I recently passed my “SalesForce Plat Form Developer I” certification and would like to share my experience. It was one of the best balanced certification exams that i came across.
How did I study ?
I had a limited exposure to Apex and visual force before this exam so i decided to follow up some structured learning . I took Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I Course on udemy. This course is useful for people who are new to salesforce / apex and is very well structured. I watched this course thrice and at the same time i practised all the concepts with instructor.
I didn’t rush to just get the certification , but rather learn it by heart. I followed the trailmix which is available on official page. I tried to go through the official documentation which i think is very helpful. I dedicated min 15 hrs/week study. In total i would say i spent 100+ hours in preparation but i think it’s really up to the person, their experience and personal commitments.
Certification Exam Experience
I took my exam date as soon as i started preparation , so i could stay committed. On the exam day i spent my normal day at office and took exam in the afternoon.
Time is normally not an issue if you plan it. I went through all the questions and answered which i was 100% sure. There were some questions around coding and i think you really need to take a moment before coming to the final answer even if you are sure. I had to change my answer couple of times when i dry run the code so be very careful. I marked those which require review in the second pass. Don’t rush to finish the test but try utilise all the exam time and review as much you can.
Topics and Areas to look for
The test was very balanced with mix level difficulty questions, but i believe you need to have very well understanding of following topics.
- Heroku.
- Governor limits.
- SOQL and SOSL.
- Change sets.
- How SalesForce Map to MVC.
- Triggers and best practices.
- Multitenancy and implications.
- Collections (Sets, Lists, Maps) and their use.
- Cross object formulas and roll up summary.
- Lightning and visual force differences.
- Deployment in same and different orgs.
- Custom Exceptions from creation to catching the inner exception.
- Process Automation especially workflow rules and process builder.
- OOP concepts like Interface, Abstract Classes and access modifiers.
- Master Detail and Look up relationships, when and why to use either?
- Loops (do-while, while) and coding questions around them. Practice a lot of them.
- Standard controller, Custom controller and extensions. Know the scenarios what to use when .
Good luck !