, it has been because some module that I had completed in the past had added a new step. So, while that module was complete on my profile, the current version of the module was incomplete. My guess is that the individual steps are reading from my profile and the aggregated score is based on current state. Anyway…I have learned that when the completion status doesn’t match to look at modules that are over a few months old and find the one with the new task.

Today, my tried and true method failed me. Everything was complete, but I still had only 88% complete on the summary. Hmmm. I got lucky and found Community thread with my first query that had the answer (fortunately near the top, as the thread continues with several more comments that are less helpful), which is to click Unfollow, then go through and click all of the “Mark as Complete” buttons again.

Noting this here so I remember for the next time.

HTH

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© Scott S. Nelson
Scott S Nelson Certified Service Cloud Consultant

Passing the Salesforce Service Cloud Consultant Certification Exam

I’ve written about the process I have gone through for all of my Salesforce certifications.  The Certification Prep section of my blog currently starts with these, and I believe that many of those posts also have some helpful tips for the Service Cloud Consultant Certification. If you haven’t already passed the Administrator certification, I would suggest starting with my Tips to Pass the Salesforce.com Administrator Certification Exam post. Enough self-promotion, on with the sharing!

As mentioned earlier, this isn’t my first post on certification approaches and if you are preparing for Service Cloud Consultant certification it isn’t your first exam, so I’m going to minimize the elocution here and just drop my formatted notes by section headings for easier reference.

Start with Trailhead

The proscribed place to prep, completing the Service Cloud Specialist Superbadge will have you well prepared for a passing grade if you work all of the prerequisites and then the Superbadge itself. I did complete the prerequisites but have not yet done the Superbadge project. This is much more a comment on my other time commitments than the approach as I highly recommend completing the Superbadge project, preferably right before taking the exam.

If you also have a reason to not be able to fit the Superbadge into your preparation plan, I recommend completing the Get Started with Service Cloud for Lightning Experience trail. Some of the trail modules are part of the Superbadge prerequisites, so it will take less time than you might think.

Quizlet

Quizlet is a great free resource for some exams, and the Service Cloud Consultant is one of them. https://quizlet.com/272794451/salesforce-service-cloud-consultant-flash-cards/

Udemy

I’ve used Udemy to prepare for every Salesforce certification, and have already enrolled in the Salesforce Data Architect Course for my next planned exam because it was on sale. For those who haven’t used Udemy before, they have frequent sales where the prices are drastically below their regular price. By signing up for their marketing notifications you will eventually get a feel for how low particular courses can drop to, so if you have some planned, buying on sale is a great strategy.

Returning from that digression (my regular reader is used to this), I enrolled in the Salesforce Service Cloud Consultant Certification Course by Mike Wheeler because I had previously taken his Platform App Builder course (as mentioned in Become a Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder) and found it helpful in preparation. I will admit I was disappointed with the Service Cloud course. It was recorded in 2018, and while the Udemy listing says it was last updated 11/22, I couldn’t see where. He continually points out Lightning issues that have long since been addressed and spends a lot of time in Salesforce Classic, which is no longer referenced in the exam. And, while the functionality of Live Agent changed very little when being re-branded to Salesforce Chat, there are a couple of questions in the exam where the Live Agent option is the wrong answer.

And, for the record, I do not get a commission if you enroll in a Udemy course I recommend…and not for lack of trying. Their affiliate program has too much friction to bother dealing with (and it is reflected in my losses as a shareholder).

Focus on Force

I won two vouchers this year (so far, fingers crossed) with Trailhead Quests. The first voucher was for a $200 exam and the second was for a $400 exam. My certification path is focused on Technical Architect and I had done all of the $200 exams, so I sat on that voucher for awhile. When I won the $400 voucher I was a bit surprised to find that it had a shorter expiration period. I immediately scheduled my exam for the expiration date and plowed into My Sharing and Visibility Architect Path.

I rested my brain for a couple of days and decided to use the first $200 voucher on the Service Cloud Consultant certification (sometimes called just Service Cloud Certification). For the Sharing and Visibility Architect exam I tried a few Udemy practice exams because they have served me well for previous exams. I requested refunds for all but one, and that is because I had been to busy to start on the first one and the guarantee period had expired. They were awful. I then went to the Trailhead Community and asked folks there for a recommendation and discovered Focus on Force.  I will keep looking for study courses on Udemy, but for Salesforce practice exams, Focus on Force will be my go-to from now one.

