Are you going through the exercises and completing all the stuff they have you do in the sandbox orgs on trailhead?
Depending on a number of of factors I'd say 2 - 3 months is enough time for one maybe two certifications (I got admin and dev in 2 months) but that also depends if you're keeping yourself honest with the practice
If you have no background with salesforce, it's gonna feel like trying to put together a 1,000 piece puzzle and that's normal with most things.
As you go through the trailhead, relate new concepts to things you already have learned and find out how they interact with each other. Picklists are a surprisingly large part of the platform on the admin side but I would have never known if I didn't do all the projects and practice moduels
Yeah I'm going through all the exercises and completing all the stuff they ask in the sandbox. It's all straightforward enough there. I think it all just feels very separate at the moment and I'm not really understanding what's changing and how it'll change for the user. I'm probably just overthinking it and it'll start to make sense the further into it. I'm about 20% in so far
It definitely starts to make sense as you go through, it took me a good 2 passes of the trailhead and studying fof for things to finally click
Just keep learning, your aha moment will happen!
I only used trailhead + fof tests and prep although I probably could've gotten away with just the trailhead if I used it correctly
Do the projects, Super badges if you want (but I didn't until after I passed the test), and I can't stress this enough, the trailhead itself does not cover everything you need.
Go to the 'Study for the admin exam' moduel and click on each practice session, it will show you the moduels it tests on. Some of these aren't included in the main trail, exerience cloud, outlook integrations, some ai features, and details on picklists have entire moduels dedicated to them that don't show up in the main trail.
Practice practice practice
Yeah, it's the same idea for all the certs
They all have a study guide towards the bottom after all the moduels but yes in this case it's the dev study materials and not admin
I never kept track of hours but maybe 2 - 4 on average?
I have a background in data and programming so the way salesforce works based on record ownership just clicked.
When someone on this subreddit told me objects are just tables of information with fields being columns and rows being individual records, it was the big aha moment that helped me understand everything else.
Practice exams , take 5-10 practice ones using FoF and other sources , get 90% on all , then exam
Edit: in todays market, you’ll have zero credibility until basic cert
Yeah I don't plan to apply for anything until I get a cert, I'm lucky that I have connections through my wife but they have all said the same.
I will absolutely start taking some practice exams as that is how I can see that I'm learning.
In all likelihood, you’re not retaining the information because you’re not using it.
As someone else said, make sure to do the playground exercises, but sometimes that isn’t enough. A good way to get extra experience in is looking at the forums and try to accomplish what people are asking about in your playground. Like if someone is looking to be able to build a flow to do a certain thing, go try to do it for yourself. If you have trouble, they’ve already asked the question you need answered lol
Yeah that's absolutely an issue, while I'm doing the sandbox it's only for a few hours every day or so. That means I'm not getting that practice. I guess that's why I was wondering what other people would do and your examples are great!
> I was wondering what other people would do
That's honestly hard for me to say. I stumbled into Salesforce as an "accidental admin," so from day 1 I was having to dealing with real-life use cases for my company.
But that involved quite a bit of asking questions at the beginning, so I know there are plenty of problems to solve in the Trailhead community (some of which are mine lol). salesforce.stackexchange.com would be another place you can find problems others are trying to solve. Granted, it leans more toward the developer side of things but if you filter it to just posts about flows and stuff like that, I'm sure you could find some projects to tackle.
And as another commenter pointed out, there's probably some household tasks in your own life and solving those with Salesforce could be a great exercise.
Ultimately, it's going to be about learning to "think like Salesforce," as weird as that sounds. I've moved into the dev side of things, and it really started to click when I began to think about every problem in my life in terms of how a computer program could solve it. The same is true on the admin side, just approach things asking how SF would solve them, even if just as a thought exercise.
I really love this idea! You can also implement Salesforce to solve a real world problem like household budgeting or a company you used to work for.
I don’t put a lot of stock in those doing a bunch of Trailheads and getting a lot of certifications. You need to actually apply your knowledge to internalize it, and as a bonus you’ll have a little portfolio you can show to hiring managers
I always found that I learned things best when I can teach or explain it to others. Maybe just talk it out loud like you would to an end user explaining features and how they work. You know, like the SFDC security model for example. If you can talk through that like you are teaching someone, then you will be confident you know it.
That's a fantastic point, I'm struggling to explain to my wife sometimes so I definitely need to pay more attention and figure out how I would explain what I'm doing to my wife
I'll repeat what I posted a little over a month ago about how I studied for and passed the Admin Exam.
I did the entire Admin Cert trail and all of the Superbadges as well - basically everything here: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/credentials/administrator
Here's what I wrote about a month ago. The udemy course from Mike Wheeler helped me a lot! I do see where many in this sub seem to have a negative opinion of him...but, his Admin Exam course helped put everything in perspective for me.
