Salesforce Certified Administrator Course Notes

Think in layers. Company/user settings define scope and display; authentication and session controls govern login; profiles and permission sets govern capabilities; organization-wide defaults and sharing mechanisms govern record access. High-yield distinctions include freeze versus deactivate, Field History versus Setup Audit Trail, minimum-profile plus permission-set design, and standard versus custom fiscal years.

• Changing an organization-wide setting when only one user's locale or time zone must change.

• Always identify the scope of the requested change before choosing a Setup setting.

Design the data model from lifecycle and user-experience requirements. Lookup is loose; master-detail is dependent and enables native roll-up summaries. Separate schema-level field requirements from page-layout presentation, and separate record types/business processes from page layouts, Lightning App Builder, and action context.

• Choosing master-detail merely because two objects are related, without checking ownership, deletion, and lifecycle dependency.

• Choose relationships from business lifecycle and security requirements, not from naming conventions.

Know the sales lifecycle and the configuration layer that owns each behavior: Lead assignment and conversion, Opportunity stages and sales processes, Path guidance, products/price books, forecasting, territories, and Campaign Members. Do not use marketing constructs to solve Opportunity lifecycle requirements or role hierarchy to substitute for territory design.

• Treating a Lead as an Opportunity or assuming conversion always follows the same record-creation path.

• Do not say every lead automatically becomes an opportunity; conversion behavior is configurable/user-selected.

Case administration is primarily an intake, ownership, routing, service-level, collaboration, and resolution problem. Distinguish queues from assignment rules, assignment from escalation, auto-response from routing, Case Teams from ownership, Email-to-Case from Web-to-Case, and Knowledge publishing from case ownership.

• Using Escalation Rules for initial ownership or Assignment Rules for SLA aging.

• Queues hold work; assignment rules route work.

Use the feature that matches the user workflow: Tasks for due work, Events for scheduled time, Chatter following for feed updates, compact layouts for mobile highlights, Lightning App Builder for conditional/mobile presentation, and package lifecycle/security review for AppExchange or AgentExchange solutions.

• Creating Events for due-date work that should be a Task.

• Scheduled start/duration = Event.

Start with the data operation and scale, then protect quality and interpret analytics through access. Know Data Import Wizard versus Data Loader, External IDs, formula-field import behavior, duplicate controls and Merge, custom report type row universes, row-level versus summary formulas, folder access versus record access, and static versus dynamic dashboard visibility.

• Using Data Import Wizard for large unattended recurring loads or Data Loader when a simple supported sub-50k one-time import is enough.

• Tool choice = volume + object + operation + automation.

Choose automation by trigger, timing, interaction, and need for a formal human decision. Prefer purpose-built assignment/response/escalation mechanisms for narrow routing problems; use Flow for orchestration. For Flow, know before-save versus after-save, scheduled paths, transition criteria, debug/fault handling, bulk behavior, execution context, and formal Approval Process semantics.

• Choosing Flow automatically when a narrow native assignment, auto-response, or escalation feature already owns the requirement.

• Match the narrowest tool to the job.

Agentforce administration is bounded configuration, not unrestricted AI access. Topics/subagents define jobs, instructions shape behavior, actions and permissions define what the agent can do, grounding defines approved knowledge, and versions/testing provide operational control. Simulate before Live Test when side effects matter, and use traces to diagnose routing, variables, actions, and latency.

• Giving the agent broad data or action access because a prompt says not to misuse it.

• Never treat prompt instructions as a security boundary.