Salesforce Interview Questions Flashcards
Salesforce
- A customer-facing CRM system
- A Cloud SaaS platform
- Used to record customer details and the org’s interactions with them
- Most popular products are Sales Cloud and Service Cloud
Sales Cloud
- Designed to support businesses with their sales cycle
- Used by orgs to record initial interest from customers (Leads) and follow through a Sales cycle, taking customers through various steps to win their business
- Included with this Cloud:
1. ) Prospecting
2. ) Lead
3. ) Opportunity
4. ) Quoting
5. ) Forecasting
Service Cloud
- Helps orgs with their customer support process
- Designed to support customer service teams from within a business
- Helps agents deal with customer queries, as well as solve issues
- When using this Cloud, customers initiate a support process by e-mailing, calling, or submitting an online form
- Once a case has been created in Salesforce, agents can use features such as a Knowledge base to help find answers to questions, milestones to ensure SLA (Service Level Agreements) are met, as well as features like live chat to talk to customers in real-time
Cloud SaaS Platform
- Stands for “Software-as-a-service”
- Means I can access it through my web browser, as opposed to a desktop application
- Biggest benefits are:
1. ) Cost (don’t need to buy a ton of servers with this type of platform)
2. ) Upgrades (taken care of for me with this platform)
3. ) Mobility (can be accessed from anywhere)
Salesforce Platform
- Formerly known as Force.com
- This enables me to create powerful customizations on top of Salesforce’s products, that allow me to completely tailor the applications to my org’s exact needs
- I can create customizations with clicks, not code
- Allows me to create custom fields and objects to store unique information related to my org
Automation
- One of the most popular customization possibilities in Salesforce
- I can create this to pretty much do anything in Salesforce, update a field, create a record, send an e-mail, etc.
- These types of customizations can end up saving users alot of time
Can I provide an example of a custom App I can build on the Salesforce platform?
- ) An HR application to help internal teams manage jobs and job applicants
- ) A finance system that can track invoices
- ) A goal-setting App that can help managers set targets and goals for their team
Declarative Customizations
Point-and-click; allows non-developers to build powerful customizations by using a wizard to create custom fields, automation, and tables of data
Programmatic Customizations
- Customizations built with code (ex: Apex)
Lightning Development
Salesforce’s UI coding language; can be used to cerate completely custom screen layouts
Can I explain how Salesforce releases work?
- Being a Saas platform, Salesforce delivers updates to my system automatically
- The major releases happen 3 times a year
- Some other, much smaller updates are delivered in between the major releases
Salesforce Lightning Experience
- A new UI released in 2015
- Allows Salesforce Admins to easily control the layout of all pages
- Every single page of this is fully customizable
- I can customize the homepage, record layouts, and create dashboards to suit my specific needs
6 Steps of the Sales Cloud process
- ) Qualify
- ) Discover
- ) Analysis
- ) Proposal
- ) Negotiation
- ) Closed Won (or Lost)
‘Discovery’ phase
- 2nd phase in the Sales Cloud process
- Where the salesperson will find out more about the opportunity
‘Analysis’ phase
- 3rd phase in the Sales Cloud process
- Where the salesperson will find out what kind of product will be suitable for the customer
‘Proposal’ phase
- 4th phase in the Sales Cloud process
- Where the salesperson will present a proposal to the customer, with the suggested product and pricing
‘Negotiation’ phase
- 5th phase of the Sales Cloud process
- Reserved for any negotiations that take place
- This could involve pricing negotiations or contract negotiations
‘Closed Won (or Lost’ phase
- The 6th and final phase of the Sales Cloud process
- Where an option is chosen depending on the outcome of the opportunity
5 Phases of the Service Cloud Process
- ) New
- ) Working
- ) Waiting on Customer
- ) Escalated
- ) Closed
‘New’ Phase
- 1st phase in the Service Cloud process
- Used as a holding stage until a customer service agent picks up the case
‘Working’ Phase
- 2nd phase in the Service Cloud process
- Used when an agent has picked up the case, and is working to solve it
‘Waiting on Customer’ phase
- 3rd phase of the Service Cloud process
- Used once a reply has been sent to a customer
- This could be a question about the issue, or a resolution has been provided
‘Escalated’ Phase
- 4th phase in the Service Cloud process
- May be used if a case needs to be escalated to a more senior team
‘Closed’ Phase
- The 5th and final phase of the Service Cloud process
- This phase is used once the case has been resolved
Object
- A table of data
- Will contain various fields and in turn, these fields contain information like e-mail address, phone number, or company name
- 2 types: Standard and Custom
Standard Objects
- Objects that come out of the box with Salesforce products
- Ex: Accounts, Contacts
Custom Objects
- Objects created by myself
- These are the objects that can be created as my foundation for building custom apps
AppExchange
- Pre-built apps specifically for Salesforce
- Adds additional functionality in Salesforce
How are changes tested in Salesforce before being deployed to Production?