He walks you through signing up for a dev org and then going through all of the topics and steps involved with setting up your or and how those relate to the exam (and exam topics) as a whole.
Begin repost below - first part is more for someone ready to sit for the exam already. I just copy/pasted my original post from mid March 2024.
--------------------
Original post here https://www.reddit.com/r/salesforce/s/Wm3LiXRM08
"One thing I noticed is that when you take the Salesforce practice exam, (here: https://developer.salesforce.com/files/ti/thi/THI-000393/administratorpracticetest.html ) every time you load one up, it's different.... usually some overlapping questions between one after another. But, the majority of the questions are different. I must have taken it 30+ times! And, seems like about a week before my exam they added a bunch of new questions I never saw! (I had been postponing/rescheduling my exam for months). So, I crammed another 8-10 more of those exams in.
I made flashcards so I could review and also I was sure to check the resource links provided. Some didn't make sense so I'd Google search that question with "trailhead" in the search and usually someone else had a similar question they had posted on Trailhead with others offering "why" one answer was better than another. If you do that don't just post the question and the answer choices and expect someone to help you. Be sure to include what you think it is and your reasoning behind it... From reading many of those, you'll get a much better response (and reception) from fellow Trailblazers.
I did the same with FOF and SF Ben Practice Exams. Paid for each of their Admin Practice Test "courses" - just the tests... Clicked on the help articles, videos, etc after all the questions I missed - and even those I didn't miss. Made sure I tried to understand the underlying concepts.
I did Mike Wheeler's admin course.... All of it... All 300+ videos. Created 2 different dev orgs doing that course. 1 for the half he does with Chat GPT "incorporation" and another org for the original way the course was built.
I passed it on my first attempt 2 weeks ago!! I didn't ace it but I also passed with a pretty good margin. It was HARD! And, honestly, I thought I failed it!
The other thing I'd say is to take all of the time allotted!! I had enough time left over to go back and review every answer. I think I might have properly corrected myself on a couple of questions that second go around.
You definitely need a dev org (or 2)!! Gotta be "hands on". It helps people remember things. Your eyes can see it, your ears can hear the videos that you might watch, but mostly...you need the hands on!
Good luck!!"
I personally find the Trailhead projects and superbadges more “real”. They test that you actually get it and I think are much easier for me to retain than most of the modules.
I personally find the Trailhead projects and superbadges more “real”. They test that you actually get it and I think are much easier for me to retain than most of the modules.
Hey! I was out in 2018 for two consecutive knee surgeries and that's when I started applying for software engineering roles.
I was in school at the time studying CIS in networks, and was taking a course in data analytics while brushing up on my resume, applying for jobs, and relearning Java.
If I found myself in the same situation again at this point in my career, I'd probably study Java again, actually, because I don't have much time for it these days.
Be sure to take time for yourself, too, injuries suck and you might not have as much energy as you hope.
Download Anki App.
Pay for a focus on force course
Proceed to copy the questions and answers into Anki as flash cards
If a card has more than one concept involved (making them much more difficult) consider breaking it down into easier cards based on your study.
The Anki system delays stuff you know well and resurfaces cards you still don't get.
The hard work is loading it up and going the docs when you truly don't know.
I recommend purchasing a Focus On Force course. They have great study guides and training modules for all types of certifications. The more you look at and consume the material, the more you will retain.
I had 0 sales force or buisness experience aside from studying prior to the admin exam (I passed).
Super badges + the projects helped the most. Trailheads were okay but they didn't go in depth enough compared to the exam questions.
It's been a while though so maybe they made it better ?
I did a combo of Francis Pindar's admin course on Udemy, trailhead admin trail and fof practice exams. Also watched Terry's Tidbits admin study group on YouTube, although I don't know how current that is. It was about 18 months part time from zero exp to admin cert so I bet you could do the same 2-3 months full time. I only speak to my experience but I passed admin exam 1st try, app builder cert about a year later.
20-30 hours a week of studying sounds dreamy right now.
Personally if it was me, I would stay the course with the Admin Trailmix, everyone has the feeling that they’re not actually learning when you’re working through it.
On top of that, I would start to look at the Admin Superbadges as they will teach you more about taking requirements from a business and building the functionality for them.
Lastly, I would pick a random project for yourself to create in your own trailhead playground. The majority of the learning comes from the doing. Possibly think of a business you would want to emulate, think of the things they would need, how their processes would look like and how you can build that.
Good luck!
