I passed Salesforce Certified Integration Architecture Designer exam

I have quite good number of years of experience in integration. But, don't be under the impression that it's enough to crack this one. For me, this was toughest one so far. You need solid preparation around the topics - there are huge number of them. To make it easier, there are lot of folks (including me) who have jotted down the topics so that you don't have to.

I will take slightly different approach from my other blogs. I have reference to only 2 blogs this time, but more focus on the topics that I noted down post the exam.

• It's Maceij's blog again. Excellent topic explanation with diagrams. This guy is amazing!
• Gemma did awesome job with this blog, again. She has given crisp and clear explanation, with diagrams. A must read if you are preparing for Integration Designer exam.

Now, coming to the topics, I noted down post the exam. This list quite exhaustive, so take a deep breath... aaaand read on.

• Capabilities of Bulk API - what types of file/format it supports (XML, JSON, CSV), doesn't support base64
• Understand CA-signed & Salesforce client certified - also know what is used for Outbound message
• Know when to use Wave vs external ETL - this is excellent article given in Resource Guide
• Understand what is actionPoller and actionRegion tags
• Know what is allowed inside Test.startTest() & Test.Stop()
• Understand capabilities of Apex Continuation class - also know the difference betwee @future class
• Thoroughly understand Named credentials - where it can be used
• Understand the Integration Design Patterns - read & understand this excellent article/resource - there were good number of questions on this topics
• Salesforce Connect - know the capabilities, what's supported what's not
• Know various options for getting updated records - Data Replication API, getUpdated(), etc.
• Clearly understand the capabilities/features of Enterprise & Partner WSDLs
• Know the difference of ETL & Middleware - know when to use what, also know capabilities of middleware
• Understand usage of workbench
• Know Outbound Messages thoroughly - like others mentioned there were good number of questions around this topic - using Named Credentials, availability in Process Builder
• Understand how Duplicate Management works
• Know Force.com Canvas - again excellent tutorial given in Resource Guide
• MUST go through these 2 video tutorials given in Resource Guide (you should go through all of them, but special shout out to these 2)
• Integrating with Force.com : Security
• Integrating with Force.com Streaming API

Section-wise weightage and # of questions. Do refer to the latest study guide for any change in weightage.

	Weightage	# of questions
Salesforce Integration Testing	10%	6
Enterprise Integration Architecture Concepts	15%	9
Monitoring	5%	3
Salesforce Integration Patterns	17%	10
Integrating with Force.com: Security	15%	9
Salesforce Integration Capabilities	28%	17
Tools	10%	6

May the force be with you. The hands-on experience combined with the study, will definitely make the exam easier for you. All the best :)

I passed Salesforce Certified Development Lifecycle & Deployment Designer exam

After clearing Application Architect track last month, I continued my flow and started preparing for System Architect track. Today I cleared Development Lifecycle & Deployment Designer exam 😄😎

The exam was easiest of all the designer exams for me. My experience helped me big time for this feeling. Though I studied as per the Resource Guide and blogs, I felt due to experience I was able to answer various questions.

Like other blogs I have written, I am not going write in detail for each topic, rather I will point out to the blogs I have referred and the topics I noted post the exam.

• Blog by Gemma. She has done wonderful job in covering the topics with neat explanation, sharing her experience on the exams in each of her blogs.
• Nicholas, in his blog, has given excellent explanation to various topics covered in the exam. Definitely 'worth' reading it 😋
• Development Lifecycle Guide is a MUST read in my opinion. I am guessing it covers majority of the topics. Its a nice refresher too.

Topics I noted post the exam (please refer to Study Guide and read the topics I might have missed):

• Types of sandboxes - there were good number of questions with different scenarios. Pretty straight forward if you know the usage of each type of sandbox
• External objects & Salesforce Connect - know its capabilities, deploying them, reporting on them, etc.
• Continuous Integration - best practices around branching, know how it works
• Change Sets - what happens during deployment (what gets locked)
• Difference in Waterfall & Agile methodologies
• Tools/matrices - RTM, RACI - if you are part of project management/planning its easy peasy, otherwise read and understand about it
• Various types of testing and when to use it - stress testing, load testing, performance testing
• Usage of Apex Hammer.

