How to succeed in the Platform App Builder Salesforce Certification exam

When you’re looking to complete your Salesforce certification, you might need some help structuring your study. If someone can help you understand where to start, what to study and how to study, you’ll have half the job done when starting.

Studying has never been one of my strengths, as I tend to explore the world while doing so. Thus, throughout my academic life I wrote a mental list of what not to do when I want to be successful at an exam, and for my first Salesforce Certification, Salesforce Platform App Builder, it was no different.

By reading this article, you will know how I studied for my Platform App Builder Certification exam and get some tips that assure your success during this journey.

Here’s the table of contents for this article:

1. My study journey – an overview
2. Highlight your weaknesses and strenghts
3. Working on your weaknesses
   1. Salesforce resources
   2. Other online resources
4. Salesforce certification exams are your best friend
   1. Online proctoring
5. Schedule your exam and shine

My study journey – an overview

Across the internet, you may find universal study guides and miracle solutions. However, I am living proof that there is no such thing. Each person has a unique way of studying – some prefer to read, whereas others write everything down, and some may like to do both. For the Platform App Builder Exam, I started things off by understanding my strengths and weaknesses. Then, according with the weights of the topics I started working on my weaknesses until they became strengths. Finally, I did some practice exams and scheduled the final exam.

Highlight your weaknesses and strengths

To identify what I knew and what I needed to work on, I had to go through the Platform App Builder Exam Outline. Since every Salesforce Certification covers not one but several topics with different weights, knowing the outline of your exam is one of the most relevant steps you must take first.

Just by reading the guide, I identified some areas that I needed to work on. However, to have a clearer picture of my knowledge, I did a practice exam and listed all my questions. Taking a mock exam at the beginning of your journey is also a great thing to do: it will make you aware of the type of questions you will found and will help you guide your study.

Working on your weaknesses

Before improving your knowledge in Salesforce, you must be aware that sometimes you’ll be asked about Salesforce specifications, for example, platform limits and licenses, which are topics you usually do not have any contact with, in your work life. Having said that, there are several ways to increase your knowledge in Salesforce:

• The most important one for me is to work on real projects. I cannot stress this enough, the final exam is composed by specific Use Cases, therefore, if you have some daily work experience in Salesforce it will be easier for you to understand the request and the best way to sort it out.

Salesforce Certification Resources

Salesforce itself provides several ways to learn:

• Trailhead – At this point, you have certainly heard of this innovative Salesforce Academy. You can search for specific Modules, Projects and even work hard on Superbadges. Specifically, for the App Builder exam, you can follow along with the Platform App Builder Trailmix, which will help you organize your thoughts.
• Salesforce Documentation – here is where you go to learn more in-depth about specific functionalities. It is a complete handbook about Salesforce specifications, basically like the Salesforce bible.
• Trailblazer Community – If like me, you find it fascinating to learn with others, this is the right place for you, where trailblazers from all over the world help each other solving issues they encounter while working with Salesforce. Someone has likely had the same issues you are facing, so don’t be afraid to ask.

Other Online Resources

FocusOnForce – This is a paid platform and I know what you are thinking: ‘why should I pay if the internet is a vast free world?’. Fair enough, here are some thoughts about it:

• In this platform, you can buy Study Guides or Exams. The Study Guides cover all exam topics in detail with an easy-to-read and very accurate method. The Exams are the holy grail, FocusOnForce provides different types of exams: Topic Exams, which are exams with specific questions for each topic; 5 Practice Exams, that mimic the final exam you will take; Question Bank Exam;
• Is free a synonym of good quality? No, it is not most of the time. There are reliable free resources, however, one can never know without prior knowledge of a certain subject;
• The price of each exam guide or exam for each certification is 19$ which is not that much considering what it offers;
• There are other paid resources such as Udemy, which, in my opinion, are not as good as FocusOnForce, since they are only lectures about Salesforce.

You can also search on the internet, as I surely did, and find other resources. If you search for “Salesforce App Builder Free Dumps” you will see several sites with flashcards with App Builder questions. In my opinion, simplilearn and Quizlet have very good questions with complete explanations for each answer.

A wise word of advice: Be cautious when using free resources. They can contain imprecisions that will make you doubt your thinking capacity (yes, it certainly happened to me). These are a good option when you have studied every topic, thereafter you will be able to correct every flashcard that may be wrong and it will also boost your trust in yourself.

Salesforce certification exams are your best friend

Probably, after this subtitle you may find yourself wondering why you are reading this article, do not give up, I am with you! What I want you to know is that there is nothing better than to study for your Salesforce Platform App Builder certification with mock exams. Through exams at the end of the study journey, you will be able to understand if there is something you are missing or otherwise if you are ready. Using FocusOnForce (I swear I have no shares on this platform), or other resources you find, you can prepare yourself for the exam by mimicking the condition of the exam:

• 105 minutes is the duration of the Exam;
• 60 multiple-choice/select is the number of questions of your Exam;
• 63% is the passing score, I am sure you will not need to know this, as you will top your score!

Online Proctoring

As I said earlier this was my first certification, so I have only tried the online proctoring, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as you may have guessed. However, I liked it because it was really practical, you only have to install a software on your computer and turn it on when the date arrives. In this article, Catarina explains it way better than me, so go on, take a look at it!

Note: The rules are always being adapted, so you should also search for recent Salesforce documentation about this subject.

Just a friendly reminder to those that have selective memories such as myself: You have to maintain your Salesforce certification so that they are always updated. You can learn more about this here.