Salesforce.com Certified Administrator Exam was the first exam that I passed about 3.5 years back. Here are some Exam Preparation Notes & Tips for Salesforce.com Admin Certification.

These are just Exam Preparation Notes and a pointer to few of the important topics. If you are preparing for Salesforce.com Certified Administrator Examination you must refer to following:

• Latest Administrator Certification Study Guide at certification.salesforce.com
• Online Administrator Training Material from Salesforce.com. Take the following courses online:
  • Analyze Your Data Your Way with Reports
  • Automating Your Service Cloud
  • Configure Salesforce with Custom Fields
  • Creating Your Salesforce Community
  • Customizing Profiles to Align with Your Business Needs
  • Getting a Head Start with Chatter
  • Managing Data for Administrators
  • Managing Users and Troubleshooting Login Issues
  • Salesforce CRM Content for Administrators
  • Salesforce Mobile
  • Summarize Your Data with Highlights, Charts, and Dashboards

Salesforce.com Certified Administrator Exam Preparation Notes & Tips

Use the following notes / outline to prepare. Cover all the topics listed below.

Organization Setup

• Company Profile
  • Company Information
  • Fiscal Years
  • Business Hours
• Currency Locale
• Multiple Currencies
• Advanced Currency Management
• Understand
  • Default Time Zone
  • Currency Locale
  • Default Locale
  • Default Language
• Fiscal Years
  • Custom fiscal years
• Letterhead and Communication Templates
  

User Setup

• Identify Confirmation
• Logging in through API v/s UI
• Login Hours & Login IP ranges
• Trusted Network
• Methods of application access
  • UI
  • Mobile
  • API
• Information on user record
• Related lists on user page

Global User Interface

• Home Tab
  • Home page components
  • Home Page Layouts

• Global Search
• Apps
• Tabs
• Global User Interface Settings
• Learn UI Settings that an admin can control

• Collapsible sections
• Quick Create
• Hover Details
• Inline Edition
• Lookup Dialogs
• Printable List Views
• Collapsible sidebar
• Related Lists Hover Links
• Floating report headers (report settings)
• Custom sidebar components

Security and Access

• Profile
• What profile controls
• List of standard Profiles
• When to create custom profiles
• Sharing rules
  • Objects that have sharing rules
• Organization wide defaults / Sharing model
• Role hierarchy & hos access is granted through roles
• Record ownerships
• manual sharing
• Public groups & when to use them
• Sales Team, Account Team, Case Team
• Places where Folders are used
• Folder access

Standard and Custom Objects

• Salesforce Applications
• Standard Objects
• Relationships between Objects
• Custom Field / Standard Field
• Standard Fields on a Custom Object
• Types of Custom fields (Data Types)

• All types of fields
• Formula fields
• Roll up summary fields

• Relationships
  • One to Many
  • Many to Many
  • Junction Object
  • Lookup
  • Master Detail

• Special relationships
  • Hierarchical

• Mapping the custom lead fields
• Label standard objects and fields
• Field history tracking
• Dependent picklist
• Page Layout
• List View
• Related List
• Record Types
• Objects that require business process – learn those process

• Lead
• Case
• Opty
• Solutions

• Field level security v/s page layout & visibility
• Custom Object Tab & web Tab

 Sales Cloud Applications

Marketing

• Campaign
• Campaign Hierarchy
• Campaign for existing customers and new prospects
• Associate leads and contacts to campaign
• Use lead queues to manage leads
• lead assignment rules to manage and assign leads
• web to lead
• lead auto response rules
• measure campaign results
• process and effects of converting leads

Sales

• Account Management
• Contact Management
• Opportunity management
  • Opportunity Closed Date
  • Expected revenue
  • Opportunity Stages
• Forecasting
  • Forecast category

Service Cloud Applications

Case

• What is a case
• Case hierarchy
• case queues
• Web to case
• Email to case
• case assignment rules
• Case escalation rules
• case auto response rules
• case management & Business hours
• Support settings

Solutions

• What are solutions
• Associate with a case
• Categories
• Suggested solutions

Portals

• What is available via customer portal & self service portal
• Accessing self service

Community apps

• Ideas
• Answers

Knowledge

Consoles

• Console
• Service Cloud Console

Activity Management

• Tasks V/s Events
• Public Calendars and Resources
• Activity settings
• Multiday Events

Chatter

• What is Chatter
• Chatter Licenses
• When to use Chatter
• Chatter Groups
• Chatter Profiles

Data Management

• Data Migration Tools
• Import Wizards
  • Different Types of Import Wizards
  • When to use Import wizard
  • Importing new records
  • Updating data via import
• Data Loader
  • When to use data loader
  • functions of data loader
  • Upsert
• Mass Update
  • Mass delete
  • Mass transfer records from one owner to other
• Recycle bin
• Export

• Storage in SF
• Data Validation
  • Common Data Validation use Cases
  • When data Validation Rules are enforced

Content and Folder Management

• Salesforce Content
• Folders – where they are
• Folder security
• Content Delivery

Analytics – Reports and Dashboards

• Standard Reports
• Restrictions on Standard reports
• Running a report
• Custom report
• Report types
  • Tabular
  • Summary
  • Matrix
• Custom report Type
• Charts
• Advanced Filters
• Custom summary formula
• Conditional Highlighting
• Printing & exporting reports
• Dashboard
• Dashboard Component types
• Running user

 Workflow Automation

• Workflow rule criteria
  • Three criteria
  • which criteria is not available in time based WF

• Workflow actions
  • Various types of actions
  • Use cases for various actions

• Immediate and Time dependent actions
• Workflow Approval Process
• Workflow Rule V/s Approval process
• Jump start Wizard V/s Standard Wizard
• Routing Approvals

Desktop and Mobile Administration

• Mobile Lite
• Salesforce for outlook
• Outlook profiles

AppExchange

• App Exchange
• Managed Packages
• Installing a Package
• uninstall and Package

Other Topics

• Cloud Computing
• Saas, PaaS, IaaS

Advanced Configuration

• Key Account Management
• Territory Management
• Advanced Currency Management