My process was to first go through all of the Topic Exams and then start on the Question Bank.  Then I had some issues with Question Bank on mobile, so I did practice exams on mobile and Question Bank on PC. Once completing the first 20 Question Bank exam, I found I needed to focus in these exam areas:

  • Contact Center Analytics
  • Interaction Channels
  • Knowledge Management
  • Solution Design

This is one of the reasons I don’t consider certifications a true test of consulting skill. I have delivered well-received proposals and solutions using Knowledge Management, and am regularly approached for my solution design expertise. The exam questions cover some narrow areas of very broad topics, and the questions I missed are are about activities that are generally one-and-done… then forgotten and looked up again when next needed. But, certification is important in the Salesforce landscape, so I spent time drilling on things that I would still have to look up again in a couple of years.

I went through the Udemy course in parallel, partly because I only had 55 days to prepare and a demanding day job, and partly to see if this approach was better than first doing the course and then using the practice exams.

Where previously I found the feature to check questions individually instead of at the end of the exam useful, this time I found that I did better if I waited until the end. I think this has a lot to do with my not knowing as many answers as the start as I had for the Sharing and Visibility exam (which I found surprising in itself) and that my expectations changed as I saw immediately that I was wrong. Unless you have an eidetic memory your frame of mind can impact your score more than the knowledge you have accumulated.

The Focus Review feature has the same issue as the Question Bank when used in Chrome on Android mobile devices. The score calculation at the end fails to complete. It then remembers the answer state the next time either is tried. Because both use random questions, some will have the answers from the previous session. I reported this twice for Question Bank and once for Focus Review and no fix has happened yet. If you run into the issue, please report it and then stick to using a PC for those test types. The answers from the failed mobile session will still be there the first time but subsequent attempts will work properly so long as you don’t try mobile again like I did (sometimes I’m optimistic when I shouldn’t be).

Bionic Reading® Notes

I use https://10015.io/tools/bionic-reading-converter to format my notes for Bionic Reading®. Below are the ones I made to review just before the exam. They are specific to reminders I thought would be useful as I created the notes and I recommend you create your own, or supplement these with your own.

For the Industry Knowledge questions, when not sure always go with the one with the highest cost savings followed by the one with the most potential income result. Again, this is only when unsure. There are some questions where cost is not the key factor of the question, for example when considering the benefits of an email channel, lower cost may not be the correct answer as there are other options that are a lower cost than email.

For processes, Case Stages are driven by the Case Status field

CTI allows telephony services in Salesforce. No desktop software or softphone required.

Customer SLA = Entitlement

List views are automatically created for queues

Customer Service site template for Questions to Case, not Customer Portal

Console History component shows recent primary and sub tabs. Recent items shows records

Email to case has a limit of 2500 per day

Knowledge does not return solutions only articles that are related to similar cases or questions

Messaging is what was called Live Messaging and not related to Social

Enable Case Comment Notification to Contacts is a support setting

There is no case field alert

Email approvals require Draft emails

Service Console requires Service Cloud User license

Knowledge Publication Teams and Publication States do not exist

In the routing model, you choose whether to push work to agents who are Least Active or Most Available. If you select Least Active, then Omni-Channel routes incoming work items to the agent with the least amount of open work. If you select Most Available, then Omni-Channel routes incoming work items to the agent with the greatest difference between work item capacity and open work items.

Internal metrics focus on what happens inside the contact center, and external metrics focus on what happens outside the contact center.

Case Sharing Rules by Record Owner:
Public Groups
Roles
Roles and Subordinates

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© Scott S. Nelson
Salesforce Sharing and Visibility on path to Technical Architect

My Sharing and Visibility Architect Path

Full disclosure: This is a quick draft from notes made during my prep journey and quickly edited after passing. Based on comments received, I may revise and elaborate further (hint, hint)

Overview of the Sharing and Visibility Architect certification

After completing the Administrator and Developer certifications, the App Builder certification seemed easy, and I had an expectation they would continue to get easier. I was right and wrong.

I struggled a bit with this certification, for a variety of reasons. First, the earlier certifications are very popular as the best of the entry-level exams. Popularity in this century leads to quantity, and there was lots of high-quality study material available for free and at a reasonable cost. I used to find the Salesforce sharing and visibility topics a bit confusing. They are highly flexible, and flexibility can lead to complexity. The thing about complexity is that when it is well-managed it has a simple core. Getting to that core is the challenge with understanding the subject areas of sharing and visibility and preparing for the certification exam.