By the use of Sandboxes (important: CHANGES SHOULD NEVER BE MADE IN PRODUCTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Sandboxes
Salesforce feature which replicates my Production configuration, giving me a safe environment to test changes and implement new features
4 Primary Salesforce Editions
- ) Essentials Edition
- ) Professional Edition
- ) Enterprise Edition
- ) Unlimited Edition
Essentials Edition
- Preferred by small businesses
- Ready-to-go platform for small businesses to manage and grow their business effectively
- The businesses can leverage easy-t-use UI and intuitive walkthrough guides to customize and get started with their deployment
Includes:
1.) Customizable Sales Process
2.) Lead Management
3.) Multi-Channel Communication
4.) Full Offline Mobile Functionality
5.) Automated Routing
6.) Email Integration
7.) Ticket Management
8.) AppExchange and many more - Costs $25/month
Professional Edition
- Preferred by small and medium-sized businesses
- Designed for businesses who demand a full-featured CRM functionality to manage their business
- The businesses can conveniently administer their entire sales cycle with with this edition
Includes:
1.) Comprehensive Lead Management
2.) Campaign Management
3.) Mass Emails
4.) Quotes and Orders
5.) Custom Dashboards
6.) Custom Reports
7.) Case Management
8.) Process Builders, and more - Costs $75/month
Enterprise Edition
- Preferred by large and complex businesses
- Additionally helps large businesses to automate their complex business processes using workflow and approvals
- This edition offers advanced customization and management tools to support large-scale deployments
- Additionally, this edition also includes access to Salesforce API’s, so that the businesses can effortlessly integrate with back-office systems
- Includes:
1. ) Territory Management
2. ) Salesforce APIs
3. ) Workflows & Approvals
4. ) Sales Console App
5. ) Advanced Report Types
6. ) Unlimited profiles and roles per org
7. ) Unlimited processes and flows per org
8. ) Lead Registration, and more - Costs $150/month
Unlimited Edition
- Preferred for large businesses (more than 1,000 users)
- Offers access to countless online training, 100+ admin services, and premier support
- With this edition, the businesses can build unlimited custom apps and tabs to tailor Salesforce as per their convenience and business requirements
- This edition presents new levels of platform flexibility to manage and share information on demand
- Additionally, the Admins can gain access to multiple sandboxes for development and testing with this edition
- Includes:
1. ) Developer Pro Sandbox
2. ) Workflow & Approvals
3. ) Web Services API
4. ) Increased Storage Limits
5. ) Unlimited Custom Apps
6. ) Full Mobile Access
7. ) 24*7 Toll-free support - Costs $300/month
Change Sets
- A packaged set of components that can be created in one environment and moved across to another
- Most common way to move changes between environments
Metadata
- Relates to the fields, configurations, code, logic and page layouts that go into building the information architecture and look and feel of your Salesforce environment
- The data that describes other data
Data
Relates to the records that a business relies on, such as Users, Accounts, Contacts, to name a few
Queue
- Holding areas in my CRM, where records wait for a user to pick them up, assign them to an owner, and work on processing them
- Used for record ownership rather than sharing rules
- Available on all custom objects and many standard objects
Salesforce Customer 360
- Suite of products that allows users of its platofrm to see a 360-degree view of their customers
- This means that users of Salesforce can see every interaction with a customer, from the first enquiry through the website, to which products they have bought and what issues or queries they have with their products
- This helps businesses by allowing them to serve their customers better, by knowing everything about them and ensuring the businesses is working off a single source of truth
Profiles
- Controls what a user can DO on the platform
- ALWAYS required
- Controls which objects and fields users can access
- These also determine whether users can create, edit, or delete records
- These also control individual permissions such as “Export Reports”, “Create Dashboard Folders”, or “Modify All Data”
Roles
- Used to control what users can SEE
- Is predominantly about sharing records to users
- These are designed to open up access through a hierarchy so that more senior members of the organization can see more records
- For example, someone at the bottom of the hierarchy, like an Account Executive, might be only able to see their own accounts
- But the VP Sales US would be able to see all accounts owned by individuals below them
Automation Tools
- Designed to be easy to use and enable businesses to automate complex processes
- This, in turn, helps users be more productive, allowing them to focus on revenue-generating activities instead of manual Admin work
- For example, once an Opportunity is closed won, I could easily create automation to create a case, which prompts the customer success team to get in touch with the customer to begin onboarding
- Further examples include Workflow, Process Builder, and Flow
Look-up Relationships
- Loosely-coupled relationship
- Relationship where I can relate records easily to other records in a one-to-many fashion
- Roll-up Summary Fields is NOT available
- Parent record is NOT required when creating a Child record
- Lookup fields are NOT required on the page layout of the detail record
- Standard object record can be on the detail side of a custom object in this type of relationship
- By default, record ownership of Child records is NOT controlled by the Parent
- I CAN have a Child record without a Parent
- I can have a maximum of 40 lookups on an object
- No cascade delete
Master-Detail Relationships
- Tightly coupled relationships; means that a child record CANNOT exist without a parent record, and if a Parent record is deleted, the Child also gets deleted with it
- Allows the Parent record to control Child record attributes such as sharing and visibility
- Whichever security setting I chose for the Parent record, the Child record inherits
- Roll-up Summary field IS available
- Parent record is required in order to save a Child record
- Master-Detail field is ALWAYS required on the page layout of the detail record
- Standard object record CANNOT be a child
- The Parent controls the record ownership of Child records. The Owner field is not available on the detail record in Master-Detail relationship queues, sharing rules, and manual sharing is not possible for detail records as it requires the Owner field
- I CANNOT have a Child record without a Parent
- I can have a maximum of 2 Master Details on an object
- Includes Cascade Delete
Page Layouts
- Determines which fields are displayed to my users on a record
- Controls which fields are visible for a specific record
- These also allow me to add fields, sections, custom buttons and other features
- The “Details” tab contains a lot of the elements that are controlled by this
- Controls the user interface in various ways and can be used in conjunction with each other to create customized experiences for my users
Record Types
- Allows me to create separate kinds of records for each object
- These control the page layouts, picklist values available, and other business logic
- Offers different business processes, picklist values, and page layouts to my users
- For example, one of the most common use cases of these would be to create 2 different sales processes on the Opportunity object. Each with different sales stages and Page Layouts
- This means that this can now apply multiple Page Layouts per object, per user profile
- Controls the user interface in various ways and can be used in conjunction with each other to create customized experiences for my users
3 Tools that Account and Contact information can be imported into Salesforce
- ) Data Loader
- ) Data Import Wizard
- ) Dataloader.io