Salesforce CRM
Salesforce CRM
Salesforce CRM
Salesforce is a Cloud SaaS platform (Software-as-a-Service), which means you access it through
your web browser, as opposed to a desktop application. Cloud systems have major benefits over
legacy computer systems that require huge amounts of server power to run. This is why most
applications you access today, in your business or personal life, will be cloud-based (Spotify,
Gmail, Office365, Dropbox, etc.).
• Cost: Older on premise solutions required a huge upfront investment in infrastructure. You
would need to buy all the servers, install them, and maintain them. With Cloud computing,
you are essentially outsourcing the maintenance of the infrastructure to a provider such as
Salesforce.
• Upgrades: Instead of managing upgrades to your software yourself, Cloud computing
providers take care of this for you. Salesforce will upgrade your solution to the latest
version three times a year. This comes with new features and improvements to the system
without you having to lift a finger or pay additional fees.
• Mobility: Cloud computing tools can be accessed from anywhere. As long as you have a
device and an internet connection, you can access any information that is stored in
Salesforce. This is particularly handy if you travel frequently for work or meetings.
At its core, Salesforce is a customer-facing CRM system. It is used to record customer details and
the organization’s interactions with them. Salesforce’s most popular product is Sales Cloud. This
is used by organizations to record initial interest from customers (Leads) and follow through a
sales cycle, taking them through various steps to win their business. 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).
3. Can you describe the main differences between Sales Cloud & Service Cloud?
Sales and Service Cloud both act as the core CRM platforms for Salesforce and will be used by the
majority of organizations. While both share some similarities, they are distinctly different
products that contain different sets of features for their specific function.
• 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.
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. Some of Salesforce’s other
products include Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Experience Cloud, Mule Soft, and Slack. For
a full overview of Salesforce’s products, check out the link below.
5. What is the Salesforce Platform (Force.com), and how does it help organizations?
One of Salesforce’s biggest selling points is its platform (previously called Force.com). This
enables you to create powerful customizations on top of Salesforce’s products, which allow you
to completely tailor the applications to your organization’s exact needs. This is made even more
attractive by the fact that you can create customizations with clicks, not code. At a basic level,
this allows you to create custom fields and objects to store unique information related to your
organization. One of the most popular customization possibilities is automation. You can create
automation to do pretty much anything in Salesforce – update a field, create a record, send an
email, etc. These types of customizations can end up saving users a lot of time.
6. Can you provide an example of a custom app you could build on the Salesforce platform?
Taking customizations one level further, Salesforce enables you to build custom applications on
the platform. Think about how the Sales and Service Clouds are set up with their various features
designed for a certain purpose – this can be recreated for any team function.
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:
7. Can you describe the differences between declarative and programmatic customizations?
When it comes to Salesforce customizations, there are two main types: declarative and
programmatic.
As a SaaS platform, Salesforce delivers updates to your system automatically. The major releases
happen three times a year, with some other, much smaller updates delivered in between. The
major releases are labelled, 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.
9. What is the Salesforce Lightning Experience, and how does it help organizations?
Salesforce Lightning was primarily a new UI that was released in 2015 – it took Salesforce’s UI,
which was mostly unchanged since 1999, and brought it into the 21st century. Salesforce
cantered the design around a modular experience that allowed Salesforce Admins to easily
control the layout of all pages. 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.
10. Can you describe an example sales process that a company might implement?
Sales Cloud is Salesforce’s most popular product – it’s more than likely that you will need to
support this product. This is why it’s more important than ever to be able to recommend and
support a company’s sales process. 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.
14. How are changes tested in Salesforce before being deployed to Production?
A fundamental concept of any IT system is that changes should never be made in Production.
They need to be tested in a safe environment to ensure nothing breaks and user processes are
not disrupted. Salesforce provides a feature known as Sandboxes. These replicate your
Production configuration, giving you a safe environment to test changes and implement new
features. 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.
15. Can you describe some of the main differences between Salesforce editions? (e.g.
Professional & Enterprise)
Salesforce has a few different versions of its products including, Essentials, Professional,
Enterprise, and Unlimited. It’s important to understand some of the differences, at least from a
high level. If you join an organization that has a lower tier than you are used to, it may reduce
the functionality you can implement. Here are a few of the main differences:
• Functionality: Most Salesforce editions will contain core CRM functionality including
Account & Contact fields, email integration, and the mobile app. However, some of the
lower editions will not include automation, API availability for integration, or some
advanced features such as Flow.