Section-wise weightage and # of questions. Do refer to the latest study guide for any change in weightage.

	Weightage	# of questions
Metadata API	10%	6
CI Techniques	8%	5
Methodology Tools	3%	2
Governance	17%	10
Risk Identification and Mitigation	12%	7
Understanding Packages	3%	2
Testing	10%	6
Application Lifecycle Management	17%	10
Environments	15%	9
Change Sets	5%	3

All the best :)

I am Salesforce Certified Application Architect

By clearing Sharing & Visibility Designer exam, I became certified Application Architect. Of course I am a Certified Platform Developer 1 & Platform App Builder (these are needed to be awarded as an Application Architect, see diagram below).

http://certification.salesforce.com/architectoverview

This is one of my great achievements. I definitely enjoyed preparing for these exams, learnt lots of new stuff. The thought of continuing this 'flow' came to me and I decided to study for the other track - System Architect. Watch out for my next posts on how I passed 😉

I have written 2 separate blogs on how I passed the 2 designer exams:

• I passed Salesforce Certified Data Architecture & Management Designer
• I passed Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer

Instead of rewriting the topics and explaining them again, I have given the blogs which have these information. No reinventing the wheel please!

If you are not ready for the exams, I (strongly) suggest you all to go through this wonderful thing called Resource Guide for each of these exams. Salesforce team has done a fantastic job of putting together all the helpful resources in one PDF. Apart from links to articles and videos, it also has a practice material to ensure you get hands-on experience. How cool is that?

I passed Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer

Next up, in my journey to Application Architect, is Sharing & Visibility Designer. The whole topic of security/sharing is very dear to me. The exam had lot of scenario based questions and confusing options/answers. Though the topic is very close and I was very confident, it wasn't so easy for me. Lot of other folks said that it was one of the easiest. May be, they got the easier set of questions 😋😉

Like my previous post on Data Architecture & Management Designer, I will give you various blogs that I went through and various topics that I noted post the exam.

• How to Prepare For and PASS Sharing and Visibility Designer Exam by Maciej, by now my go to blog for designer exams.
• Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer Exam Preparation by Sathish. His post has cross posts/reference to Maciej' and Santanu's blog too.
• Prepare for Salesforce ‘Sharing and Visibility Designer’ Exam by Binod.
• Tips for passing Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer by Santanu.
• I highly recommend watching these 2 webinars:
• Secure Development on the Salesforce Platform - Part 1
• Secure Development on the Salesforce Platform - Part 2
• Glanced over this quizlet for revision.

Topics I noted down post the exam:

• Use cases for Apex Managed Sharing, also what happens when owner changes
• Territory Management - Uses of Type, Type Priority, Hierarchy, Model State
• Capabilities of Platform Shield
• Usage of Crypto class
• With Sharing keyword - what is enforced. Using Schema.DescribeSObjectResult and  Schema.DescribeFieldResult to enforce/check
• Cross-site Script (XSS)
• Parallel Sharing Rule, Defer Sharing Calculations, Granular Locking - scenarios on when to use what
• runAs() usages
• Best practices for storing passwords (Named Credentials, Protected Custom Setting, etc.)
• Report sharing options
• Options available for Filtering and sharing list view
• Usages of External OWD.

Section-wise weightage and # of questions. Do refer to the latest study guide for any change in weightage.

	Weightage	# of questions
Performance	8%	5
Programmatic Sharing	25%	15
Declarative Sharing	67%	40

The exam was fantastic opportunity to know some of the new topics and to strengthen the current knowledge.

All the best :)

I passed Salesforce Certified Data Architecture & Management Designer

It was a while since I took any certifications. The great promotion on Designer exams attracted and I decided to go for it.

I decided to go for Application Architect track, since I believe its much easier and wanted to ensure I get 2 certs free ;)

http://certification.salesforce.com/architectoverview

First up, Data Architecture and Management Designer. I cleared it yesterday. Yay!

As always I referred to the study guide for understanding the weightage and various topics covered, and go through blogs to learn from the experience.

