Interview Set2
Interview Set2
Interview Set2
On the other side of the coin, you have Service Cloud, which is designed to support
customer service teams from within a business. Service Cloud helps agents deal with
customer queries, as well as solve issues.
Sales and Service Cloud are Salesforce’s two main products, but over the years,
Salesforce has been able to support all kinds of internal teams within an organization,
including Marketing, Analytics, Portals, Integration, and Collaboration (Slack).
Sales Cloud: This product is designed to support businesses with their sales
cycle – taking a potential customer on a journey, from qualifying them through
the Lead object to converting them into an Opportunity where the main sales
cycle takes place. Sales Cloud also has a number of other features to support
this process, from quoting to forecasting.
Service Cloud: Service Cloud, on the other hand, helps organizations with their
customer support process. Customers initiate a support process by emailing,
calling, or submitting an online form. Once this case has been created in
Salesforce, agents can use features such as a knowledge base to help find
answers to questions and milestones to ensure SLA (Service Level
Agreements) are met, as well as features like live chat to talk to customers in
real-time.
Read More: Sales Cloud vs Service Cloud – What Are The Differences?
4. Apart from CRM, what other products do
Salesforce have in their offering?
Over the years, Salesforce has built up a huge portfolio of other products to help serve
its customers. One of the most attractive selling points is the fact that they can
seamlessly integrate with each other, creating a full 360-degree view of their customers.
If you are familiar with Trailhead, you may have already created a few custom
applications that will give you a good answer to this question. If not, here are a few
ideas:
An HR application to help internal teams manage jobs and job applicants.
A finance system that can track invoices.
A goal-setting app that can help managers set targets and goals for their team.
The major releases are labeled, Spring, Summer, and Winter, with the fiscal Salesforce
year following the name, e.g. “Salesforce Winter ’22 Release”. Each release will have a
huge amount of features and updates included across most Salesforce products.
It’s important to stay alert around release time. Whilst Salesforce rarely breaks anything
whilst updating your org, it’s important to test everything and ensure that it works as
expected.
This resulted in a rise in user productivity with the help of new features, as well as an
easy-to-navigate UI. Pretty much every single page of Salesforce Lightning Experience
is fully customizable. You can customize the homepage and record layouts, and you
can create dashboards to suit your specific needs.
When someone refers to a sales process, they are referring to the process that a
salesperson will follow in order to sell a product or service to a potential customer. This
is then translated into the “Lead Status” and “Opportunity Stage” fields.
At an extremely basic level, that could look like the following: Qualify > Discover >
Analysis > Proposal > Negotiation > Closed Won (or Lost).
Here is an example below that includes a full Sales process, from entering the
organization at the Lead stage, all the way through to its closing.
11. Can you describe an example service
process that a company might implement?
Similar to the above questions, it’s important for Salesforce professionals to understand
how a customer support organization works and the different stages they go through to
solve a case.
Unlike a sales process that is split across the Lead & Opportunity objects, service
processes are contained on the case object.
Here is an example of a Service process: New > Working > Waiting on Customer >
Escalated > Closed.
12. What are objects in Salesforce and how
are they used?
In normal database terms, an object in Salesforce is simply a table of data. A table of
data will contain various fields and, in turn, these fields contain information like an email
address, phone number, or company name.
There are two types of objects in Salesforce: standard and custom. Standard objects
are those that come out of the box with Salesforce products. For example, in most
Salesforce products, Accounts & Contacts come as standard. In Sales Cloud, you will
get objects such as Lead & Opportunity, whilst in Service Cloud, Cases & Entitlements
will be standard.
Custom Objects, on the other hand, are created by you. These are the objects that can
be created as your foundation for building custom applications.
13. Salesforce has an App Store similar to an
iPhone. What is this called? Can you name
some apps you have used in the past?
One of Salesforce’s selling points is the AppExchange. This has nearly enough similar
functionality to the iPhone App Store or the Google Play Store. You can install pre-built
apps directly into your Salesforce org to easily add additional functionality. Some of the
most popular apps include e-Signature, Document Generation, and Form tools.
There is a near certainty that any Salesforce company you join will be using at least one
AppExchange app – this is why it’s important to have an understanding of how to use
these applications.
Check out some of the most popular apps in the post below and remember that most
apps have a free trial, so there is no harm in getting stuck in.
Sandboxes come in different flavours, ranging from a Developer sandbox that only
contains your custom configuration, all the way through to Full Copy Sandboxes, that
contain all your configuration and data.
There are many ways to move changes between environments. However, the most
common way is to use change sets. Change sets are a packaged set of components
that can be created in one environment and moved across to another.
If you want to really impress your interviewer, learn all about Salesforce DevOps, the
next generation of deployment tools.
17. What is the difference between Data and
Metadata?
Metadata relates to the fields, configurations, code, logic, and page layouts that go into
building the information architecture and the look and feel of your Salesforce
environment.
Data relates to the records that a business relies on, such as Users, Accounts, and
Contacts, to name a few. On the other hand, Metadata is the data that describes other
data.