• Limits: All Salesforce editions have some kind of limits, these can include daily API calls, data
storage limits, custom apps, or the number of custom objects of fields. Higher-level editions
will have higher limits.
• Cost: As you might have guessed, the more advanced versions can cost a lot more. You can
expect the Essentials version to cost $25/month per user and the Unlimited one to cost
$300/month.
Once changes have been implemented and tested in a Salesforce sandbox, they need to be
moved to another sandbox and, ultimately, the production environment. 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.
For a few years now, Salesforce has been trying to create a suite of products that allow users of
its platform to see a 360-degree view of their customers. This means that users of Salesforce can
see every interaction with a customer, from the first inquiry via the website, to which products
they have bought and what issues or queries they have with their products. 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.
21. Can you describe the differences between a Role and a Profile?
Roles and Profiles are two fundamental concepts of the Salesforce platform. They control what
users can see and do on the platform.
• 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.
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 on boarding. 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.
23. What are the main types of relationships you can create between objects in Salesforce?
• Creating relationships between Salesforce objects is a fundamental skill. It’s important to
create them in a scalable way, ensuring you pick the right relationship for the right solution.
• 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…
24. Describe the differences between Page Layouts and Record Types
• Page Layouts and Record Types are some of the first features that a Salesforce professional
needs to learn. They control the user interface in various ways and can be used in
conjunction with each other to create customized experiences for your users. 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.
25. Describe a few ways that Account and Contact information can be imported into
Salesforce?
Importing data into Salesforce is a vital skill to hold, but it’s also important to understand the
differences between the main tools available:
• 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 Mule Soft, the free version
allows a certain number of importing/exporting activities and is very useful for some more
complex scenarios.
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…
27. Can you name the types of Salesforce reports and the differences between them?
The reporting capabilities in Salesforce are a favourite 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.
28. What Salesforce product can be used to provide your Partners with the ability to create
Leads and Opportunities?
The Salesforce product you are looking for here is called the Experience Cloud (previously called
Community Cloud). This allows you to create portals that connect to your Salesforce instance for
a specific purpose. Two of the most common types of portals include…
• 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.
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.
Making fields “required” in Salesforce is a great way to ensure that correct information is being
captured at the right point in the process. Over time, this massively improves data quality. Here
are a few ways you can make fields required:
• 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.
The Salesforce Order of Execution is a set of rules that describes what events happen when a
record is saved in Salesforce. For example, if you have validation rules, flows, Apex triggers, etc.
there is a consistent sequence in which these events get triggered. This is important to
understand when designing solutions, as well as when you are troubleshooting issues.
32. Can you describe what Apex is, and why it is required in some scenarios?
Salesforce has a huge variety of declarative tools at its disposal for admins, but the primary
reason that developers are brought into the picture is to code.
Apex is Salesforce’s primary backend programming language. This allows developers to write
complex automation that runs on the Salesforce platform. Examples of using Apex over
declarative tools may include:
• Writing complex business processes logic that is not supported by declarative automation
such as Flow.
• Integrating Salesforce into other systems.
• Creating custom email services.
SOQL stands for Salesforce Object Query Language, and is used to search Salesforce data when
developers are writing custom logic. SOQL is structured similarly to SQL, and can be used to
retrieve data from a single object or multiple objects that relate to one another.
As Salesforce is cloud-based software, you share server resources with other customers (whilst,
of course, keeping data completely separate). Governor limits are a concept that allow Salesforce
to set certain rules on the number of resources you can monopolize to ensure that everyone’s
instances of Salesforce continue to run. An example of a Governor Limit is “Per-Transaction Apex
Limits”. This includes a number of rules that only allow you to run a certain number of queries
within a single Apex transaction.
Mule Soft is an integration platform that was acquired by Salesforce in 2018 for $6.5B. MuleSoft’s
Any point platform allows you to integrate with other systems easily, with a set of templates that
provide out-of-the-box APIs. Salesforce acquired Mule Soft 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 Mule Soft Composer, which is designed to
give admins a declarative way to integrate with other systems.
