Taking the Salesforce.com Admin Exam

It’s been over a year since I took the Admin exam so I am sure it’s a little different, perhaps more scenario-based than I remember, and probably harder. But I think the following test-taking advice still applies. Read my advice carefully and then take some of the sample tricky questions I have below. See how you do… then read my advice again.


So you should first understand how the exam is structured. It is 60 questions, multiple choice, and hard. I won’t sugar coat it. You have 90 minutes to complete the exam and get at least 36 questions right. If you can do that, get 60% right, then you will pass. Passing is good.


Second, you should know that there are two options for how you take the exam. The first is a test center. In Cleveland, OH we use New Horizons located in Garfield Heights. When you go there you have to relinquish all of your cheat materials – phone, flash cards, and 7-11 Big Gulp cup. The test room is monitored by the proctor at the front desk and you cannot talk to any other people in the room with you. At the test center they will provide you with two pages of blank paper and two pencils. You may not think you’d need them but I know I used the paper. I hash marked the questions I knew I had right… good to know how close you are to the magic 36. I also used it to try and visualize certain questions, especially the ones dealing with security and giving users access to records. It’s nice to see the parent child relationship in front of you before you commit to answer C. 


The other option is online. When you commit to this option, be advised that you need a standalone web camera. You cannot use the one built into your laptop. Before you launch the exam, find yourself a nice quiet room. You cannot be in an area where people will be walking past you, talking, or feeding you the answers on paper airplanes. Once you are in your comfy, private place Kryterion (who hosts the online exam for Salesforce.com) will walk you through setting up the web cam at the right angle and completing your biometric enrollment status taking a picture of yourself with the webcam. Once that is done, you keep your desk clear and start the exam. There is a remote proctor that is making sure you don’t slip a cheat sheet out of your sleeve or phone a friend for help. No cell phones, paper, or writing utensils are allowed. If you are comfortable with this set up and an eye in the sky watching you, this is a nice option because you can do it from home, in your jammies, and with your hair all unruly. Yes, I have done that.


More than physically taking the exam, I think the you need to know how to mentally take the exam. This is my third and final point. The questions are not easy. They are not clear cut. They are wordy and sometimes very scenario-based. I recommend taking the following approach to every question:


1. Read the question carefully
2. Re-read the question carefully and look for the true question
3. Read the answers carefully
4. Rule out any answers that don’t make sense (usually at least one)
5. Treat each multiple choice answer as its own true-false statement in regards to the question
6. Question options that grammatically don’t fit
7. And remember that you are looking for the BEST answer, not just the RIGHT one(s).


Let’s break it down with this example:


Question: A prospective customer completed a Web-to-lead form on your corporate Web site. Upon follow up with a sales representative, the customer indicated he intends to buy your product. In the Salesforce CRM application, what is the process for moving a prospect to a customer?


When you read that question, note the following key terms:


Question: A prospective customer completed a Web-to-lead form on your corporate Web site. Upon follow up with a sales representative, the customer indicated he intends to buy your product. In the Salesforce CRM application, what is the process for moving a prospect to a customer?


What is the real question? How can you make a lead into an account? Remember that Leads are one standard object in their own table and Accounts are a separate object with their own table. Visually, it looks like this:

Okay, now for the answer choices:
A. Prospect validation
B. Account Setup
C. Lead Conversion
D. Contact Management


Which one doesn’t fit? To me, I would say, ‘Prospect Validation.’ I know you can score leads but I am not familiar with any prospect validation tool built into Salesforce.com. Products like “Google AdWords” will do this for companies by analyzing leads generated from their Google Search Engine but in this scenario, the prospect didn’t google your company; they went directly your corporate website. 


So that leaves B, C, and D. Let’s go back to the real question: “How can you switch (or convert) a lead (the prospect) to an account (or customer)? To me, C makes the most sense. After all, we basically just asked how to convert a lead to an account. 


Sure enough, that is the answer. 


Now it’s your turn. Here are four more questions for you to tackle on your own. Good luck. And no cheating.


Question 1: Acme Computers has a private sharing model for their Salesforce.com solution. However, they found that they need sales reps to have access to accounts based on criteria such as zip code, account revenue, and number of employees. What is the best solution for Acme? (Select 2)
A. Lead Assignment Rules
B. Territory Management
C. Customizable Forecasting
D. Account Sharing Rules


Question 2: Universal Containers is in the early planning stage to implement salesforce.com. The business is asking what metrics to track to determine whether the implementation is a success. Select three quantitative metrics you recommend to track the adoption:
A. Number of logins per week
B. Count of activities created
C. Number of people who are uncomfortable using the application
D. New contacts created daily
E. Number of downloaded AppExchange analytic packages


Question 3: How long can the administrator restore data from the recycle bin for?
A. Not at all
B. 30 days
C. 15 days
D. Unlimited time


Question 4: Marketing is excited to launch a new product and wants to track related transactions. They requested an email be automatically sent to notify them. As a system administrator, you:
A. Create a Dashboard
B. Create a workflow to send an email each time that product is added to an opportunity
C. Train them to leverage the Global Search function
D. Encourage each user to follow the products through Chatter

What can Salesforce.com do for me?