Read More: What Is Salesforce Metadata? A Beginner’s Guide
18. What is a Queue in Salesforce?
A lot of objects in Salesforce have to be owned by an individual. For example,
Accounts, Opportunities, Contacts, and Campaigns must be owned by a user in
Salesforce.
This helps businesses by allowing them to serve their customers better – by knowing
everything about them, and by ensuring the businesses are working off a single source
of truth.
20. Where can you view Salesforce system
status & scheduled maintenance?
Salesforce has three releases each year and occasionally has scheduled maintenance
such as org migrations to different servers. On very rare occasions, Salesforce can also
‘go down’ for a limited period.
You can access all information pertaining to scheduled maintenance and downtime,
at Salesforce Trust. You can also sign up for notifications to be kept up to date with your
server status.
Profiles control what a user can do on the platform – for example, they control what kind
of access rights a user has to a certain object, such as create, read, edit, or delete.
They also control individual permissions such as “Export Reports”, “Create Dashboard
Folders”, or “Modify All Data”.
Roles, on the other hand, are used to control what users can see. They are designed to
open up access through a hierarchy so that more senior members of the organization
can see more records. For example, someone at the bottom of the hierarchy, like an
Account Executive, might be only able to see their own accounts. But the VP Sales US
would be able to see all accounts owned by individuals below them.
*It’
s worth noting that even if the Salesforce Admin is below the CEO in the hierarchy. The
“Modify All Data” permission will allow them to see all data in Salesforce.
22. What are some of the automation tools
available to admins, and how can they be
used to help businesses?
Automation tools in Salesforce are an admin’s best friend. They are designed to be
easy to use and enable businesses to automate complex processes. This, in turn, helps
users to be more productive, allowing them to focus on revenue-generating activities
instead of manual admin work.
For example, once an Opportunity is closed-won, you could easily create automation to
create a case, which prompts the customer success team to get in touch with the
customer to begin onboarding.
Examples of automation tools include Workflow, Process Builder, and Flow. Salesforce
are currently in the process of retiring both Workflow and Process Builder, so Flow will
be the best automation tool to use going forward, with Salesforce only introducing new
features for this tool.
The most common types are the Lookup and Master-detail relationships. Lookups can
be defined as loosely coupled, meaning that you can relate records easily to other
records in a one-to-many fashion.
Master-detail relationships, on the other hand, are tightly coupled. This means that a
child record cannot exist without a parent record, and if a parent record is deleted, the
child also gets deleted with it. For a full overview of all seven Salesforce relationships,
check out the article below…
Page Layouts determine which fields are displayed to your users on a record. They also
allow you to add fields, sections, custom buttons, and other features. The “Details” tab
(in the image below) contains a lot of the elements that are controlled by the page
layout.
Record Types, on the other hand, let you offer different business processes, picklist
values, and Page Layouts to your users. For example, one of the most common use
cases of Record Types would be to create two different sales processes on the
Opportunity object. Each with different sales stages and Page Layouts.
This means that with Record Types you can now apply multiple Page Layouts per
object, per user profile.
Data Loader: The Data Loader will be a staple of any Salesforce professional’s
toolkit. It allows you to import, export, update and delete large amounts of
records in a single operation. The Data Loader has to be downloaded to your
desktop for use.
Data Import Wizard: The Data Import Wizard is a simplified tool that, as the
name suggests, allows you to import data into Salesforce. The wizard is
accessed from within Salesforce and also has deduplication features.
Dataloader.io: Dataloader.io is an advanced, cloud-based data loader that is
packed full of features. Whilst this is primarily a paid product provided by
MuleSoft, the free version allows a certain number of importing/exporting
activities and is very useful for some more complex scenarios.
Read More: The Best Data Loaders for Salesforce
26. What is a Junction Object?
A junction object is used to create many-to-many relationships in Salesforce. This is
used when a normal parent-child or a one-to-many relationship doesn’t work.
This is exactly how the Opportunity and Product tables are joined in Salesforce. Check
out the article below for more details…
Partner Portal: This is an area where your partners can create leads and
manage the sales cycle of opportunities. All partner activity can be viewed
within your Salesforce org, along with the provision of full reporting
capabilities.
Customer Portal: A common use case for a customer portal is to provide
support as well as help articles. Customers can log cases, as well as search
knowledge bases for answers to their queries. You can even go as far as to
create a community that allows customers to interact with each other.
Read More: Ultimate Guide to EVERY Salesforce Product in 2021
28. Can you name the types of Salesforce
reports and the differences between them?
The reporting capabilities in Salesforce are a favorite amongst users, so it’s important to
understand the types of reports and their differences…
Tabular: This is the simplest of reports and is suited just to show lines of data
and nothing else. It is similar to an Excel spreadsheet. If you just want to show
data without the need to show totals, calculations or groups of data, then this
is the report for you. It is also best to use this report type if you are planning to
export data.
Summary: As soon as you add a grouping, you will turn the report into a
summary report. Summary reports are probably the most commonly used and
are great for showing groups of data, e.g., if you want to see the number or
value of opportunities per account, you would group your report by Account
Name. You can also subgroup fields by dragging them under the initial group.
