Passing the Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II MCQ Exam

Passing the Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II MCQ Exam

 

Yabba Dabba Doo!

I have an immense joy to let the world know that I have successfully cleared the Salesforce platform developer II MCQ Exam (Level 1) and I would like to share my preparation and the test experience for this certification. Hope this will be useful for those who are preparing for this certification.

Overnight success is a myth, over the course of 5 months I spent my off-hours working through the suggested materials in the Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II study guide and then crossed my fingers and took the exam. I wanted to share my experience with you guys since this exam is a bit of a mystery. So in this post, I am sharing my experience and links about various topics from study guide on Salesforce Platform Developer II certification(Level 1).

[Update] : This exam is the prerequisite to the Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II assignment 

[Update] : If you preparing for Domain Architect certifications, please click here.

About the Certification

The Salesforce.com specialized Platform Developer exam is an advanced developer credential. Platform Developer exam examines your skills, ability, and deep understanding needed to develop custom applications utilizing programmatic aptitude. Most of the questions would revolve around Visualforce, APEX, Triggers, Governance rules, code syntax, Security, and Lightning.

Audience description

Before I list down the various topics from which you can expect questions, let me point out the requirements a candidate should possess:

 

           • Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I credential
           • Three +  years of experience as a salesforce developer
           • At least two years of hands-on experience on the Force.com customization.
           • Strong knowledge of Apex and Visualforce.

Firstly, DO NOT even think of endeavoring this exam without hands-on programming experience on the SFDC platform. It will be an extremely uphill battle to pass (you will not find any dumps for last minute preparation) and it’s very illogical as well if you think about it. This certification is for experienced developers who have at least 2 years of development experience with Salesforce.

Preparation

“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” 

So what I am trying to convey by above quote is ‘You have to be focused when you are preparing for this certification and you should never, ever give up and you should always keep learning’

You might already have strong experience with development on Salesforce platform but you may not have worked in every area certification is looking for. Even I had been working on Salesforce for more than 3 years, there were certain topics I needed to read through more than once.Salesforce already has documents on each specific topic so if you study and practically try it in your developer org it’s going to be straight forward for you to clear this exam.

There are both scenario based questions as well as code snippet based questions. Most of the code snippet based questions were tricky and which involves many twists, obviously as it’s advance developer exam so you shouldn’t be expecting fairly straightforward questions without twists.

What to study?

The two main and I would say must resources for this exam are the APEX developer’s guide and the Visualforce developer’s guide. It will take a LOT of time to go through both of these but mark my words, its worth. I personally preferred guides as compared to partner portal videos and focused on a subset of the important materials from these guides. Old 501 videos are still helpful in learning the concepts.

Below are topics and its related links ( I can understand that list is quite long 😛 but frankly, I tried my best to highlight all the details/preparation material needed to clear the exam),

☁  APEX developer’s guide

☁  Visualforce developer’s guide

☁  Visualforce Performance Best Practices 

☁  Lightning Design System Introduction

☁  Lightning Components

☁  Governors and Limits

☁  Order of Execution

☁  Dynamic Apex

☁  SSO (Single Sign-On)

☁  Connect API – Chatter in Apex

☁  Integration: SOAP API and REST API

☁  Exposing Apex Methods as SOAP Web Services

☁  Apex Test class best practice & Test classes for SOAP and REST using the Mock classes

☁  Effective use of Developer console

☁  Field History tracking

☁  Asynchronous Apex

☁  Metadata API

☁  Developer Best Practices Checklist

☁  Introduction to Web service Callouts & Remote site Setting

☁  Passing Data to a Flow Using the Process.Plugin Interface

☁  @InvocableMethod Annotation

☁  Data Security & Apex Managed Sharing

☁  Salesforce1 Reporting REST API Developer Guide

☁  All about Custom Components

☁  Visual Workflow Guide

☁  Salesforce Development Lifecycle Guide

☁  Roll Up Summary Fields Consideration

☁  Salesforce Standard Features with Apex

☁  Advanced Currency Management (Dated Exchange Rates)

☁  Compound Fields

☁  Implications of Enabling Multiple Currencies

☁  Streaming API

☁  External ID and Unique ID

☁  Create Custom Data Sets

☁  Process Builder

☁  Debug Logs

☁ Make Long-Running Callouts from a Visualforce Page – Continuation Class

What is the best way to revise?

The best way to revise all you learned is by reminding yourself to apply best practices and learnings to day to day coding skills.

Pro Tips:

1. On the off chance that you stall out, attempt to figure out from the appropriate responses option and coordinate it back to the stream of code to see which alternative is an ideal choice for the given question.
2. Always try to eliminate options.
3. During exam try to read the question properly because sometimes you might see multiple possibilities but based on scenario there might be some requirement where specific option doesn’t fit.
4. Prepare your own notes, this will help you for revising the concept faster.

Kindly don’t request specifics on the exam questions, as I don’t have any questions related material and this would also breach the test taker agreement.

What Next?

This exam is the prerequisite to the Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II assignment, so I am waiting for assignment to start! Be sure folks, I will keep you posted!

[Update] Yippeee, I have successfully cleared the assignment and earned the Advance developer (Platform Developer II) credential. All the assignment related tips and techniques are available Here.  

Good luck folks and feel free to tweet me @JitenJoysar if you have any questions! That’s it for this post, See you in next blog

Thank you!