Study Guides

For most of my earlier certifications I started with digging deep into the material and the using practice exams to help identify my weaknesses. There are not a lot of courses for sharing and visibility, and many that are out there are out of date. I think part of this has to do with the diminishing number of test takers for this one, coupled with the complexity of the material. Higher effort to address a smaller market reduces those interested in completing. I did find a decent subject matter course on Udemy, my usual go-to for learning anything quick at reasonable price (so long as I can wait for one of the frequent sales). I also found a good, exam-focused series on YouTube that I highly recommend for those like me who want multiple sources and frequently treat YouTube videos as pod casts, using audio-only.

Of course, I also did all of the related modules and trails on Trailhead. There were fewer of these for sharing and visibility compared to my previous certification, too. I also found them less effective in making the content stick in my head.

Practice Exams

Where I struggled was finding practice exams. Most of the ones on Udemy for sharing and visibility are garbage (sorry, Udemy…and I’m a stock-holder, too). One is not too bad, though I think I give it some leniency because of the comparison to what else is available. I finally got frustrated and posted on Trailhead (where I am guilty of answering more questions than I ask, a poor learning strategy). The community did not let me down and came back with a solid recommendation for focusonforce. Their format is a bit different, in that they have practice exams, and they also have section-focused exams. I missed the section-focused being separate from the practice exams until the last minute. I would have felt much more prepared had I found them earlier. They also have a nice feature of 20 random questions that are mixed in proportion to the exam topic mix, which was great for when you don’t have a lot of time and still want to practice.

Oh, yeah, another cool feature from focusonforce is the ability to see the answer after each question instead of at the end. I know there are some free site on other topics that do this, but this is the first time I have seen it with a high-volume and high-quality set of practice exams. It made it easier to make notes on my weaker areas. With better notes, I then used Bionic Reading® forming to make it easier to read them over and over again.

No matter what exam you are preparing for or where you get the practice exams, I recommend taking the practice exams using multiple paces; fast, slow, checking each, checking at the end.

One of the reasons I was so dissatisfied with the Udemy practice exams is that the questions are so long and complex, yet it is still 60 questions each. Well, turns out most of the questions really are long and complex. Still, the Udemy ones missed the actual style of the real questions. Understandable, given the level of complexity, but still disappointing.

Take the practice exams using multiple paces; fast, slow, checking each, checking at the end. When doing the real thing, follow standard practice of speed through and mark for review, etc.. The value of practice exams is more than learning the answers to likely questions. The highest value is in adopting the mindset and thought processes in the context of how exam questions are stated and rated, which is more complex and more constrictive than a typical design session where one can review the problem repeatedly over time and adjust

Tips to taking the exam

  • When doing the real thing, follow the standard practice of speeding through answering the easy questions and marking any with any level of doubt for review.
  • Review first pass unchecking those you are totally confident you are right or totally confident you have no clue.
  • Third pass, commit to an answer.
  • If time remains, go through everything again.
  • On the second pass, read the questions thoroughly. It is the small details in the exam that are easy to trip over.
  • Remember that it’s the best solution given the parameters.
    • If multiple options will solve it, which has an advantage over the others?
    • Which addresses all of the variables in the question?
  • When there are multiple answers that could be right, think about which answer is declarative vs programmatic and which is the most secure

Resource links

Below is a list of resources I used. I hope they help you in your own pursuit.

Trailhead Trailmixes

Udemy

The course I took was Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Architect Course by  Walid El Horr

The practice exam that was OK on Udemy is Salesforce Sharing and Visibility Practise Tests – 100% PASS (that is the title, not an endorsement by me).

Focus on Force

Salesforce Sharing and Visibility Architect Practice Quiz and Sample Questions

YouTube

Sharing and Visibility – Salesforce Certification by CertCafe

Identity and Access Management in Salesforce by Salesforce Apex Hours

Combined playlist on my channel

My notes in Bionic Reading® Format

Generated with https://10015.io/tools/bionic-reading-converter

runAs() is only for test classes
runAs() does not enforce user and system permissions
runAs() does not enforce FLS

Tagging rules have only three options:
1. Restrict users to pre-defined tags
2. Allow any tag
3. Suggest tags

There is no View Content permission

The Salesforce CRM Content User is a Feature License enabled at the User Level (not Profile)

Granular locking is default

Granular locking processes multiple operations simultaneously

Parallel recalculation runs asynchronously and in parallel thus speeding up the process. Creating sharing rules or updating OWD must wait until the recalculation is complete

Initialize test data and variables before the startTest method in a test class

There is NO Account Team Access

Team Member Access is how to view access.