Matrix: Matrix reports are very similar to a summary, but they allow you to group
by rows as well as columns to see different totals. Building on the example
above, you might want to see the value of opportunities per account, by
month. So you would see that Edge Communications has $100,000 of
opportunities in January, $50,000 in February and so on.
Joined Reports: Joined reports allow you to create two separate reports so that
you can compare data. You could use a Joined report to show the total
number of opportunities and cases per account, side by side.
Read More: How to Create a Report in Salesforce
29. What is a Dynamic Dashboard?
Dynamic Dashboards are a fantastic way to create a personalized experience for your
users when viewing a certain dashboard. It allows the data on a dashboard to change,
based on the user who is viewing it.
For example, you could have a single, personal sales dashboard for sales reps.
Whenever a different user viewed this dashboard, it would only show their leads,
opportunities, and accounts. This works by using the “My” filter on all dashboards.
Custom Field Settings: Whenever you create a new custom field, you have the
option to make this required. This is a ‘hard’ limit and will be required
whenever you are creating a new record inside Salesforce or uploading via a
data loader.
Page Layout: On a Salesforce Page Layout, you also have the option to make
fields read only or required. This is considered a ‘soft’ limit, as it will only apply
if you are creating a new record via the Salesforce interface, not when
uploading via a data loader.
Validation Rules: Finally, we have validation rules. These have much more
advanced logic and can be built to only make a field required, under a certain
condition, e.g. if Opportunity Stage = Closed Won, make X field required.
Validation rules have a hard limit.
Developer Salesforce
Interview Questions
Although you might not be interviewing for a Salesforce Developer position, it’s
important to understand the role that they play, as well as some of the concepts that can
intersect with both a Salesforce Developer and a Salesforce Admin.
Here are our Developer Salesforce interview questions…
This is important to understand when designing solutions, as well as when you are
troubleshooting issues.
Visualforce was primarily used back in the Salesforce Classic ‘era’ on tag-based
markup language (similar to HTML), whereas Lightning is a modern, componentized UI
Framework that uses HTML and JavaScript.
Read More: What are Salesforce Governor Limits? Best Practices & Examples
36. What is MuleSoft?
MuleSoft is an integration platform that was acquired by Salesforce in 2018 for $6.5B.
MuleSoft’s Anypoint platform allows you to integrate with other systems easily, with a
set of templates that provide out-of-the-box APIs. Salesforce acquired MuleSoft to
better serve customers going through their digital transformations, and required
integration with backend systems such as HR, Finance, or ERP.
Salesforce has also recently released MuleSoft Composer, which is designed to give
admins a declarative way to integrate with other systems.
As a general ‘rule of thumb’, if Flow can handle the use case and will not hit any
limitations, it’s a good idea to build the automation in Flow. Flow has a simpler user
interface and can be understood by a wider range of Salesforce professionals.
This requires developers to write test classes that run through their code, ensuring that
the code is of good quality and will run successfully in production.
Lightning Web Components were released in early 2019 and, instead, use an updated
web standards-based framework. This provides easier accessibility for users who are
unfamiliar with the Salesforce platform. They utilize standard technology such as CSS,
HTML, and updated JavaScript.
Consultant Salesforce
Interview Questions
If you are interviewing for a Salesforce Admin or Developer position, you will almost
certainly need to put on your Consultant hat on at some point. So it’s important to
understand some of the following concepts to really impress your interviewer.
This is important to understand, as these stages need to be followed whenever you are
implementing a new Salesforce product or feature.
Salesforce extended the functionality of its platform to deal with B2C businesses.
Person accounts allow you to access a new type of record (which is actually a
combination of the Accounts and Contacts objects) that can support a B2C business.
This helps Salesforce customers create truly customized experiences, which is a world
apart from Salesforce Classic.
48. How would you explain Salesforce to
someone who has never used a CRM?
As an admin or a consultant, it won’t be unheard of to come across a user who is
completely unfamiliar with Salesforce and CRM software. Here is an easy way to
explain CRM software to someone who is unfamiliar with the concept…
“CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. All businesses in the entire world
will have some form of CRM. The software simply records who your customers are,
what interactions you’ve had with them, and what products they have bought.
If you run a hairdressing salon, you might have a spreadsheet or a notebook of your
regular customers – if you run a catering company, you will have the same, or if you run
a 10,000-employee international conglomerate, you will have CRM software.”
Release Date: No surprises here! This is the date the release actually happens
and can change depending on your org location.
Sandbox Preview: This is the date on which your own org’s sandboxes will be
upgraded. It is very important for testing the new release against your own
customizations.
Release Notes: Finally, it’s important to understand when the release notes will
be available. It’s a good idea for all professionals to familiarize themselves
with the main aspects of any release.
Release dates change every year, so check out the latest updates here!
50. What is scope creep?
Any experienced consultant will be familiar with the dreaded term, “scope creep”. A
successful project is one that is kept within budget and scope, as well as completed on
time. However, when in the middle of a project, new requirements often come up, which
means that a customer may want extra scope to be added.