Salesforce.com is a very versatile CRM application. It can be a great tool to capture the following 'types' of information for you and your company:

• Accounts
• Activities
• Assets
• Campaigns
• Cases
• Contacts
• Contracts
• Dashboards
• Documents
• Forecasts
• Leads
• Opportunities
• Opportunity Products
• Pricebooks
• Products
• Reports
• Solutions
• Users

This is a world of information at your finger tips! It should be enough to get any company started in the big ol' cloud! But the great thing about Salesforce.com is that the sky is limitless and you can build objects above and beyond those standard objects available to you 'out of the box' (or out of the cloud).

The best practice is to define your company's overall approach to what they need to capture, report on, and use in Salesforce.com from the beginning. I really can't stress that enough because by gathering those business requirements up front you can potentially save yourself a lot of time and frustration. In terms of customizations, you need to ask yourself (and your key stake holders) the following questions:

1. What data do you need in Salesforce?
2. What fields will support that data in Salesforce.com?
3. And are those groups of fields and data sets already available in the standard objects listed above?

The good news is that if you find the requirements you have are not met within the objects above, you don't have to bail on Salesforce.com. Their intuitive application allows you to create custom objects to store data specific to your organization. Not only can you create the 'table' to store the data but you can create the tab, reports, and dashboards for that information without enlisting the help of a developer. It's all in the configurable settings of Salesforce.com!

So … how do you do it? I won't walk you through the whole process in writing. That is futile. You need to get IN the system and do it yourself. Get your hands dirty, if you will.

Here is how to start (after you wash your hands):

• For custom objects, click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects
• For custom tabs for a custom object, click Your Name > Setup > Create > Tabs

Perhaps you haven't used Salesforce.com before. If that's the case then you may be thinking that you aren't even sure what you might use a custom object for. Let me help. Here are some good examples for you to understand what a custom object might bring to the table. But don't let this limit your vision, your creativity, and your end results. The best part about Salesforce.com is that the sky is the limit and you can truly make it your own!

    Custom Object Examples:

• Employees
• Recruiting Candidates
• Budgets
• Competitors
• Time Cards
• Expenses

Finally, here are some tips, hints, and resources to help you with your Custom Objects:

1. Establish your object relationships before adding your custom fields, page layouts, and related lists
2. Note that you cannot enable Enhanced Lookup and Auto-Completion on your Custom Objects
3. When creating your custom tab, it is best practice to select 'Append tab to users' existing personal customizations' to ensure users see your new object
4. Check out the following cheat sheet: Building Custom Objects, Tabs, and Related Lists (may require SFDC login)
5. Watch the quick tutorial on creating a custom object tab

Lions, Tigers, and Bears… Oh My!

When I first implemented Salesforce.com in 2009, my company really took it's time and defined the system requirements and business needs. We spent weeks building a data dictionary, defining our fields, our reports, and our dashboards. In fact, we spent so much time that when I was finally given the green light to GO! and set up our instance I ran (not walked… not jogged…) to the nearest PC and let my fingers start typing. I was confident about how our Account pages would look, what our custom objects would capture, and what fields would be pick lists versus text boxes. I was sure I would win awards for our design…

Enter the 'But.' You knew it was coming.

Although we considered security while defining our system, we did not understand how to align our users with the security. As a result, I immediately dove in and created 75 users. I used the standard profiles and skipped the Roles (even though it looked like a required field on the user setup). I never paused to think, "How will we make sure Joe Schmoe shows up on a report for Mr. T?"

Our Director of Sales was adamant; we wanted the Organization-Wide Defaults set to Private. Our sales reps worked independently and they were very concerned about people seeing their "stuff." So if one rep owned an account the intent was that only he or she would see it.

Enter the exceptions. This is where I started to lose it. Because after taking 2 hours to create 75 users I suddenly realized that Mr. T couldn't access the account Joe Schmoe owned. And the Director of Sales was shouting that he didn't have any accounts showing up in his reports. I should have set up roles... and public groups… and who knows what else…

So now my confidence was gone and I started to think like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz … I was looking for the Emerald City and all its glamour and instead I felt like I was suddenly facing a dark, wild thicket. And all I had was Sassy on my shoulder, creeping me out by playing the role of the Scarecrow… (enter dream state here)

Dorothy: "I don't like this forest! It's – it's dark and creepy!"
*My Translation: "Okay… I am getting frustrated with this cloud! It's not as white and fluffy as they portrayed it to be!"
Scarecrow: "Of course, I don't know, but I think it'll get darker before it gets lighter."
*Sassy's Translation: "You have to get into the thick of the cloud and get it set up right so your users will adopt it!"
Dorothy: "Do - do you suppose we'll meet any wild animals?"
*My Translation: "I have a deadline, Man! I will be eaten alive if this doesn't go right!"