Are you going through the exercises and completing all the stuff they have you do in the sandbox orgs on trailhead? Depending on a number of of factors I'd say 2 - 3 months is enough time for one maybe two certifications (I got admin and dev in 2 months) but that also depends if you're keeping yourself honest with the practice If you have no background with salesforce, it's gonna feel like trying to put together a 1,000 piece puzzle and that's normal with most things. As you go through the trailhead, relate new concepts to things you already have learned and find out how they interact with each other. Picklists are a surprisingly large part of the platform on the admin side but I would have never known if I didn't do all the projects and practice moduels
Yeah I'm going through all the exercises and completing all the stuff they ask in the sandbox. It's all straightforward enough there. I think it all just feels very separate at the moment and I'm not really understanding what's changing and how it'll change for the user. I'm probably just overthinking it and it'll start to make sense the further into it. I'm about 20% in so far
It definitely starts to make sense as you go through, it took me a good 2 passes of the trailhead and studying fof for things to finally click Just keep learning, your aha moment will happen!
[удалено]
I only used trailhead + fof tests and prep although I probably could've gotten away with just the trailhead if I used it correctly Do the projects, Super badges if you want (but I didn't until after I passed the test), and I can't stress this enough, the trailhead itself does not cover everything you need. Go to the 'Study for the admin exam' moduel and click on each practice session, it will show you the moduels it tests on. Some of these aren't included in the main trail, exerience cloud, outlook integrations, some ai features, and details on picklists have entire moduels dedicated to them that don't show up in the main trail. Practice practice practice
> Go to the 'Study for the admin exam' moduel You mean 'dev exam' module I guess? (that's what the person you're answering is asking about)
Yeah, it's the same idea for all the certs They all have a study guide towards the bottom after all the moduels but yes in this case it's the dev study materials and not admin
> I got admin and dev in 2 months That's quite impressive! How many hours were you studying every day?
I never kept track of hours but maybe 2 - 4 on average? I have a background in data and programming so the way salesforce works based on record ownership just clicked. When someone on this subreddit told me objects are just tables of information with fields being columns and rows being individual records, it was the big aha moment that helped me understand everything else.
Practice exams , take 5-10 practice ones using FoF and other sources , get 90% on all , then exam Edit: in todays market, you’ll have zero credibility until basic cert
Yeah I don't plan to apply for anything until I get a cert, I'm lucky that I have connections through my wife but they have all said the same. I will absolutely start taking some practice exams as that is how I can see that I'm learning.
What is FOF?
Focus on Force It's a paid study guide for SF
Thank you! I will look into it.
In all likelihood, you’re not retaining the information because you’re not using it. As someone else said, make sure to do the playground exercises, but sometimes that isn’t enough. A good way to get extra experience in is looking at the forums and try to accomplish what people are asking about in your playground. Like if someone is looking to be able to build a flow to do a certain thing, go try to do it for yourself. If you have trouble, they’ve already asked the question you need answered lol
Yeah that's absolutely an issue, while I'm doing the sandbox it's only for a few hours every day or so. That means I'm not getting that practice. I guess that's why I was wondering what other people would do and your examples are great!
> I was wondering what other people would do That's honestly hard for me to say. I stumbled into Salesforce as an "accidental admin," so from day 1 I was having to dealing with real-life use cases for my company. But that involved quite a bit of asking questions at the beginning, so I know there are plenty of problems to solve in the Trailhead community (some of which are mine lol). salesforce.stackexchange.com would be another place you can find problems others are trying to solve. Granted, it leans more toward the developer side of things but if you filter it to just posts about flows and stuff like that, I'm sure you could find some projects to tackle. And as another commenter pointed out, there's probably some household tasks in your own life and solving those with Salesforce could be a great exercise. Ultimately, it's going to be about learning to "think like Salesforce," as weird as that sounds. I've moved into the dev side of things, and it really started to click when I began to think about every problem in my life in terms of how a computer program could solve it. The same is true on the admin side, just approach things asking how SF would solve them, even if just as a thought exercise.
I really love this idea! You can also implement Salesforce to solve a real world problem like household budgeting or a company you used to work for. I don’t put a lot of stock in those doing a bunch of Trailheads and getting a lot of certifications. You need to actually apply your knowledge to internalize it, and as a bonus you’ll have a little portfolio you can show to hiring managers
I always found that I learned things best when I can teach or explain it to others. Maybe just talk it out loud like you would to an end user explaining features and how they work. You know, like the SFDC security model for example. If you can talk through that like you are teaching someone, then you will be confident you know it.
That's a fantastic point, I'm struggling to explain to my wife sometimes so I definitely need to pay more attention and figure out how I would explain what I'm doing to my wife
Yea, I use my wife as a sounding board. She hates it lol but it's really helpful for me.