As a result, it’s important for every Salesforce professional to understand how to handle
scope creep and how to manage customers’ expectations.
Summary
This article has been designed to give you a complete overview of typical Salesforce
interview questions, at any level. If you would like a more in-depth dive into some
specific Salesforce roles, check out our more specialized interview questions below:
General
1. What advice would you give to a customer
(with little to no SF experience) who is
planning to self-implement?
As a consultant, you could be faced with this question if a customer is dubious about
paying a high day-rate to deal with a consultancy. There are a few different angles to
take with this question:
Salesforce is a fairly complex system with all its interlinking components. Without
knowing how all of the elements should be used, and how they can be extended with
custom features, you can almost guarantee that something will not be set up
correctly. This has two main knock-on effects; the system will not be used correctly,
and therefore you may need to pay more money in the future to unpick the work to
ensure its best practice.
Consulting partners earn their living by knowing Salesforce inside out. However, in
addition, they have also built up years of experience working with similar customers.
This means that as well as getting someone that knows Salesforce, you have
someone that can advise on your business processes and precisely the best way to
implement based on years of experience.
As well as feature and implementation experience, a Salesforce project will also include
requirements gathering, training, and optimization for adoption. Without these three
core areas, how well Salesforce is setup becomes redundant.
Training: Training is your biggest chance to show off the system to users and
demonstrate how to use the system in the most effective way. Training should not just
be a one-off event; there should be various follow-ups in different mediums to ensure
users have truly understood the system.
Ongoing Support: Developing a plan for ongoing support is essential to ensure
adoption and make sure that users don’t feel lost with the system. This can be in the
form of power users, system administrators, or using a consultancy to support users.
Project Involvement: Involving users right at the start of a project will ensure that they
feel their opinion is valued. After all, to some extent, they will be shaping the system.
Involving users early on will also demonstrate to them the importance of a CRM and the
importance of their particular project.
Feature Development: You should listen to your users and constantly be striving to
improve the system. Opening a channel of communication between users, managers,
and system administrators will mean that their voice is heard, and changes to the
system will happen.
READ MORE: What is Salesforce Adoption? 15+ Salesforce Adoption Strategies
Validation: Using Validation in Salesforce is a fantastic way to keep data clean. This
can come in a few different forms such as required fields, using picklists over free text
fields, validation rules, as well as setting correct permissions. All of the mentioned
features are simply trying to ensure that users can only enter data they should be
entering. This is one of the most effective prevention methods for bad data.
Duplicate Management: A common issue for users and admins using Salesforce, is
duplicates. They can come from various sources including an initial data load, marketing
leads (Events or website), or users themselves manually entering them. Salesforce has
various simple but powerful duplicate tools to prevent this.
READ MORE: 6 Salesforce Duplicate Rules You Need To Activate Right Now
Being a consultant is very different from being an admin, but there are also some
similarities. The one big piece of advice I would give is to switch their thinking from just
implementing features in Salesforce, to implementing business solutions that are going
to transform a companies processes; saving time and money. This thought process is
one that a lot of admins already have, but the role of a consultant requires this thought
process to be executed.
READ MORE: Becoming a Salesforce Consultant – The Next Step in Your Career Path
With Salesforce there are various Apps, both simple and complex, that help you
automate key business processes. These can range from a simple App that helps you
clone records, to complete accounting systems that sit on top of Salesforce such as
FinancialForce.
Communication
8. How would you explain what Salesforce is
to someone who didn’t even know what a
CRM was?
To some, Salesforce is a very complex system and can be hard to grasp. Of course,
most people reading this would already have an extremely good understanding of
Salesforce and how it can help your business, but as a consultant, you need to be
understanding of people who won’t. My explanation of Salesforce to non-technical
people or clients goes like this:
Be sympathetic that some people are not technical, do not make them feel less
intelligent because of this fact.
Avoid talking too much about the technical solution, and more about the people,
process, and the actions.
When you do talk about a solution, don’t use Salesforce terminology. Instead of using
Flow terms or Apex, talk about automation.
If you do have to talk about something complex that the client might not understand, be
creative in how you explain it and draw on examples.
Have empathy towards people that may dislike an external party coming in and telling
them alternative, improved methods. This is often an uncomfortable situation to be in.
Learn more about the way they are working and what you can do to help them in a non-
intrusive manner.
Involve them very early on in the project so that they feel like they are a part of this new
system.
Never focus on the direct solution, but talk about the benefits it will bring to them and the
time saving that will apply.
Implementation
11. List three critical success factors for a
new implementation and why they matter.
There are many critical aspects to projects that must be perfected in order to ensure the
best rollout and implementation possible. Here are some examples:
User & Management Buy-In: Getting user and management buy-in from the start
ensures that the system has been designed specifically for the people that are going to
use it. Neglecting either one of these user groups (or executives) can result in a low
adoption rate due to either the system not being fit for purpose, or the users not
realizing the implications of the system.