I think at that point I started chanting "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!" over and over. It helped, kind of like a mantra. And with each revision to my users I defeated the one of the animals:

Lions… CHECK! Users set up!

Tigers… CHECK! Roles set up!

And Bears… CHECK! Groups set up!

Now I was ready to start on some sharing rules to make sure Mr. T and the Director of Sales were happy. This is really what this post was supposed to be about - sharing Rules for all those Lions I created. So let's get into it, shall we?

What are sharing rules and where and how can you use them?

• Account and contact sharing rules are available in: Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions
• Account territory, case, lead, opportunity, and custom object sharing rules are available in: Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions
• Campaign sharing rules are available in Professional Edition for an additional cost, and Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions
• Only custom object sharing rules are available in Database.com
  

With sharing rules, you can make automatic exceptions to your organization-wide sharing settings for defined sets of users. For example, use sharing rules to extend sharing access to users in public groups, roles, or territories. Sharing rules can never be stricter than your organization-wide default settings. They simply allow greater access for particular users. You can create the following types of sharing rules:

For more information, check out these publications:

• Sharing Rule Considerations
• How to Benefit from Criteria Based Sharing Rules

And, more importantly, what kinds of questions are asked about sharing rules on the certification exam?

Take these sample questions and see how you do. Answers are at the bottom but you'll have to stand on your head to read them.

A. Which of the following is not true about Sharing Rules?

1. Sharing Rules have three types of access levels (Read, Read/Write, and Controlled by Parent)
2. Can be granted to users who are either in public groups, roles, or are subordinates
3. Deleting a sharing rule automatically deletes the sharing access created by that rule
4. Sharing Rules give users wider access to data

B. How would you separate the process for international sales and national sales that have different stages in their opportunity?

1. Profiles
2. Record Types
3. Sharing Rules
4. Page Layouts

C. When Universal Containers shares accounts owned by Sales with the Customer Service department, what associated items can be affected? (Select 3)

1. Contacts
2. Opportunities
3. Cases
4. Campaigns

D. An Operations Manager needs access to all opportunities in order evaluate the sales pipeline but the organization's sharing settings are set to Private. What should be done to give the manager read only access to Opportunities?

1. Update the owner of all Opportunities to the Operations Manager
2. Use sharing rule to grant read-only access to campaigns
3. Use an Account Sharing Rule to grant access to opportunities
4. Update the Organization-Wide Default on Opportunities to Read-Only

Maybe next week we can focus on the Flying Monkeys…

Thinking about getting Certified?

Are you thinking about going after a Salesforce.com Certification? Good!! We need a few more good men and women!

 
But you're wondering what it will take to get certified? Well, let me start by asking YOU a few questions and then you can start making the judgment about whether or not you are ready. Ready for the prep work, the bittersweet smell of pressure, and the truly sensational thrill of defeat!

 

1. Have you used Salesforce.com for more than 30 days?
   1. If yes, proceed to question 2.
   2. If no, stop here and visit this site again once you can answer yes.
2. Were you or are you a system administrator for the Salesforce.com instance you have used?
   1. If yes, proceed to question 3.
   2. If no, stop here and go get set up as an admin. If it takes asking for a promotion, then so be it. You are long overdue anyway.
3. Have you set up a user?
   1. If yes, proceed to question 4.
   2. If no, stop here and go set me up as a user. And email me the password. Then go ask HR for a pink slip.
4. Have you created a custom field?
   1. If yes, proceed to question 5.
   2. If no, stop here and go add a date field to your opportunity page. Call it "Date the account officially started wasting my time."
5. Have you created a custom object?
   1. If yes, proceed to question 6.
   2. If no, stop here and go set up an innovative new object. Maybe something useful to butter up the people in charge of your paycheck.
6. Have you created a custom application?
   1. If yes, proceed to question 7.
   2. If no, stop here and set up an app. Maybe you won't ever use it but how cool is it to define your own group? Call it "My Party."
7. Have you not gotten bored with this site yet?
   1. If yes, proceed to follow this blog.
   2. If no, then you are lying. You shouldn't lie. Your parents, your teachers, your preachers, and your God have told you that.

Now go start studying. Start by reading this article: Understanding the basic building blocks of Salesforce CRM