certification

Scott S Nelson Certified Service Cloud Consultant

Passing the Salesforce Service Cloud Consultant Certification Exam

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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

Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

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

Preparing for (and passing) the Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I Exam (WI19)

Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

(Originally published at InfoWorld, this version has an additional section on test taking tips.)

I’m ambivalent about certifications. Because I spent enough time in school for the equivalence test validation to be embedded in my psyche I have enough certificates to fill a two-inch binder clip. Because I have been working in the real world long enough to know what most of them truly reflect, I actually display them all in two-inch binder clip with a sticky-note on top that says “Pick One”. Anyone who has multiple certification knows that not all are of equal value in terms of proof of knowledge. I have one from an enterprise vendor that is a household name, very fancy looking with a hologram in the middle. It is the result of showing up for class every day for two weeks and the check clearing. Yet I learned a great deal achieving it. Another was acquired as a pre-requisite for continued employment following a merger, which was easily achieved with no study and only a third of the allotted test time. The next took a solid year of daily study and was taken in hopes of leveraging it to leave the employer that required the previous one. 

My most recent certification was one of the more difficult to study for: The Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I (WI19). While I have plenty of practical experience working with Salesforce, there are many aspects of the product that are required knowledge for certification that just haven’t come up for the businesses requirements I have been fulfilling. However, I enjoy working with the product and Salesforce has done a good job of convincing decision makers of the value of certification as an indicator of ability that I wanted to have it to please those decision makers. So here is how I went about it.

Trailhead

Trailhead is an invaluable resource for learning Salesforce, regardless if you are seeking certification or not. I use it all the time to keep up on new and updated features and whenever I run across a requirement where a tool that I’m not thoroughly familiar with may be helpful. Also, in 2018, Salesforce move the certification verification to Trailhead as well as the maintenance exams.

If you have not already created a Trailhead account, do so before reading on. If you already have a free Developer org, sign up at Salesforce Trailhead. If not, go to the Developer Edition site and get yourself one first. Pro tip: Don’t use your email address as your user ID for the Developer org, even though that is the default value on the sign-up form. User IDs must be unique to all of Salesforce, not just the org.

On Trailhead, navigate through the menus under Credentials > Certifications then to the specific certification you are interested in (or jump to the Platform Developer I (PDI) page). Here you will find the Exam Guide, which is a good way to understand the structure of the exam. There is also a link to a Trailmix. Trailmixes are groupings of Trailhead training modules and super badges created by Salesforce and other Trailhead users. These are a great way to begin preparation for a certification. If you have been working with Salesforce, many of the modules will be topics you are already familiar with. Skip those according to your own confidence level. I will add this personal anecdote about skipping Trailmix modules: The second-lowest score I received on the exam was in a category I work with regularly. The exam questions were about aspects that I no longer consciously think about, similar to how it may be hard to give directions with street names for a route you travel daily because you traverse them on autopilot. A refresher may be useful.

Udemy

I used Udemy to great success for the Salesforce Administrator’s exam by taking an excellent preparation course taught by Francis Pindar and then a practice test course with three practice tests. Preparing for the Developer’s exam was a bit more daunting, mostly because the nature of the exam has evolved in the last couple of years and the courses have not caught up with it.

Before you get sticker shock looking at the Udemy courses, here is the strategy to pay a reasonable price for Udemy courses in general. Create your account on Udemy and take one or two free courses (there are many worth doing). Eventually (at longest up to three months) you will receive and offer for all courses for a flat rate per course that is quite reasonable. If your employer has a discount program that includes Udemy (such as Fond), you can get an even better price. I only paid $9.99 per course through my company’s Fond program.

As of this writing, the best Udemy course I found for the Developer’s exam is Salesforce Platform Developer 1 Certification Course by Deepika Khanna. It seems to be an Apex developer course that was later re-purposed for certification prep. As such, most of the content is there, though it may not be clear how it translates to the exam. There are also several course files that are not referenced in the course. One of these is a practice exam that has all of the answers in Word. Most of these questions are also in Salesforce Certified Platform Developer practice Tests, so I suggest you not read the Word document until after you have gotten everything you can from the practice exams.

I had taken another prep course on Udemy that had a great outline, but I did not find it a good learning resource as evidenced by the abysmal score I achieved on the first of the two practice exams.

The practice exam on Udemy is not the greatest, though it does reflect the actual exam process well, if not the questions themselves. There are a lot of spelling and grammatical errors in the practice exams and the mistake I made was to assume that an incorrectly spelt answer was automatically wrong. The spelling issue is not seen in the actual exam, so it is just an issue with the practice exam author.