Below are the blogs that I referred apart from thoroughly going through Resource Guide.

• I am super impressed by the level of details and research Maciej has done in each of his blogs. His blog on Data Architecture & Management Designer is excellent.
• Gemma is awesome. All her blogs have been BIG help in all my designer certs. Here is her superb blog.
• She even created a Trailmix with great collection of Trailhead modules.
• As a revision, I went through this Quizlet.

Here are some of the topics that I have noted down post the exam:

• Working with Large Data Volume (LDV)
• Skinny Tables
• Indexes
• Mashups
• Defer Sharing Recalculation
• Bulk API - Serial & Parallel modes
• PK Chunking
• Duplicate Management
• Data.com Clean
• Advantage of Custom Metadata over Custom Settings
• Data Governance & Stewardship
• Measuring data quality - Age, Completeness, Usage, Accuracy, Consistency, Duplication.

Section-wise weightage and # of questions. This kind of helped me to go deeper into the each of sections which had more number of questions. Do refer to the latest study guide for any change in weightage.

	Weightage	# of questions
Data Modeling	20%	12
Data Governance	7%	4
Data Archiving	10%	6
Data Migration	10%	6
Metadata Management	7%	4
BI, Reporting & Analytics	10%	6
Performance Tuning	11%	7
MDM	10%	6
Conceptual Design	15%	9

I strongly believe you need to have good amount of experience along with studying these topics, as the questions are scenario based (and our favourite UC needs help).

All the best and do let me know if you need help.

Omni-channel Considerations

Omni-Channel in Salesforce is one of the awesome point-and-click feature which saves lots of coding and maintenance for us, Salesforce Dev/Admins. The blog is inspired by my session at Salesforce Dev Group, Bangalore. You can check out the slides I used during the session here.

This article concentrates on Considerations or Limitations, not about setting up or anything else. I have suggested and implemented in couple of projects for my clients, mainly because the considerations were not roadblocks. Considering how much time it would take to implement using custom solution, these considerations were ignorable for me. Also Spring'17 release had great feature announced - Omni-Channel Supervisor Tab, which also helped in reducing the effort required for creating multiple reports and dashboards (the feature does much more than that).

Image credit - Summer'15 Release Notes

If you are not familiar with Omni-Channel, NOW is the time. Learn more about it from the best place to learn Salesforce - Trailhead - there is a module for this. I highly recommend completing the module and practicing it for better understanding. Trust me it is very easy.

For step-by-step instructions and deep-dive, please check the Help Article.

Now… Assuming you know about Omni-Channel, let me come to the agenda of the blog - Considerations. I have listed them below. Please note that these are applicable as on today, 7 April 2017 (you know the speed of Salesforce, they would have added the feature while you are reading this).

• Deployment - This is probably the biggest consideration. You cannot deploy the related configs using Change Set or Eclipse; I am sure even ANT Migration doesn't support. What does this means is that, you have to manually create the settings/configs in the org.
• Salesforce Console - Omni-Channel doesn’t work with normal Salesforce pages. To work with Omni-Channel you need to have a Console app created. You might need to buy Salesforce Console as add-on feature if your edition doesn’t include it.
• CTI Support - Omni-Channel cannot assign the cases originating from Phone/CTI. It means that in the console you will have 2 component - one for Omni-Channel and another for CTI/SoftPhone. Slight inconvenience, I know :)
• Capacity - There are 2 considerations:
• Work Item (a case, lead, etc.) is considered to be closed when the tab is closed NOT when the Case is closed (Status=Closed). When the agent closes the tab, his/her overall load is reduced, so they would be assigned with new work item.
• The overall capacity or availability of the agent is calculated based on the work items that were assigned through Omni-Channel. In other words, if a case was assigned to an agent through a Trigger/Flow Definition/Workflow Rule, Omni-Channel will not adjust the overall capacity since it did not assign. Did you say, selfish? Currently, true!
• Supported objects - Omni-Channel is applicable to all the objects which can have Queues. So Account or Opportunity, for example, cannot be routed using Omni-Channel.
• Live Agent - There are number of differences how Live Agent handles the work item vs Omni-Channel. Please glance through the help article for details.
• SOAP API - Oh yes, this is kind of positive consideration. You can expand the Omni-Channel's capabilities using the SOAP API. Check out the Omni-Channel Developer's Guide.