Training: Another critical success factor is the training. Training is one of the most
important parts of the project following a proper implementation. It ensures that users
have all the information and the tools to do their job. For some, Salesforce is a daunting
system, and although should always be designed with the user in mind, training is still
key to ensure adoption.
Reporting: Salesforce has a fantastically powerful reporting and dashboard system,
and this should never be forgotten to implement. Reports & Dashboards give both users
and management alike, insights into what is happening in their Org. This is one of the
only ways to ensure that the system and user’s behaviors can be improved.
Data Migration: A data migration for any implementation is very much a critical success
factor. This can always be a stressful exercise, but it’s one that should be executed with
particular care. If the data from the old system is in a bad place, importing this will just
serve to confuse and frustrate users, as well as mess up reporting.
12. What would you say are some of the more
common reasons for project scope creep?
What measures do you put in place to reduce
the risk of this happening?
Any consultant or project manager’s worst nightmare is scope creep. What does this
mean? It basically means that the project goes outside of the defined project scope at
the start of the project. It’s bad because it can increase the length of the project, the
cost of the project, which means the consultancy could sometimes foot the bill if this is
not managed correctly. Here are some ways scope creep happens and how to manage
them:
Undefined Scope: All projects will have a scope of work of some kind before the
project kicks off. The aim of this will be to give the customer confidence in the
consultancy to deliver the project within a set timeframe, a price, as well as a set of
requirements. If the Proposal or Statement of Work has a lot of “wiggle room”, this will
mean that the customer may try and fit more requirements into the project than has
been generally agreed. This is always a tough risk to manage but the scope of work
should always have clear in scope and out of scope requirements, defined assumptions
about the project as a whole, and any specific tasks or requirements.
Lack of Project Management: Effective project management is the key to any
successful project. The project manager will control the resources (consultants) on the
project including their tasks, timelines, and will have overall responsibility for delivering
the project to a high standard and to a specific timescale. If the project management is
poor, this may lead to scope creep due to no one taking responsibility for what is in or
out of scope. Scope creep also usually occurs when the project is massively over
deadlines which can be a result of poor project management. All projects should have a
clear role defined for the project manager, and there should be a solid project
management plan in place with clear timescales for all tasks.
Length of Project: The longer a project runs, the more time that people involved in a
project can choose to make changes. In addition to this, at the current pace of how
businesses change, if a project runs for long enough, the whole business could change.
This is all related back to good project management. Project plans need to be in place
to ensure everyone sticks to agreed timescales.
13. What information would you say should
always be captured on a working lead,
regardless of industry?
Leads coming into your Salesforce org often will only have the basic required
information, so it’s important that as a consultant you advise on certain fields which
should always be included on the Leads object. This also links back to the section on
keeping data clean.
Features
14. How do you stay on top of new Salesforce
Features/Products/Apps?
It is imperative that as a consultant (Or any Salesforce professional for that matter), you
stay on top of Salesforce as a platform. This includes staying on top of releases,
features, new products (Or acquisitions), and of course knowing about the
AppExchange. It is best to get your information from varied sources so that you get a
well-rounded knowledge base. Here are a few ways to stay on top of the platform:
Salesforce Release Notes: This is where all Salesforce professionals need to spend a
good amount of their time at each release, looking through the areas that apply to them
and their area of expertise. Knowing about the release notes can unlock a variety of
features for you to implement for your customers. Not only that, it can lift previous limits
that might make previous solutions that didn’t work, logistically possible now!
Salesforce Blogs: There are a lot of blogs out there, where authors spend their time
writing up helpful articles for Salesforce professionals. These are a great way to get
targeted content about summarized topics on a daily or weekly basis. Make sure you
check out our ultimate blogs list to see some of the best.
Events: Attending Salesforce events, whether they are community-hosted or official,
are a great way to network with fellow Salesforce professionals, and also to hear from
fantastic speakers about a broad range of related topics. Similar to blog posts but with
deeper content, these will be entertaining and provide you with a great deal of value for
a particular topic.
READ MORE: Salesforce Events 2022
Profiles help to control object privileges such as CRED (Create, Read, Edit, Delete).
They also contain system permissions that a user can carry out such as exporting data.
Roles on the other hand, help with sharing records across an organization. They work in
a hierarchical fashion, giving users access to records that are owned by people lower
down in the hierarchy.
READ MORE: Learn Salesforce Roles and Profiles in 5 Minutes (Ft. Permission Sets)
Technical
19. What are three metrics/reports every
Sales Manager should have set up in their
Salesforce org?
Reports should be able to show the sales manager not only how the business is
performing, but actually give them insights into the business, to understand what they
are doing well or could be doing better in.
Lead Win/Loss Ratio: Yes your sales rep might be hitting their ‘number of new leads
target’ each month, but how many of these are they actually converting? And if they
aren’t, why not? Is this because their leads target is too high and they aren’t focusing on
quality? Is it a training issue and the sales rep isn’t properly qualifying? Or is it because
the territory/sector they work in is not currently a viable market? Who knows until you
look at the numbers!
