salesforce Archives - Scott S Nelson

Salesforce Sharing and Visibility on path to Technical Architect

My Sharing and Visibility Architect Path

July 31, 2023August 2, 2023Scott 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 There are not a lot of courses for sharing and visibility, and many that are out there are out of date.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 text 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).

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

CSV, Excel, and Salesforce

December 2, 2022August 2, 2023Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

The upside to modern PCs is that so many file associations are created for us automatically. This is offset to a degree because the default setting in Windows is to hide file extensions, so that what you see is just the name and an icon. This is especially problematic for CSV files as most people who use Windows have Excel and since the friendly green icon is fronting the file the habit to just click it prevails.

Sometimes, this association is fine. Simple text data delimited with commas or tabs can be converted to Excel format with no manual intervention and everything looks fine. But, if any of the fields have commas, or are dates or numbers, than Excel makes lots of assumptions that it doesn’t tell you about and changes the data to match the assumptions. One does not need to be a data scientist to know this is bad. Indeed, one only needs a pulse to be annoyed by it, and if you don’t know why the data is being messed up, frustration is a common reaction.

The first thing I recommend is to change your Window settings to show file extensions. There are instructions provided by Microsoft for this here.

Next, develop the habit of opening CSV files using one of the more time-consuming (and reliable) methods. Method 1 is to open the CSV file in a text editor (my personal preference is EditPad, and there is a good list of others here). Then create a new Excel workbook or sheet, copy the contents of the CSV file from the text editor and use the Paste > Use Text Import Wizard option.

The simplest approach is to accept the defaults on the first two steps and on the third step select all columns by holding the Shift key, scrolling to the right and click the last column, and choose the Text column format.

Text Import Wizard Step 3 select all columns and Text format

This will create a clean separation by column with no auto-formatting applied. Then Finish and you will have the data as you expected.

For larger files, I suggest reading this thread on SuperUser.com.

When creating data in Excel for CSV upload, format all the columns as Text before saving as CSV. If you have to do the same data transforms regularly, I recommend creating a template with formulas.

Probably the hardest habit of all for most users to adopt is when opening the file in Excel just to view its contents is to select No when prompted to save the changes.

5 considerations about low-code/no-code (LCNC)

August 2, 2022January 15, 2023Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

My latest post at Logic20/20:

5 points to consider about low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions

Salesforce Trailhead “Challenge not yet complete” most common cause

April 11, 2022Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

Ah, Spring is in the air. So are arms, as people new to Salesforce throw them up during Trailhead challenges where they can’t seem to get the hands-on part to pass even though they see the result they expect.

The Trailhead modules and Superbadges are so well organized and written, it may seem like there is an instructor reviewing you submissions, but that would not be practical, profitable, or in the spirit of a cloud platform. The scoring is done by automated tests that are checking that things match exactly as the instructions provided.

The most common cause is that the learner has mis-typed a value provided, usually the API name (i.e., my_variable__c). Runner up to this is the experienced user who is new to Trailhead and uses their own naming conventions rather than following the instructions (been there, done that).

The third common cause is that the module content was updated but the test was not (doesn’t happen that often, but you can tell when there are a bunch of questions on the Trailhead Community about the same problem).

HTH

How to re-assign Salesforce object ownership in bulk

November 10, 2021August 8, 2022Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

Here is a question I see frequently in the Trailhead Community: How do you re-assign the ownership of objects in bulk? I’m sure there is an app to make this easier, and I suggest you look in the AppExchange if the policy for your org is to use apps first. And I know there are other solutions, this is just one that I find quick and easy because I don’t have to give it too much thought.

First: Always try it in a sandbox first and test the results before doing it in production.

Second first, locate the user id of the person who’s object owners ship you want to change from. From their user page (or just copying the link), grab the object ID from the URL.

Copy Object ID

Now open Salesforce Workbench in another tab, login and navigate to Queries > SOQL queries. If you are adept at SOQL, create a query to pull all of the object you want to re-assign based on the user id. If you are not comfortable writing your own SOQL or just feeling lazy, use Workbench to help create the query:

The key values you want are the object ID and the owner ID, though adding a Name field to check the values can be helpful. Be sure to select View as Bulk CSV then run the query. Save the resulting file. I recommend naming it something that is meaningful to you rather than accepting the long string produced by default. Open in your favorite CSV editor to see the object and owner ids.

Next, get the user ID of the new owner(s) the same way you did for the current owner. In the CSV file, change the OwnerId value as desired.

For safety reasons, delete all columns from the csv file except Id and OwnerId, then save it with a different name as a CSV file.

Back in Workbench, go to Data > Update. Select the object type and click the Choose File button and select the file you just created with the new OwnerId(s), then click Next.

On the mapping screen the values should already be mapped. Check that only the ID and OwnerId are mapped and click the Map Fields button. If there are many records, check the “Process records asynchronously via Bulk API” option on the resulting page then Confirm Update. Note that if rules were changed since the records were created you may have errors that will require fixing the records before they can be updated.

And in list view: