Salesforce Admin Interview Questions and Answers

Chapter 1: Cloud Computing

1. What do you understand by the term cloud computing?

Answer: If you know earlier big companies used to maintain their servers which were

providing the data storage and computing resources which were very costly to maintain,

moreover not necessarily each company was utilizing their servers to fullest or if they

wanted to expand the computing power it was not an easy task.

Cloud computing is like the on-demand availability of computer system resources, data

storage, and computing power without being managed by the user utilizing them. And it’s

effortless to increase or decrease the resources you want for yourself. Example AWS.

2. Are virtualization and cloud computing the same thing?

Answer: No, they are not the same thing; in exact words, virtualization is the

technology while cloud computing is a methodology.

To generate multiple simulated environments from a single piece of the underlying

hardware.

Cloud computing is a set of approaches to deliver data storage, computation power,

infrastructure, etc., to users on-demand across any network.

3. What is PaaS? Is Salesforce a PaaS or SaaS?

Answer: Platform as a service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that

allow customers to develop, run applications without the complexity of building and

maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching

the application(s);

Salesforce is both PaaS and SaaS, and it is SaaS as Salesforce provides you with a set of

software offered in an on-demand model.

PaaS as Salesforce Lightning Platform’s built-in features and functionality take care of

back-end concerns such as security, infrastructure, and data integration to focus on

building only apps rather than worrying about other things.

4. What is a public cloud [Salesforce interview questions and answers]?

Answer: Public Cloud – In simple terms, it’s a hosting solution where your data is stored in

the provider’s data center. He is accountable for maintaining and manage the data

center and is being shared with other organizations. Salesforce is a public cloud.

Top Salesforce Admin Interview Questions and Answers

5. What is a private cloud?

Answer: These reside on a company infrastructure only; the company is responsible for

maintaining and upgrading it over time and is not shared between any other organization.

Chapter 2: Salesforce & CRM Basics

6. What is CRM?

Answer: Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing your

firm’s relationships and interactions with potential customers. The goal is to improve

business relationships. A CRM willing companies to stay connected to customers,

streamline processes, and improve profitability.

7. What are a few other software and apart from Salesforce providing CRM

software?

Answer: Microsoft CRM, Sugar CRM, Zoho CRM, Oracle CRM

8. How many times does Salesforce release updates every year?

Answer: Salesforce releases updates three times a year.

They are called Spring, Summer, and Winter.

9. What are different Salesforce Editions? Why are there so many editions?

Answer: Salesforce provides bundles of features and services, each geared toward specific

business needs. These bundles, called editions, share a look and feel but vary by

functionality and pricing. For example, Custom fields allowed per object are different in

each edition. In the Enterprise edition, we can create up to 500 fields per object, while in

the unlimited edition, we can create 800.

Salesforce comes in these editions: Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and

Developer Editions.

Chapter 3: Force.com & Environments

10. What is the difference between Salesforce.com and Force.com?

Answer: Salesforce.com is built over Force.com only; force.com allows you to develop your

custom applications, while Salesforce.com is a set of pre-packaged solutions such as sales

and service cloud.

Salesforce.com is SaaS, while force.com is PaaS.

11.

12. What is Database.com?

Answer: Database.com is Salesforce’s primary enterprise

that is built to store data on the cloud. It is a massive data storage platform. Users

can securely stash a vast number of records. Create transactions with speedy

response times. Retrieve records for developing apps.

13. What are the different types of sandboxes available in Salesforce, and what

are their uses?

Answer: There are four types of sandboxes in Salesforce, namely –

Developer Sandbox – This is a basic sandbox-provided Salesforce with all the

metadata from the production environment, but no data copied over, and for

development will use it.

Developer Pro Sandbox – They are a better version of developer sandbox only;

they come with more storage than developer sandbox, but even here, only moving

the production metadata.

Partial Copy Sandbox – This type of sandbox not only allows you to copy metadata

rather than some part of live data as well. But this is also usually used as SIT

environment where you can test your integration. Other functionality with data

similar to actual live data.

Full Sandbox: This is a replica of the production environment, usually used to test

functionalities and give user training thoroughly.

14. What is work.com?

Answer: Work.com is a Salesforce product that targets employee engagement in

three areas:

1) Alignment of the team and personal goals with business goals,

2) Motivation through public recognition, and

3) Real-time performance feedback.