While the permission is Edit, the Apex method is isUpdateble()

While the FLS column is View, the API method is isAccessible()

If want to see group access, look in group maintenance table, not sharing setting for object.

User above a role in the hierarchy can edit opportunity teams of users in subordinate roles

File types cannot be restricted by the library

Opportunities have a Transfer Record permission

Experience Cloud uses Sharing Sets

Sharing rules cannot set base object access

PK chunking to split bulk api queries for large data sets

Rapid access usually means a custom list view

A library with more than 5k files cannot have a folder added

Sharing set in Experience Cloud allows access only to account and contact records.

Share groups are only for HVP users

Schema.Describe.SObject/Field result for permissions

Session based permission set group is more efficient than multiple session based permission sets

There is no Partner Community Plus

Sharing sets can be assigned to profiles

Criteria based sharing rules are only for field value criterion. If no field value criteria, use ownership based sharing rules

Max file size for UI upload is 2GB

EPIM = Enhanced Personal Information Management

Delegated external administrators can’t see custom fields on user detail records

Sharing Hierarchy button is a thing that shows the hierarchy

Share Groups are not available for Partner Community Users

If the default OWD access is changed for an object, it is no longer controlled by parent

There is no Permission Object

Sharing Rules share to groups and profiles, not individuals

Enhance Transaction Security Policy can be triggered by request time length

If only one custom record type is assigned to a user that is the default type for that user.

Territories can belong to public groups

Activities are child objects of any of the following parents: Account, Opportunity, Case, Campaign, Asset and custom objects with Allow Activities.

the ‘with sharing’ and ‘without sharing’ keywords can be declared at the class level, but not at the method level.

The Group Maintenance tables store Inherited and Implicit grants, i.e., the extrapolated grants, which makes sense as extrapolation is more compute-intense than a query.

Partner Community can use Sharing Rules

External OWD must be equal or more restrictive than the Internal OWD

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© Scott S. Nelson
SFDC Login Use Custom Domain

Trailhead Log In to Personal or Scratch Org SOLVED!

Having problems logging in to your dev, personal, or scratch org to verify the completion of a 500 point Trailhead lesson? Personal dev orgs are Production orgs and use login.salesforce.com and dev sandboxes are sandboxes and use test.salesforce.com and since I usually just use the CLI to log in to scratch orgs I can never remember which to use. And I don’t need to. There is enough to remember about Salesforce and technology in general, so if I can simplify something to a common approach, I always do. In this case, when authoring an org of an OAuth connection I always use the Use Custom Domain option and paste in the domain of the org I want to use.

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© Scott S. Nelson
Photo by Ruben Mishchuk from Unsplash

When Change Sets Fail in Salesforce

With the growing popularity of DX and the GA release of DevOps Center, I’ve seen fewer questions about Change Sets the last couple of years. I expect that organizations that have used change sets successfully for a long time are less motivated to change their processes and those that had issues have had sufficient time to move to the newer options.

What I have seen in the past around legacy processes that work well for small teams is that they are often passed to newer members experientially and at some point someone joins that is not mentored into to how things have been done and struggle on their own. Here are a few tips for those that run into this gap with change sets.

Practice makes it home by dinner time

Even the simplest change can result in big problems if something critical is missed. Always test the change set by pushing from one sandbox to another that has been refreshed since the last production update. If there is a possibility of changes being done directly in production, this means to create or refresh the test target sandbox immediately before the deployment test.

Go small or stay home

Incremental changes are best. I prefer to do a deployment anytime there is a completed task that has tested in development. The push could just be to a fresh sandbox with the final production release being a series of pushes. Another approach is to use dark deployments, pushing out tested work products incrementally even though not all pieces are ready for users. The dark deployments may require some custom metadata types or permissions to keep them from being used before they are ready, something it is really useful for large projects to avoid big-bang pushes.

The incremental pushes to sandboxes should result in a series for change sets. As they progress, dependencies may be discovered and indicate a need to revise the change sets so that dependencies are pushed first. Again, the dark deployments are useful here.

The mighty DX

Among many good reasons for switching to DX, verbose error messages for deployments helps speed up debugging. Using Workbench, it is possible to turn change sets into packages for use in DX, which is handy if you are just starting to migrate to DX. Again, test deployments against fresh sandboxes are critical to avoiding critical situations.

The only constant…

Is change, not change sets. Eventually change sets will probably go away, so if you are reading this post you are either bored and avoiding more productive tasks or you are struggling with a change set today.  Now is a good time to start looking into alternatives.

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© Scott S. Nelson