One of the best way to check the limitation is to check the ideas. I myself have posted couple of ideas, here, here.

These are the various considerations that I have come across while implementing Omni-Channel. It will be great if you can comment on other considerations that I have missed.

As always, suggestions/feedback are most welcome.

Jaipur Dev Fest (JDF) for me

The highly anticipated, one of the most awaited event is over. I am glad and fortunate to be part of the history by attending as well as speaking at this event. This blog is about my experience attending Jaipur Dev Fest or JDF 2017.

What?

JDF is India's first-ever community led Salesforce event in India. There are many such events across the world - Midwest Dreamin', Tahoe Dreamin', London's Calling to name few. Check this blog by Apttus which has details about the various events happening in 2017 (of course it doesn’t have all the events but it will give idea about events happening across the world).

Why?

As mentioned above there are so many community led events happening throughout the world. India has 2nd largest Salesforce professionals and there was no community event in India!
The idea is not just to do what others do, but to inspire, educate, collaborate and spread about Salesforce, just like all other community events.

Who?

The core team consists of awesome Indian MVPs and experts from Jaipur - Abhinav Gupta, Ankit Arora, Bhawani Sharma, Durgesh Dhoot, Gaurav Kheterpal. There were 38+ awesome volunteers too, who were key in the success of the event.

How was the experience for me?

Amazing! The event was organized very neatly. Starting from the pre-event dinner conducted for speakers, registration, keynote, sessions, lunch, panel discussions, after party, everything was well organized and was of great quality. The sleepless nights of the organizers and volunteers was very evident since the overall event was flawless and super fun.

The WIT had good percentage of overall session. There was WIT Panel Discussion too which included some entrepreneurs and WIT Leaders. The discussion and the ladies were (are) very energetic, inspiring and delivered powerful message.

Networking was much more friendly and warm. I met most of the India Salesforce Community leaders who I knew through Twitter and other online media. These folks are actually more energetic and creative than what they are in Twitter. Also met many students who sought guidance from their carrier perspective - the kids are lot smarter than we think! It was pleasure discussing with international delegates and our own Salesforce India team members. Where else do you get chance to meet?

Do checkout the Twitter and Facebook handles/pages to get a feel about the event. There are multiple Live videos posted by various attendees. Also check hashtag #JDF17 in Twitter & Facebook.

Psst.. do check the crazy after party dance. We danced as if we were the world's craziest dancers :P

When I heard about JDF announcement I was sure that I will attend; if not as a speaker as a volunteer or attendee. I am glad that my submission was selected and I presented on Apex Design Patterns.

The response was overwhelming. The hall was full and people were standing behind the last row! I got good feedback and inputs from some of the experienced folks who were leading and practicing design patterns in their organizations. This is more than what any presenter wishes for.

Some tweets about my session:

Great session #Apex #designpatterns by @goabhigo. A must for any #development. We @Zen4orce are stern followers of #designpatterns #JDF17

— Jina Chetia (@JinaChetia) April 1, 2017

FullHouse @ #Nahargarh in #JDF17. Every @SalesforceDevs wants to know more about Apex Design Patterns. @goabhigo is a #Rockstar. pic.twitter.com/eHTKl1TAwZ

— Durgesh Dhoot (@ddurgesh28) April 1, 2017

Full house for @goabhigo session #JDF17 Great knowledge pic.twitter.com/oOBcAVKSRS

— Vipul Goel ☁ (@vipulgoel19) April 1, 2017

kick start on apex design patterns by @goabhigo must attend this @jaipurdevfest #JDF17 pic.twitter.com/3RmXFmvYg6

— M U S T A F A (@MustafaJhabua) April 1, 2017

I am grateful to Andrew Fawcett for all the amazing things he does to the community. I cannot imagine my session without his blogs. Keir Bowden, my mentor, who always believed and encouraged me.

Thank you JDF. You made many of us stronger and proved that Salesforce Community in India is very strong.