Salesforce Advanced Administrator Certification Exam Changes
As Salesforce continuously makes improvements to their product offerings, updates to their respective certification exams are also made to reflect these enhancements.
As a result, changes have been made to the Salesforce Advanced Administrator certification exam on December 8, 2021.
The old exam outline previously had 10 sections and 17 detailed objectives, whereas the new exam outline (effective December 8, 2021) now has 7 sections and 25 detailed objectives.
Author: Martin Gessner
Martin Gessner is the Founder of Focus on Force.
He has spent over 10 years working in various Salesforce roles including business analyst, project manager, consultant and solutions architect. Along the way he has earned twelve certifications, published "The Salesforce Career Playbook", and helps Salesforce professionals learn more about Salesforce, develop their career and prepare for certifications.
Let's begin by taking a look at the sections of the old exam outline. Security and Access was its highest-weighted section at 20%. This was followed by Process and Automation at 13%, Sales Cloud Applications, Service Cloud Applications, Data Management, Change Management, and Analytics, Reports and Dashboards at 10% each, Extending Custom Objects and Applications at 8%, Auditing and Monitoring at 6%, and finally, Content Management at 3%.
OLD SECTIONS | OLD WEIGHTINGS % |
|---|---|
Security and Access | 20% |
Process and Automation | 13% |
Sales Cloud Applications | 10% |
Service Cloud Applications | 10% |
Data Management | 10% |
Change Management | 10% |
Analytics, Reports and Dashboards | 10% |
Extending Custom Objects and Applications | 8% |
Auditing and Monitoring | 6% |
Content Management | 3% |
While the core concepts remain the same, a few key changes to the updated Salesforce Advanced Administrator certification exam outline have taken place:
- 1Renamed sections and detailed objectives
- 2Changes to the weighted percentages
- 3Additional topics to be introduced (i.e. Standard Salesforce suite of products that enable extending the core platform, Ensuring sensitive data is setup to support a business/legal/compliance use case in production and sandbox environments, and Methods to connect to, access, backup/restore, or archive data outside of the Salesforce platform.)
OLD SECTIONS | OLD WEIGHTINGS % | RENAMED SECTIONS | NEW WEIGHTINGS % | DETAILS TO CHANGES |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Security and Access | 20% | Security and Access | 20% | NO CHANGES |
Process and Automation | 13% | Process and Automation | 20% | âś“ Weighting increased by 7% |
Sales Cloud Applications | 10% | Cloud Applications | 11% | âś“ Section renamed âś“ Combined with Service Cloud Applications in Cloud Applications âś“ Weighting increased by 1% |
Service Cloud Applications | 10% | Cloud Applications | 11% | âś“ Section renamed âś“ Combined with Sales Cloud Applications in Cloud Applications âś“ Weighting increased by 1% |
Data Management | 10% | Data and Analytics Management | 13% | âś“ Section renamed âś“ Weighting increased by 3% |
Change Management | 10% | Environment Management and Deployment | 7% | âś“ Section renamed âś“ Weighting decreased by 3% |
Analytics, Reports and Dashboards | 10% | — | — | ✓ Combined with Data and Analytics Management |
Extending Custom Objects and Applications | 8% | Objects and Applications | 19% | âś“ Section renamed âś“ Weighting increased by 11% |
Auditing and Monitoring | 6% | Auditing and Monitoring | 10% | âś“ Weighting increased by 4% |
Content Management | 3% | — | — | RETIRED |
With the changes that have happened on December 8th, Security and Access is still highest-weighted section at 20%, along with Process and Automation.
Additionally, the following new topics have been introduced:
Focus on Force Tip: If you've scheduled your exam for after December 8th, make sure you give enough attention to the Process and Automation and Objects and Applications sections as these topics have gained more importance with the new structure.
Three sections remain the same and these are: Security and Access, Process and Automation, and Auditing and Monitoring. There are no changes to Security and Access, and only the weightings have changed on Process and Automation, and Auditing and Monitoring.
Security and Access stays exactly the same
Process and Automation has a 7% increase in its weighting
Auditing and Monitoring has a 4% increase in its weighting
As mentioned, the number of detailed objectives within the sections has been increased from 17 to 25 as of December 8, 2021.
The updated exam outline now has the following detailed objectives (Click on each section to view):
Security and Access: 20% (4)
Objects and Applications: 19% (2)
Cloud Applications: 11% (6)
Environment Management and Deployment: 7% (2)
Process Automation: 20% (4)
Data and Analytics Management: 13% (4)
Auditing and Monitoring: 10% (3)
In Summary
Changes have occurred to the Salesforce Advanced Administrator certification exam starting December 8, 2021, to reflect recent improvements done by Salesforce.
To summarize, the key changes are as follows:
Best of luck to test-takers!
Want to upgrade your study?
Browse our Catalog of Practice Exams and Study Guides!