Lead and Opportunity Loss Reasons: Even more powerful is showing the potential
revenue amount per reason. Imagine if you had lost £1m over the last year as your
product was missing a certain feature – this provides you with a business case to go
back to the product team (and senior exec team to try and get this on the roadmap –
which will also motivate your sales team as it is good to know that the product/service
they are selling due to market needs – this makes their job far easier).
Last Activity Reports:- In particular for customers. It is a really powerful report and a
great talking point in a meeting to be able to highlight how a sales rep has not spoken to
their top customer in three months (albeit they might not have logged in Salesforce…)
but this really holds the sales rep accountable for their customers, and as a sales
manager you can easily identify customers that need to be reached out to.
20. What are the benefits of using a Sandbox
to make changes?
This provides you with an environment to make changes without any risk of breaking
anything! Many Salesforce instances can be very complex. In particular, if you are a
consultant working in an org that you didn’t implement yourself.
More often than not, despite best practice, we tend to work in org’s with no
documentation or handover so even the most experienced consultant can run into
issues when making changes. Aside from this – the user impact is key. All changes to a
Salesforce instance should be communicated to users ideally prior to the change. This
should include what the change is; why it is being made (think benefits) and how it will
affect them.
Making changes in production that change the way they work, and even worse making
a change that prevents them from doing something is one of the big reasons users
become frustrated and disengaged with the system, and we all know user adoption is
critical to the success of a Salesforce implementation.
Lookup Relationship: This can be used to link two objects together. It is the most
basic type of relationship that creates a child-parent relationship between two objects.
Master-Detail Relationship: This can also be used to link two objects together. A
master-detail relationship creates a tight relationship between the parent and the child.
The child record inherits the security of the parent, and if the parent is deleted, all
associated child records will also be deleted. Master-detail relationships created some
extra functionality such as roll-up summary fields that allow you to calculate data on the
parent from the children.
Many-to-many relationship: Also referred to as a junction object, allows you to create
a relationship between two objects that need to model a many-to-many relationship.
These are created with an object that has two master-detail relationships to two parent
objects.
READ MORE: The 6 Types of Relationships in Salesforce
Performing a health check allows you to ensure you are getting the most out of the
system, and that business requirements are aligned to Salesforce.
Often it is a particular object that is causing the issue and I would suggest reviewing the
use of this object and potentially archiving data. As a last resort, you can look to
purchase more storage from Salesforce, but this is a more expensive alternative.
26. Which Salesforce Clouds have you worked with in the past, and how would you
describe your level of understanding for each?
27. Tell me a bit about some of your previous projects (size, clouds, role, the number of
projects worked on at any one time).
28. What Salesforce certifications do you currently hold? Do you have plans to take on
any new ones?
29. What has been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
30. Have you ever had a disagreement with a team member or stakeholder? If so, how
did you resolve it?
Summary
Hopefully, the above questions have provided a bit of an insight into the mind of a
consultant interviewer. These questions are not an exhaustive list, and every interviewer
will have their own style and pool of questions to draw from.
ADMIN
2. What is a Role?
Roles are technically optional, but it’s a good practice to use them. Roles are
predominately about sharing records with users. When organization-wide default
sharing is set to lower than Public Read/Write for an object, you can use roles in sharing
rules to determine which records (and whether they’re Read-Only or Read/Write) users
can view.
Roles also have a hierarchy like an organization chart so that the sharing can cascade
beyond records users need, but also for managers to access their team’s records.
This reduces the overhead for administrators. It’s useful to think of profiles as the base
set of permissions that many users have in common, while permission sets are the
‘extra’ permissions that fewer users need. You can also group multiple permission sets
together by job function via Permission Set Groups for simpler and more consistent
administration. Salesforce and Trailhead have useful articles on the subject.
READ MORE: Introduction to New Permission Set Groups
Administrators can now begin to change the security model in preparation for the
ultimate change by migrating permissions from profiles to permission sets and
enabling Field-Level Security for Permission Sets During Field Creation under User
Management Settings.
READ MORE: Salesforce to Retire Permissions on Profiles – What’s Next?
A common use case is to share records with users of a similar level, say directors. As
directors are probably spread throughout the organization, they aren’t likely to be under
each other in the role hierarchy. However, an admin could create a public group with all
of the director roles in it and share records with the group.
Queues are similar to public groups in that they are bespoke groupings of users (named
individually or via roles), but they are used for record ownership rather than sharing
rules. The classic use is for cases – where you’d want to assign an open one to a team
of people so that whoever is available first handles it. Queues are available on all
custom objects and many standard objects.
Data Modeling
6. What is a Lookup relationship?
A lookup relationship allows you to relate records to each other, creating a parent-child
schema. Generally, this is done between the different objects (such as accounts and
contacts), but it can be one object (such as parent accounts). Relationship fields allow
for users to specify how records affect each other and help with reporting.
READ MORE: Guide to Salesforce Relationship Types – and When to Use Them!