Apex Triggers are written by developers to fire logic before or after a record is saved. As discussed
previously, Apex can handle the most complex automation scenarios in Salesforce.
Whilst Apex has always reigned as the king, when it comes to complex automation, in recent
years, Salesforce has rebuilt Flow to bring it close to Apex in functionality. Parker Harris, the CTO
of Salesforce, has even been quoted saying: “Just Because it’s possible to write code, doesn’t
mean you should write code.” 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.
Before deploying Apex that has been written in a sandbox to production, developers must meet
a minimum test coverage of 75%. 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.
40. What is the difference between Lightning Components and Lightning Web Components?
Back in 2014, Lightning Components were originally released alongside the Lightning Experience;
they use a standardized JavaScript framework. 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.
41. Can you name a few ways to help improve Salesforce user adoption?
Salesforce adoption is always an important topic and it’s vital to understand how to support users
if adoption numbers start dropping. Here are a few ways you can help improve user adoption:
• Training: If you are on boarding new users onto a new system, it’s important to provide
them with sufficient training. Showing them how to use Salesforce and answering their
questions will ensure that they continue to use the system. If users feel unsupported, they
may go back to using pen and paper, Excel, or another system of their choice!
• Feature Development: Salesforce professionals will get feature requests from their users all
the time. Although not all of them will be possible, it’s important to address their issues and
ensure that they feel heard.
• Super Users: Identifying super users or “champions” of Salesforce can help drive user
adoption. Salesforce Admins won’t be available all the time to support users, so if you have
a network of champions that can drive user adoption, answer questions, and gather
feedback, this can only help.
Clean data has been an issue since IT systems first existed. However, if properly managed, having
a nice, clean system can lead to happy and more productive users. Here are a few features and
products you can implement to promote clean data:
• Validation: Using Validation in Salesforce is a great way to keep data clean. This can come in
a few different forms such as required fields, using picklists over free text fields, and
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/website), or users manually entering them. Salesforce has various simple but
powerful duplicate tools to prevent this.
• Deduplication Tools: If bad data has become such a problem that it is beyond repair, luckily
there are AppExchange apps that can help. A couple of our favourites are Demand Tools
and Clouding.
43. How is the Salesforce DevOps movement helping companies using Salesforce?
Back in 2015, Salesforce was voted the most dreaded platform to work with by users of Stack
overflow. Unlike other systems at the time, Salesforce had very few tools to support developers
in building applications, as well as testing and deploying them. Fast forward to today and the
widespread DevOps movement has now fully embedded itself within the Salesforce ecosystem.
Salesforce themselves have been focusing on Salesforce DX (Developer Experience) to bring out
tools and frameworks to support coders. In addition, there is a huge range of AppExchange apps
to help Salesforce professionals, build, test, and safely deploy changes. For more info, check out
the article below.
44. What is the “Person Accounts” feature, and how can it help organizations?
Salesforce was originally built as a B2B system – for companies selling to other companies.
However, there is an increasing number of companies in the B2C space using Salesforce for
customer support, commerce, or marketing. 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.
45. What are some ways you can customize the look and feel of Salesforce?
With the introduction of Salesforce Lightning, you can now customize the Salesforce UI to really
make it feel like your own. Here are a few ways to impress your users by branding Salesforce
using a feature called Themes:
• Change Logo: By default, Salesforce will show its own logo on the top left-hand corner. This
can be easily changed to your own logo when setting up a custom app.
• Colours: You can change a lot of the colours of Salesforce using Themes. This includes an
overall brand colour, as well as the background colour and global header background.
• Background Image: You can even set a background image that will display behind
components on record pages.
The Lightning App Builder was a key part of the Lightning Experience. While Page Layouts let you
edit the detail part of record pages, the Lightning App Builder allows you to edit the rest of it.
You can move around components, add new ones, and change the page template (number of
columns/rows). This helps Salesforce customers create truly customized experiences, which is a
world apart from Salesforce Classic.
47. How would you explain Salesforce to someone who has never used a CRM?
48. Can you explain the key dates you need to be aware of with every Salesforce release?
Salesforce releases happen three times a year: Spring, Summer, and Winter. There are multiple
dates for any Salesforce professional to be aware of to ensure they keep up with releases:
• 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.