4) Employees to meet goals through a system

Chapter 4: Data Modelling

14. What is the difference between Standard and Custom objects?

Answer: Standard objects which are default set in with Salesforce. Examples are

Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity.

Custom objects are when you create information that’s specific to the industry. For

example, your business may want to create a custom property object which will

store all the information related to real estate that you want to sell.

15. What is an app in Salesforce [Scenario based Salesforce interview Questions]?

Answer: An App in Salesforce is nothing but a container containing the app’s name,

a logo, and a set of ordered tabs.

Remember, all the metadata, such as your objects, apex classes, triggers, etc., have

nothing to do with an app.

App just allows you to group all the things that help you achieve a flow.

For example, the Sales app(Standard application ) Contains a tab for the object that

is part of Sales flow like Account, Contact, Opportunity, Lead, Order, etc.

16. What are the different types of object relationships available in Salesforce?

Answer: We have two types of relationship in Salesforce, namely :

Master-Detail:

It’s a tightly coupled relationship that allows you to connect one object to another in

one too many fashions.

Lookup:

Its a loosely coupled relationship that allows you to connect one object to another in

one too many fashions

Self Relationship:

Object creation from a relationship is possible, but it must be a lookup relationship.

Parent account field on Account that allows us to choose an account as a parent

account of an existing one.

Hierarchical Relationship:

Available only for the user object. Use a lookup field to associate users. It does not

indirectly or directly points to itself. One can create a custom hierarchical

relationship field to store every user’s direct manager; this is an example.

Many to Many Relationship:

You can use master-detail relationships to model many-to-many relationships

between any two objects. A many-to-many relationship allows each record of one

object to link to multiple records from another object and vice versa. To create many

relationships, you use a junction object that acts as detail for both master objects;

for example, price book entry is a junction object in standard objects between

product and price book.

External Lookup Relationship:

It links a child’s Standard, Custom, or External object to a parent External object. The

Default External Id field on the parent external object matched against the external

lookup relationship field. External Column Name to map the child External lookup

field.

Indirect Lookup Relationship:

It links a child’s External object to a parent Standard or Custom object. External child

object’s indirect lookup relationship field mapped to custom unique + external Id on

the parent object.

17. Can we stop users from deleting the record using a validation rule?

Answer: No, we cannot.

18. Is it possible to fire a validation rule only when a record is being inserted and

not being updated?

Answer: Yes, we can use the keyword ISNEW() to restrict validation to fire only in

case of insertion.

19. Can we rollup summary field from Contact to Account?

Answer: No, we can’t as contacts are not in a master-detail relationship with

accounts. It’s a special relationship that allows cascade delete, but contacts can also

exist without an account.

20. Can a standard object be on the detail side of a relationship?

Answer: No

21. Can I convert a lookup relationship to master detail?

Answer: Yes, you can only if either all the records have values populated for the

parent object or there are no records at all.

22. Can we convert the master-detail relationship to lookup?

Answer: Yes, if there are no rollup summaries defined on a parent object

23. Can I use formula fields as filter criteria while defining rollup summaries

fields?

Answer: No

24. Does a change in rollup summary fields also fire trigger?

Ans: Yes

25. What is a schema builder?

Answer: Schema Builder provides a dynamic environment for viewing, modifying all

the objects and relationships in-app. It dramatically simplifies the task of designing,

implementing, and changing your data model or schema. Schema Builder is enabled

by default.

26. Can you change the value formula field on the record?

Answer: No formula fields are read-only fields.

27. What is a dependent picklist?

Answer: Dependent picklist becomes active once a value is chosen on a controlling

field.

We can map a value or set of values allowed for a particular value on a controlling

field.

For example, When choosing your location, you first select a country, then

depending on your country, the second picklist, i.e., the state, gets enabled, then

depending on your state, you choose your city.

28. What fields can be made dependent?

Answer: Custom picklist, Multi-Picklist can be marked as dependent fields.

29. What is the difference between ISNULL and ISBLANK?

Answer: ISBLANK has the same functionality as ISNULL but also supports text fields

as text fields are never null; hence using ISNULL on text fields would always return

false while is blank returns T or F depending on if the field is empty or not.

30. Can we convert formula fields into any other data type?

Answer: No, it’s not allowed.