For example, if you don’t want a user to mark an Opportunity as Closed Won if the
account doesn’t have a billing address, you can add a validation rule so that when a
user tries, it won’t update the Opportunity record and displays an error message
explaining what they need to do.
READ MORE: Create Validation Rules
A common use case is something like classes in a school. The school will offer many
courses and have many students, and each of them will be connected to many classes.
Process Automation
13. What is Flow?
Flow is an admin’s primary declarative automation tool. Flow can perform actions such
as creating, updating, and deleting records, as well as sending emails, outbound
messages, launching other flows, and calling Apex code. Flow is also the only
declarative automation tool that allows admins to build custom screens to interact with
users and can greatly improve the user experience.
The most common ways for flows to be triggered are via record changes, screens, or on
a schedule.
Flow Trigger Explorer allows admins to determine the order in which flows run so that
automation can be efficient and not create conflicts.
There’s also a tool called Flow Orchestrator that allows admins to develop multi-user,
multi-step automation.
If you’re interested in learning more, don’t forget to check out the following resources:
There are Migrate to Flow tools available, and admins should thoroughly review options
and considerations.
Because an admin can expect to work with orgs that have existing workflow rules and
processes in place, understanding them remains vital. For further reading, check
out Workflow Rules vs. Process Builder (Feat. APEX & Flow) and Process Builder vs.
Flows – Become the Ultimate Admin.
READ MORE: Transition to Flow: Workflow and Process Builder Retirement
Communities
18. What is Experience Cloud?
Experience Cloud (formerly Community) is a way to allow your customers and partners
to access your Salesforce org. With these special licenses, they can have user
accounts and a special access portal, customized with a bevy of Lightning features that
can be configured without any code. It’s also very simple to layer in security so they can
only see or edit the objects and records you want them to. Check out the Experience
Cloud Basics module for further context.
READ MORE: 10 Key Salesforce Experience Cloud Terms
Naturally, there are a lot of considerations and limitations to evaluate, but leveraging
this feature can solve many use cases and do so economically, as guest user licenses
are free. Take a look at how the National Aquarium leverages guest users licenses to
allow constituents to manage email preferences.
Admins can combine Experience Cloud, guest users, and screen flow to solve some
fairly complex use cases, such as the National Aquarium reservation and education
experience applications.
READ MORE: Give Secure Access to Unauthenticated Users with the Guest User Profile
AppExchange
20. What is the difference between Managed
and Unmanaged Packages?
Applications you install from the AppExchange are in the form of packages — a
collection of all of the elements required to make the app function correctly. The creator
of the app decides whether the package is managed or not.
At a high level, unmanaged packages, once installed, behave like things you have
created yourself in the org. Whereas components of managed packages are locked
down from being edited, kind of like apps you install on your smartphone.
Source
Change Management
21. What is a Change Set?
While not exactly the same as an AppExchage package, a change set is quite similar.
It’s a collection of components you want to migrate between related orgs (generally from
a sandbox to production, but also sandbox to sandbox and other configurations).
Salesforce has also launched the DevOps Center, which “makes it easier to
collaboratively build, test, and deploy custom solutions across Salesforce – including
automations, applications, and experiences – that connect to real-time customer data.”
READ MORE: DevOps Center: Quick Look
22. What are the different types of
Sandboxes?
There are Developer, Developer Pro, Partial, and Full sandboxes. The difference is
what data is included in the sandbox when it is created or refreshed. The developer
ones have no data initiailly (they differ in the amount of data it can contain), and the
partial and full start with some or all of your production data. It’s important to note that
they also differ in how often they can be refreshed: developer daily, partial every five
days, full every 29 days.
User Experience
23. What are Record Types?
Record types allow you to create separate kinds of records for each object. They control
the page layouts, picklist values available, and other business logic. A good example is
a call center – you’d likely need different fields visible and required for cases involving
customers’ mortgages compared to car loans.
Here’s a tip: I almost always create a record type when creating a new object, even if I
only plan to use one type. It’s so much easier to add a second one when you need them
than to go back and introduce records types to an object that already has records.
READ MORE: When to Use Record Types vs. Page Layouts?
It’s worth noting that now Dynamic Forms have been released, this will represent a
paradigm shift in managing Lightning pages and page layouts!
READ MORE: Page Layouts
The Lightning page controls all of the other Lightning components you can leverage.
You can also make all of the components conditionally visible. The conditions can be
based on things like the user’s profile or data in the record.
There are also other types of Lightning pages: home pages and app pages. Those
pages won’t have any individual records but could enhance the user experience by
containing things like charts, list views, Lightning screen flows, and more! The limit is
almost anything you can think of to make things better for your users. You can even
make Lightning pages function differently between desktop and mobile instances.
READ MORE: Embed Dashboards and Report Charts on Lightning Pages
Data Management
29. What is the Data Loader?
There are many ways to import and export data in bulk from Salesforce (including
Import Wizard, exporting reports, and third-party tools such as dataloader.io), but
the Salesforce Data Loader is the original. It’s a downloadable client application that’s
free and provides all of the options you need. You may want to take a look at the Data
Management Trailhead module.