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.
An app is a collection of tabs that works as a unit to provide functionality. Users can switch
between apps in force.com app's drop-down menu. A Salesforce application is a container of
tabs, processes, and services. We can create new apps by grouping some standard app,
customize existing apps according to our work. Salesforce provides many standard apps such as
call centre, marketing, sales, etc.
• Custom App
• Service cloud control
• Salesforce create application
• Step1: Follow this navigation: Setup-> AppSetup-> create-> apps-> click on 'new'
• Step2: Select custom application radio button-> provide the app name
• Step3: Click on the next button
• Step4: Select the image from the document object
• Step5: Select the objects
To add this Salesforce app to any other profiles or tabs. Follow the below steps
User profiles are a group of permissions and settings which provide lightning access to a user.
Salesforce admins can assign the users with a profile depending upon their job roles. The user
profile includes all the tabs, records, and page access that user require. You can set up and
manage the profile by which you can conventionally create a secure boundary that dictates user's
access rights.
53. Can we assign the same profile to two different users? Is it possible that two profiles can
be assigned to the same user?
The profile defines the level of access a user can have in Salesforce. In Salesforce org, it is possible
to assign a single profile to any number of users. For example, we can consider a sales or service
team in a company. The entire team has access to the same profile. The admin can create one
profile for the whole sales team, which will have access to the leads, campaigns, contacts, and
other objects deemed necessary by the company. In this functionality, many users can be
assigned with the same profile. In case the team leader needs access to additional records, then
it can be done by assigning permission sets only for those users. Each user can be assigned only
one profile.
We can establish a relation between objects in Salesforce. We can associate one object with
others. Example: We have an object party (To store information about the party), and you want
to associate it with other objects like people (information of participants) so that you can
associate the object party with people. These relationship types also determine how they handle
record sharing, required field in page layouts, data deletion capability.
Salesforce supports the following types of relationships that can be established among objects.
• Master-Detail Relationship
• Lookup relationship
• Self-relationship
• External lookup relationship
• Indirect lookup relationship
• Many-to-Many relationship
• Hierarchical relationship
It's a tightly coupled relationship among Salesforce objects. In the Master-detail relationship, the
parent record controls the behaviour of the child record regarding visibility and sharing. If a
master record gets deleted, then the child records associated with it are also deleted. The
security setting of the parent object applies to the child object.
Example: If we create a Master-detail relationship between the objects party and people. Where
a party is a parent object, and people is a child object. Then if we delete party record, all the
associated record will also get deleted. When two objects form a Master-detail relationship, we
can create a unique type of field over the master object, called Roll-up summary. A Roll-up
summary allows us to calculate values related to child record, such as the number of child record,
average, sum, etc., linked to a parent record.
It's a loosely coupled relationship among Salesforce objects. In the Lookup relationship, both
parent and child have their sharing setting and security controls, which means if a parent record
gets deleted, then child records remain in the system. Let's see the party and the people objects.
For example, the below figure provides a visual representation of the Lookup relationship
between the party and people objects. In this diagram, the party object record has been deleted,
but the people record is still available. This relationship between objects is Lookup relationship.
Reports are an essential part of any business. Descriptions provide a clear picture of the
management. Reports are used to track the process towards its various tasks, control
expenditure, increase revenue. Reports help in trend prediction. Salesforce.com allows you to
generate reports in different styles.
• Tabula reports
• Summary Reports
• Matrix report
• Joined report
Governor limits control how much data and how many records you can store in the shared
databases because Salesforce is a multi-tenant architecture based. In other words, Salesforce
uses a single database to store the data of multiple customers. Salesforce introduced the concept
of the Governor limits to prevent monopolization of the shared resources between users.
Governor limits are the biggest challenge of a Salesforce developer. This is because if the apex
code exceeds the limit, then the issue is a runtime exception that can't be handled. So as a
Salesforce developer, you should be very careful while developing application.
59. What are the different ways to store various types of records in Salesforce?
There are many different ways in Salesforce to store various records, such as Images, files, and
documents. Some of them are as follows:
• Attachment
• Google drive
• Chatter files
• Libraries
Salesforce is the largest and leading cloud platform provider in the world. Their customer
relationship manager (CRM) is one of the most beneficial software.