31. Can we mark standard fields as dependent fields?

Answer: No

32. Can we define checkbox and multi-select fields as controlling fields?

Answer: No, we can’t define multi-select as the controlling field, but we can define

the checkbox as the controlling field.

Chapter 5: UI Customization

33. What is the page layout in Salesforce?

Answer: Page layouts control the layout and organization of buttons, fields, related

lists on object record pages, and custom links. Use them to customize the content of

record pages visible to your users. Page layout determines which fields are visible,

read-only, and required.

34. Can we have multiple page layouts defined for the same record type?

Answer: Yes, we can; every user sees a particular layout depending on record type

and profile combination.

35. What are compact layouts?

Answer: Compact layout is the one shown in the highlight panel when we open any

record. We can add only ten fields in the compact layout.

36. Have you seen the master record type on an object? What do you understand

about it?

Answer: Yes, an object has no custom record types defined. The admin can see a

master record type which is just a placeholder, for example, while assigning page

layouts, etc.

Note: Master record type does not have record type id associated with it. Moreover,

once a custom record type is defined, the master record type is no more available.

37. What is the search layout, and how do we see it?

Answer: Search layout is the search results fields displayed on the screen after

searching any record in global search in Salesforce. We can create different search

layouts for other profiles. Moreover, we can only add ten fields in search layouts.

38. What are object-specific actions?

Answer: Object-specific actions let users quickly create or update records, log calls,

send emails, and more in the context of a particular object.

39. Can you call an LWC component from quick action?

Answer: Yes

40. Can you call flows from object-specific actions and global actions?

Answer: We can call flows only from object-specific actions and not from global

actions; moreover, you can only call those flows which include screens

41. What are global actions, and how are they different from object-specific

actions?

Answer: Global create actions let users create object records; unlike object-specific

actions, there’s no automatic relationship between the record created and any other

record. You can add global actions to page layouts for the home page, the Chatter

tab, Chatter groups, and record detail pages.

42. Are the custom actions also available in Salesforce 1 automatically?

Answer: Yes

Chapter 6: Data Management

43. What is the difference between 15 digit and 18 digit record ID?

Answer: 15 Digit record ID is case sensitive, used on UI, while 18 digit record ID is a

case insensitive record ID referenced through API.

44. How can we convert a 15 digit record ID to 18 digits and vice versa in the

formula field?

Answer: We can use the CASESAFEID () function in the formula field to convert 15

digits to 18 digits in the formula field and to convert 18 digits to 15 digits, we can just

remove the last three digits.

45. What is an external ID?

Answer: The ‘External ID’ field is used to reference an ID from another external

system. External IDs are searchable in Salesforce, and you can also use the upsert

API call with the External ID to refer to records when making changes via Data

Loader.

We can make Text, Email, Number, AutoNumber as external Id fields.

46. Can we have the same external Id on multiple records?

Answer: Yes, you can; ideally, having the same external ID on multiple records is not

recommended, but the system will not stop you from saving the same external id on

multiple records unless you mark a unique checkbox on the field.

47. What are unique fields | Latest Salesforce Admin exam guide interview

Questions?

Answer: If checked on fields, it prevents you from putting the same value on multiple

records.

The critical thing to remember is custom fields marked as Unique count against an object’s

limit of 25 External ID fields.

48. What is the use of the action “Export All” in the data loader?

Answer: When you use export, you can extract/export all records, including the records in

the Recycle Bin.

Chapter 7: Data Security

49. What is OWD?

Answer: Organization-Wide Defaults(OWD) are used to control access for any

object. While setting OWD for a particular object, we also define whether access is

provided within the role hierarchy or not.

We have majorly three levels of access controls. Private Public read-only Public

Read/Write

50. Can we disable access via role hierarchy?

Answer: Yes, we can for custom objects but not for standard objects.

51. What is a public group?

Answer: Public group consists of users, roles, or “roles and subordinates.” Sharing rule is

defined using public groups. Records that match certain conditions allocated to users in

public groups through Sharing Rules.

52. What is the difference between a public group and a Queue?

Answer: Major difference between Queue and the public group is queues are used

as owners of records to share workload while groups are used for security, i.e., to

open up access for a set of users.

53. Who can manually share the record?

Answer: Record Owner, Any user above the role hierarchy or Administrator, can manually

share the record.

54. When is the button to share the record manually available?

Answer: Button is available only when OWD is not a public read-write, plus you

should have access to share the record.