READ MORE: Salesforce Data Import Wizard vs. Data Loader
Summary
Job interviews can be tricky, especially when it comes to demonstrating your mastery of
technology. This post has covered some likely admin interview questions you should be
prepared to answer from some of the most popular topics for day-to-day Salesforce
Lightning administration.
Remember, the objective is to give a concise yet comprehensive answer that
demonstrates your knowledge without going on for too long. Try mentioning a use case
you’ve experienced using the feature, if you can.
Finally, not all of the interviewers are necessarily going to be experts in the tech they
are asking about, so it’s often best to tailor your answers to their background. They
aren’t trying to certify you, only gauge the level of your expertise. Your confidence,
professionalism, and demeanor are also important interview factors.
Lightning
LWCs can only be developed using third party tools, which Salesforce recommends
VSCode and their extension pack.
Code can also be shared between Aura and LWC components using an ES Module.
Alongside the most common places mentioned above, there are some more niche
places Lightning components can find themselves, including:
Development Basics
6. What data types can we use within
Lightning components?
Within Aura components we can use any of the basic data types, e.g. String, Boolean,
Date, Object etc and arrays of those datatypes. We can also define Aura attributes to
hold SObjects and move advanced datatypes such as functions, Apex defined
datatypes and we can define an attribute which can store other components.
In LWC, things are a lot more straightforward, since we do not need to define data types
on our attributes. This means that an attribute of an LWC can hold any JavaScript data
type – for example, we can hold all the standard data types, functions, HTML Nodes,
Promises and anything else that we may require.
In Aura however, the “this” keyword does not point to the component context, instead
we use the keyword from within our helper to reference other helper methods – this
works for the same reason as in LWC, since the calling context is our helper.
In Aura we use can use one of two syntaxes, “{!v.value}” and “{#v.value}”. The first
enables two way data-binding (i.e. if you update it in one location, the other is also
updated) and the second is for one way binding.
In LWC, we have a single syntax to follow, simply by using “{value}”.
Alongside simply displaying pieces of data, we can also use conditionals and iterations
to manipulate the final markup. For simple “if” logic we can use “aura:if” in Aura and
“if:true”/“if:false” in LWC. For displaying arrays, we can use “aura:iteration” in Aura or
“for:each” in LWC, both of which work similarly by taking a piece of markup contained
within them and repeating it once for each item in the array.
For Aura components we have a design resource file, which is where we define these.
We do so by specifying a “design:attribute” for each “aura:attribute” we wish to be
customised. We can also use “sfdc:objects” to limit the objects which the component
can be used on.
For LWC, we define our customisable properties from within the “.js-meta.xml” file which
is found inside all LWC component folders. We do this by defining “property” tags within
“targetConfigs” tags. LWC offers us far more flexibility than Aura does, allowing us to
define individual properties to be exposed based on the target context (i.e. record page
vs app builder page). Also, as within Aura, we can define which objects the component
should be limited to using “objects” tag.
For LWC, the process is simpler, we can create EcmaScript Modules. These are
essentially JavaScript files which use the “export” keyword to export specific functions
or variables we have defined. These can then be imported in the same manner we
import Salesforce modules and freely used by our component.
In Aura, we define handler code within our component’s controller. We can then tell our
component to listen to and then run our code when the events are fired in several
different ways. The simplest is to add an inline event handler on to the component that
fires it. The second way is to add an “aura:handler” tag. Both expect to be pointed
towards an action in the controller which handles the event.
Handling events in LWC is a much simpler affair than within Aura components since the
events are standard JavaScript events. We can either use inline event handlers on the
elements which fire it (or possibly even its ancestors if more appropriate!) or add event
handlers to our component dynamically through JavaScript.
By default, events fired by Lightning components bubble up and are only handled by its
parent component, regardless of the phase.
Aura Application events also have a third phase, called the Default phase. In this phase
the event handlers are called non-deterministically.
In Aura, we don’t explicitly define the event propagation behaviour, instead we can
specify the phase to handle on the event handler instead.
Component Styling
15. What is SLDS?
Salesforce Lightning Design System, or SLDS for short, is the framework behind the
look and feel of Salesforce Lightning. It includes design guidelines for how components
should work from a user experience point of view alongside HTML blueprints for
components (including some that don’t exist as base lightning components). The most
frequently used part of it, however, is the style sheets it provides which allow us to
easily implement consistent styles within components.
Bonus Questions
The following series of questions have no right or wrong answer but are a great way for
an interviewer to understand how you work on a more detailed level. They give you a
completely open platform to discuss and really flex those developer muscles, a great
opportunity to make yourself stand out!
Summary
Hopefully, the above questions have provided a bit of an insight into the mind of a
technical interviewer. These questions are not an extensive list, and every interviewer
will have their own style and pool of questions to draw from.
These may range from the more technical ones, which are a good chance to show off
your understanding of the platform and the different toolsets on offer when we develop
(e.g. the Lightning Data Service), to ones with an intention to better understand how you
think, approach a challenge and you as a person (e.g. the bonus questions, my
personal favourite!).