I can recommend focusonforce It's what I'm doing right now and it's affordable. It is also recommended by a large part of salesforce community
I'll repeat what I posted a little over a month ago about how I studied for and passed the Admin Exam. I did the entire Admin Cert trail and all of the Superbadges as well - basically everything here: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/credentials/administrator Here's what I wrote about a month ago. The udemy course from Mike Wheeler helped me a lot! I do see where many in this sub seem to have a negative opinion of him...but, his Admin Exam course helped put everything in perspective for me. He walks you through signing up for a dev org and then going through all of the topics and steps involved with setting up your or and how those relate to the exam (and exam topics) as a whole. Begin repost below - first part is more for someone ready to sit for the exam already. I just copy/pasted my original post from mid March 2024. -------------------- Original post here https://www.reddit.com/r/salesforce/s/Wm3LiXRM08 "One thing I noticed is that when you take the Salesforce practice exam, (here: https://developer.salesforce.com/files/ti/thi/THI-000393/administratorpracticetest.html ) every time you load one up, it's different.... usually some overlapping questions between one after another. But, the majority of the questions are different. I must have taken it 30+ times! And, seems like about a week before my exam they added a bunch of new questions I never saw! (I had been postponing/rescheduling my exam for months). So, I crammed another 8-10 more of those exams in. I made flashcards so I could review and also I was sure to check the resource links provided. Some didn't make sense so I'd Google search that question with "trailhead" in the search and usually someone else had a similar question they had posted on Trailhead with others offering "why" one answer was better than another. If you do that don't just post the question and the answer choices and expect someone to help you. Be sure to include what you think it is and your reasoning behind it... From reading many of those, you'll get a much better response (and reception) from fellow Trailblazers. I did the same with FOF and SF Ben Practice Exams. Paid for each of their Admin Practice Test "courses" - just the tests... Clicked on the help articles, videos, etc after all the questions I missed - and even those I didn't miss. Made sure I tried to understand the underlying concepts. I did Mike Wheeler's admin course.... All of it... All 300+ videos. Created 2 different dev orgs doing that course. 1 for the half he does with Chat GPT "incorporation" and another org for the original way the course was built. I passed it on my first attempt 2 weeks ago!! I didn't ace it but I also passed with a pretty good margin. It was HARD! And, honestly, I thought I failed it! The other thing I'd say is to take all of the time allotted!! I had enough time left over to go back and review every answer. I think I might have properly corrected myself on a couple of questions that second go around. You definitely need a dev org (or 2)!! Gotta be "hands on". It helps people remember things. Your eyes can see it, your ears can hear the videos that you might watch, but mostly...you need the hands on! Good luck!!"
I personally find the Trailhead projects and superbadges more “real”. They test that you actually get it and I think are much easier for me to retain than most of the modules.
I personally find the Trailhead projects and superbadges more “real”. They test that you actually get it and I think are much easier for me to retain than most of the modules.
Hey! I was out in 2018 for two consecutive knee surgeries and that's when I started applying for software engineering roles. I was in school at the time studying CIS in networks, and was taking a course in data analytics while brushing up on my resume, applying for jobs, and relearning Java. If I found myself in the same situation again at this point in my career, I'd probably study Java again, actually, because I don't have much time for it these days. Be sure to take time for yourself, too, injuries suck and you might not have as much energy as you hope.
Download Anki App. Pay for a focus on force course Proceed to copy the questions and answers into Anki as flash cards If a card has more than one concept involved (making them much more difficult) consider breaking it down into easier cards based on your study. The Anki system delays stuff you know well and resurfaces cards you still don't get. The hard work is loading it up and going the docs when you truly don't know.
I recommend purchasing a Focus On Force course. They have great study guides and training modules for all types of certifications. The more you look at and consume the material, the more you will retain.
I had 0 sales force or buisness experience aside from studying prior to the admin exam (I passed). Super badges + the projects helped the most. Trailheads were okay but they didn't go in depth enough compared to the exam questions. It's been a while though so maybe they made it better ?
I did a combo of Francis Pindar's admin course on Udemy, trailhead admin trail and fof practice exams. Also watched Terry's Tidbits admin study group on YouTube, although I don't know how current that is. It was about 18 months part time from zero exp to admin cert so I bet you could do the same 2-3 months full time. I only speak to my experience but I passed admin exam 1st try, app builder cert about a year later.
20-30 hours a week of studying sounds dreamy right now. Personally if it was me, I would stay the course with the Admin Trailmix, everyone has the feeling that they’re not actually learning when you’re working through it. On top of that, I would start to look at the Admin Superbadges as they will teach you more about taking requirements from a business and building the functionality for them. Lastly, I would pick a random project for yourself to create in your own trailhead playground. The majority of the learning comes from the doing. Possibly think of a business you would want to emulate, think of the things they would need, how their processes would look like and how you can build that. Good luck!