61. What is a sandbox org? What are the different types of sandboxes in Salesforce?
A sandbox is a copy of the production org/environment. It is used for testing and development
purpose. It is beneficial because it allows for the development of Apex programming without
disturbing the production environment. Sandbox can be used when we want to test a newly
developed force.com application. We can develop and test it in the sandbox org, there is no need
to do it directly in production.
• Developer
• Developer Pro
• Partial Copy
• Full
64. Can you edit an apex trigger/ apex class in a production environment? Can you edit a
Visualforce page in a production environment?
No, we can't edit apex classes and triggers directly in the production environment. To edit an
apex trigger/ class, first, it needs to be done in Developer edition or testing org or Sandbox org.
Then, we can deploy it in production. A user that has apex permission must deploy the triggers
and classes using deployment tools. Though, Visualforce page can be created and edited in both
production and sandbox.
Visualforce pages are served from a different domain to block cross-site scripting and improve
security standard.
66. What are the static and dynamic dashboards? Can dynamic dashboards be scheduled?
• Static dashboards are the ordinary dashboards that will be visible to any other user who has
made a report out of his data. Example; sales manager’s/ marketing manager would be able
to see on his Salesforce Org. Moreover, a normal dashboard that shows the data for a single
user.
• Dynamic dashboards display information which is customized for a specific user. Let's
consider the above example. In case the sales manager wants to view the report of a
particular team member, then he can use dynamic dashboards.
• We can use dynamic dashboards when we want to show user-specific data such as a
particular user's quota, sales, productivity, meetings, etc.
• We can use a normal/ static dashboard to show regional and organization-wide data to a
set of users, such as sale in a region, or team performance, etc.
Salesforce can create skinny tables to avoid join and contain frequently used fields. Thin tables
improve the performance of read-only operations. Skinny tables are set aside in sync with their
source tables when the source table is modified. Contact Salesforce customer support to use
skinny tables. These tables are created and used automatically where appropriate. We can't
create, modify, or thin access tables.
The Audit trail tracks the recent setup changes that other administrators and you have made to
your organization. This is useful for organizations that have more than one administrator. It can
track the last twenty changes made to your organization. It displays
In SFDC (Salesforce development cycle), you have to develop code in Sandbox, and then you
might need to deploy this to another sandbox or production environment this is called
deployment. In other words, the movement of metadata from one organization to another
organization is called deployment. The main reason behind deployment is that you cannot
develop apex in your Salesforce production.
• Change Sets
• Eclipse with Force.com IDE
• Force.com Migration Tool - ANT/Java based
• Salesforce Package
72. What is the difference between a standard controller and a custom controller?
• The standard controller automatically contains all the standard object properties and
standard button functionality. It contains all the functionalities and logic as used in standard
Salesforce pages.
• Custom controllers are like an Apex class that implements all the logic of a page without
taking an advantage of a standard controller. Custom controllers are related with
Visualforce page through the controller attribute.
Cloud computing is the provision of computational services such as storage, servers, database,
software, networking, analytics, intelligence, and more over the internet (cloud). It brings the
organization faster innovation, flexibility in allocating resources, economies of scale. It reduces
the costs of organizations that are associated with the task of storage. Cloud-based storage
makes it possible to save the files in a remote database instead of proprietary hard drive or local
storage device. It provides access to the data and the software programs to run it till an electronic
accessory has access to the web. Cloud services can be both private and public. Private cloud
services provide services to a certain number of people. On the other hand, public cloud services
offer their services over the internet which is chargeable. These services are a group of networks
that supply hosted services. Cloud services also provide a hybrid option, which combines both
private and public services.
Based on services, cloud services provide users with a series of functionalities like
• Email
• Backup, Storage, and data retrieval
• Creating and testing app
• Data Analysing
• Audio and Video streaming
Cloud computing is still a new service, but it comes in a trend in a very short time. Nowadays,
government agencies, small businesses, non-profit agencies, and individual consumers are using
cloud computing. Cloud computing is not a single part of technology like a microchip. It's a
primary combination of three services software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service
(IaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS).