55. Can we create a user without a role and profile?

Answer: Profile is mandatory while creating the user, while the role can be left

blank.

56. How is the access of detail objects in the case of master relationship

controlled?

Answer: OWD of the child is controlled by the parent, and the parent object’s access

to the detail object is controlled only; while defining the relationship, you select

either option to define the access.

If a user has minimum read access on the parent record, they can edit the child

record.

They can edit the child record, If the user has edit access on the parent record only.

Remember, users also need to have access at the profile level to edit the object.

57. What is public read-write transfer available on specific objects in OWD?

Answer: This option is available only for the case and lead objects, along with users

being able to read and write the record. They can also transfer ownership of the

record depending on whether they have appropriate access to the profile.

58. What will happen to child records if we delete a parent record in Lookup

Relationship?

Answer: When we define a lookup relationship between two objects, we choose an

outcome for if the parent record is deleted what should happen with lookup value

will be cleared, or we will restrict the user from deleting the parent record itself.

Note: We can’t select the first option, i.e., clear the value of a field if the field is

marked as required.

59. What will happen to child records if we delete a parent record in case of a

Master-Detail Relationship?

Answer: All the child object records will be deleted if we delete the parent object

record.

60. If we restore the master record, does it also restore the detail records?

Answer: Yes

61. What is “View all” and “Modify All” permission?

Answer: View all and modify all fields trump everything in the system, i.e.,

irrespective of OWD, what sharing rules are set up in system user with this

permission will be able to see or edit all the records present in the system for a

particular object. It gives a user the ability to mass update, mass transfer, and mass

delete records.

62. What will happen if a field is hidden through Field level security and the user

searches for values in that field?

Answer: Field-level security doesn’t prevent users from searching on the values in a

field. When search terms match field values protected by field-level security, the

associated records are returned without the protected fields and their values in the

search results.

63. Can we restrict permissions using a permission set?

Answer: No permission sets are used to extend the access, not restrict it.

64. If a user doesn’t have access to a record type, can they still see the records of

that record type?

Answer: Yes, they will be able to see it; they just won’t be able to create records of

that particular record type.

65. Can we restrict users logging in from unauthorized IP addresses?

Answer: Yes, we can define what IP addresses are valid, and if users of that

particular profile try to login IP addresses outside of those defined, they will be

denied access.

66. What is the difference between defining IP ranges in network access and on

profile?

Answer: IP ranges that we define in-network access. Just tell us a list of secure IPs

that don’t require any login challenges, like receiving an OTP, while IP ranges are

defined on the profile. It will restrict the user from logging in other IPs other than

described on the profile.

67. Can we restrict the login of users based on time?

Answer: Yes, it can be done, but only at the profile level is there a related list under

each profile called login hours, where we can define the start and end time for each

day.

68. Can we force users to set up a complex password while setting users in

Salesforce?

Answer: Yes, we can define our password policies where we can choose complexity

requirements for each password, length and force the user to change the password

every 30 days

Chapter 8: Queues

69. Are all objects supported by Queues | Salesforce interview questions 2021?

Answer: No, for example, Account and Opportunities are not supported by Queues.

70. Who all can be part of Queue?

Answer: Users, Public group, roles, roles, and subordinates both internal and

portal, territories, and territories subordinates

71. Can a queue be part of another queue?

Answer: No

72. What is the use of Queues?

Answer: Queues in Salesforce are used to prioritize, distribute, assign and share the

workload among the team members sharing the workload.

Chapter 9: Process Automation

73. Can we update a child record using workflows?

Answer: No, we can; we can only update the record itself or parent record ( in case

of master-detail relationship only).

74. What all can be done using a workflow?

Answer: We can only perform the below actions using workflows :

field updates

Email Alert

Create Task

Send an outbound message

75. Can we create assignment rules on all objects?

Answer: No, only on the case and leads.

76. When I can’t create time-based workflow action in workflow?

Answer: When the workflow is executed, created, and every time it’s edited.

77. Can we see all the time-dependent workflow actions that are lined up to be

executed?

Answer: Yes, we can monitor all the pending automation related to time-dependent

workflows in the “Time-based Workflow” option in setup.

78. Do time-dependent workflow actions fire even when the record criteria that

initiated the action no longer hold?

Answer: It will be removed from the Queue and will not be fired.