Another lesson about practice exams is to avoid the temptation to take them early. There are only so many questions and you can end up memorizing the answer to those rather than learning the topic well enough to answer similar-but-different questions on the actual exam.

Other practice exam sites

The site I got the most from for drilling on test questions is a ProProfs Quiz, appropriately titled  Salesforce Platform Developer 1. Questions are added and updated occasionally. There were 131 questions available the final week before I took the exam. The same spelling issues seen on the Udemy practice tests are there, and many of the same questions. I also noted questions from the course quizzes from the exam preparation course I took, though not sure who copied who there. One thing to be aware of is that not all of the questions have the correct answers. Believe it or not, that is a good thing if you use the strategy I did. Every time I took the exam, I would research the questions I missed to better understand the concepts. This helped a lot. I also would save the final page with the answers to a PDF that I stored on my phone and reviewed when idle.

Some other useful practice sites:

  • Salesforce Certification Dev 401 #1 (also on ProProfs Quiz) is for the older exam. Most of the questions are still relevant, as the new exam has more topics than the old one.
  • Salesforce Certified Platform Developer 1 Quiz at Salesforce Tips, Tricks, & Notes is short but some of the questions are really hard. The order of events question was especially helpful in getting this topic down.
  • Simplilearn’s Free Salesforce Platform Developer I Practice Test is very hard, probably because they sell a certification preparation course. It requires some contact info, but I found they only send you ads a couple of times. No telling if they sell the info, though. Which is why I keep an anonymous account for such registrations.

Key topics to study

  • There are many questions related to Triggers and Order of Execution. Memorize this as best you can.
  • Knowing the Data Model well will boost your score. If you are good at memorizing things, the link will be sufficient. Otherwise, hands on experience (at work or on Trailhead) is the best way to embed the key points into your subconscious. I studied this the least and it was my highest scoring area from a combination of project work and Trailhead modules. YMMV.
  • Apex Testing has a multitude of sub-topics and there are some over-lapping concepts that can be confusing if you don’t regularly use this aspect of Salesforce.

Test Taking Tips

(This is a bonus section for readers of my LinkedIn or Solutionist blogs)

The process of answering the test questions is just as important as the approach to preparation in ensuring a passing score. I first go through the test quickly, reading each question and response options and answering those that are immediately obvious to me. I then go through a second time, answering the questions skipped the first time through and marking for review any that I don’t feel 100% confident about. An advantage to this approach is that sometimes one question is worded in such a way that I easily remember the answer and it reminds me of the correct answer to another, related question.

I then go back and review all of the questions marked for review, re-read the question and answer and asses my confidence. I do this in order of the exam questions because I still might leave it marked for review on this pass. The ones I was still unsure of on the review I then re-review. Finally, I go through the test from start to finish, reviewing each answer.

While this may sound very time consuming, I usually still finish with 20 – 30 minutes to spare.

Some final comments about certifications

The Salesforce employment market is heavily slanted towards certified applicants, so if you really like working with Salesforce and aren’t already in your dream job (or are a consultant who is always pursuing new clients), Salesforce certification is a must have. The Salesforce Administrator certificate I find the easiest to achieve, and if you are serious about Salesforce development I recommend getting both certificates because knowing enough administration to be certified will help you in designing better components.

No matter how hard or how easy a certification is to obtain, almost all are proof only of knowledge. In general, the application of knowledge is where the value is. As someone pursuing certification, continue your learning after certification. I find participating on the support discussions and completing Trailhead modules regularly to be a good way to grow beyond the day-to-day tasks.

And for employers, please weigh overall experience with certification achievements. Someone that has years of technical experience on multiple platforms and coding languages will be able to become very proficient in Salesforce in a short period of time, and someone with several certifications who has little experience outside of Salesforce and all within a small variety of orgs may not be the right fit for a complex implementation.

Finally, my own score on the exam was not in proportion to my actual capabilities. The exam results are broken down by category. In one case I scored very low in an area that I use regularly and frequently advise others on. In another case I scored quite high in an area I rarely use and most of my learning was academic. Having previously passed the administrator’s exam, it is no surprise that my best categories were the areas that overlap.

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© Scott S. Nelson

Reality Check and Free Training

Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

If you are just starting out in development, or have found that your skills are not as marketable as they once were, nothing helps like a certificate in  a new, hot field.

I’m not going to go in depth here about the free online certification course Ajax and Web 2.0 Programming (with Passion!) Online Course, because Gene Babon does such a good job of setting this up on his Beantown Web (not just for Bostonians anymore!).Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail


© Scott S. Nelson