There are eight kinds of certifications available in Salesforce which cater to different stages:
• Administrator certifications
• Developer Certifications
• Architects Certifications
• App Builders Certifications
• Implementation Experts or Consultant Certification.
• Marketers Certification
• Pardo Experts Certifications
• CPQ Certification
For Example, if you sign up to a Facebook account, you will be provided a unique username and
password. The same approach, if you subscribe to the Force.com cloud computing, you will be
provided a valid credential to work in your specified cloud computing area of the environment
or Org. The Salesforce environment provides accessibility to develop, test the apps, and can be
used for production also. This environment can be customized according to your requirements
such as Apex code, workflow, Custom DB attributes, and objects.
All Apex programs run on-demand exclusively on force.com platform. First, the application server
compiles the apex code into an abstract set of instructions that can be understood by apex
runtime interpreter. After the compilation, the compiled code is stored to metadata. And now,
when the end users initiate the execution of apex by clicking the button or visual force page, the
application servers retrieve the compiled instructions from the metadata and forward them to
runtime interpreter before returning the result.
With the use of Sol, we can create a simple but powerful query string in the following
environments:
The workflow is a programmed process which is used to validate evaluation criteria and rule
criteria.
"Who ID" denotes the people like contacts or leads. Whereas "What ID" denotes the objects. Let
us consider Lead ID, Contact ID are fields of "Who ID" and Account ID, Opportunity ID are "What
ID".
When a maximum number of child records (more than 10k) are connected to one parent record
that situation is called data skew in Salesforce.
84. What is collection in Apex? List out all different kinds of collections supported by
Salesforce?
Collections in Apex are variables that are used to store multiple data records. As there is a
limitation on the number of records to be retrieved per transaction, we can use the collection
variable to retrieve records.
• List
• Maps
• Sets
Static resources are used to upload images, zip files, jar files, JavaScript and CSS files that can be
referred in a visual force page. We can upload a maximum of the 250mb file using Static
resources.
86. What is the difference between Action support and Action function?
To understand the difference between Action support and Action function, let's understand their
functionalities: Both Action support and action function are used to call a controller method via
an Ajax request.
87. What are differences between custom settings and custom objects?
Custom Settings:
Custom Objects:
The key difference between workflows and approval process are as below
• Workflow rules consist of single step and a single action whereas approval process has
multiple steps and different actions.
• Workflow rules trigger automatically and the rules when triggered are not visible to the
user. Approval process on the other hand, contains multiple step s each requiring a specific
“I Approve or Reject” user action by the specified approve
90. What is the daily email alerts limit per standard salesforce license for workflow and
approval process? And what is the overall daily organization limit?
Daily email alert for approval process and workflow are 1000 per standard salesforce license.
Overall daily organization limit for workflow and approval process email alert is 2000000 (2
million)
92. What are the difference between 15-digit id and 18-digit id?
93. What are different user licenses available in salesforce and explain them?
Workbench is a powerful, web-based suite of tools designed for administrators and developers
to interact with salesforce.com organizations via the force.com APIs. Workbench includes robust
support for the Force.com Partner, Bulk, Rest, Streaming, Metadata, and Apex APIs that allows
users to describe, query, manipulate, and migrate both data and metadata in Salesforce.com
organizations directly in their web browser with a simple and intuitive user interface.
96. What is Data Loader and how many ways we can use Data Loader?
Data Loader is a client application, used for bulk import or export of data. Data Loader can be
used in 2 ways.
• User Interface
• Command Line
The background software is typically updated thrice a year, Spring, Winter and Summer. Software
updates are parent to the user base and only require a small maintenance window over the
weekend.
Yes, there are a number of different programming solutions available depending on the type of
development required. There is the FORCE.COM development environment and typically Apex
and Java languages that can be used.
99. How easy is it to customize the environment to reflect the way my business works?
It is relatively easy to configure the look and feel, add new fields, load up your company logo and
change page layouts. You should always have a CRM strategy before you start and consider the
impact of change on your data. If you have any concerns, our team of experts will happily help
you!
A person account is an individual consumer with whom you do business, such as a financial
services client, an online shopper, or a vacation traveller. Person accounts are applicable to
organizations that operate on a business-to-consumer model as opposed to a business-to-
business model.