79. Can we remove pending time-based actions?

Answer: Yes, we can delete pending automation from the “Time-based workflow”

option in setup.

80. Can an object have multiple approval processes defined for it?

Answer: Yes, as per the current release, you can have 1000 active approval

processes and 300 active approval processes per object.

81. Can I create an approval process where a set of users receive approval

notification, i.e., even if any one of the users rejects or approves records get

approved or rejected.

Answer: Yes, we call this approval process a parallel approval process where a set

of users receive notification to act on the record; whoever acts first will be able to

approve or reject the record.

82. Can I submit a record for the approval process without actually having to click

on the “Submit for approval” button?

Answer: Yes, you can submit a record for approval via process builder or even apex

trigger.

83. Assume we have created multiple field updates and email alerts used in

workflow rules. Now I want to do the same field updates and send the exact

emails via the approval process. Can I re-utilize the same field updates and

email alerts in the approval process, or do I need to create a new one here?

Answer: We can utilize the same field updates and email alerts; you can search

from the list to re-utilize.

Chapter 10: Reports & Dashboards

84. What are the different formats of reports available in Salesforce?

Answer: Tabular, Summary, Matrix, and Joined reports.

85. What all reports are supported on the dashboard?

Answer: Tabular, summary, and matrix reports.

86. Are newly created fields automatically included in your custom report types?

Answer: Yes, if you tick mark the option to include it in the report types while

creating the field, you will have to add them manually.

87. What is a report type?

Answer: A report type is like a template which makes reporting more

straightforward. The report type determines which fields and records are available

for use when you are creating a report. This is based on the relationships between a

primary object and its related objects. For example, with the ‘Contacts and Accounts’

report type, ‘Contacts’ is the primary object, and ‘Accounts’ is the related object.

Contacts and Accounts is a standard report type that comes from OOTB.

88. What is the difference between custom report types and standard report

types?

Answer: Standard report types are report types which Salesforce create itself when

we create objects and relationships between them, for example, Contacts and

Accounts.

Custom report types allow the admin to specify all fields available to the user while

creating a report. Also, it provides functionality to associate up to 4 objects. It’s like

creating a template that tells Salesforce that I need these objects with these fields to

be available to create the report.

Chapter 11: Sales Cloud

89. What is the Sales cloud in Salesforce?

Answer: Place customer information in one place. Get insights into Sales.

Get real-time reports about business running, and the intuitive workspace helps you

be productive. In other words, it’s focused on enhancing the effectiveness of an

organization’s sales team and hence increases the number of sales.

90. Can contact exist without an Account?

Answer: Yes

91. What are personal Accounts in Salesforce?

Answer: Person accounts to store information about individual people by

combining certain Account and contact fields into a single record.

Remember, After Person Accounts are enabled, it can’t be disabled.

92. What is the relationship between Account and Contacts, Account and

Opportunity?

Answer: On UI, it says lookup, but actually, it’s a special type of relationship that

also has few master-detail touches into it, for example.

Account – Contact relationship comes with cascade delete, but you can’t have any

rollup on Account. Moreover, you can’t do cross-field updates using workflow rules

on Contact.

Account-Opportunity – It’s not mandatory to populate Account on Opportunity, but

cascade delete is true, and we can also do both rollup and cross-field updates.

93. What is the difference between Product and Asset?

Answer: Products are essentially your list of items that your company is selling in its

portfolio. An asset is that your customers have purchased. For example, the iPhone

is one of the products of Apple, while the iPhone you own is an asset with a unique

serial number.

94. Can we choose which price books my newly created product will be part of?

Answer: Yes, we can get in custom price books, but all products will be, by default,

part of the Standard price book.

95. What are the Lead assignment Rules?

Answer: Assignment Rules are used to automate an organization’s lead generation

and support processes.

Determines how leads are assigned to users or queues as they are created

manually, captured from the web, or imported via the lead import wizard.

96. Once the lead is converted, can we move it back to an unconverted state?

Answer: No

97. What all records are created on lead conversion? Is it mandatory to have all

records created on conversion?

Answer: 3 new records created on lead conversion

One each of Account, Contact, and Opportunity

We can tickmark “Don’t create Opportunity” if we don’t want to create an

opportunity on lead conversion.

Chapter 12: Service Application

98. How many active case escalation rules can we have?

Answer: We can have only one active escalation rule at a time.

99. What error comes up if you create a new active escalation rule when you

already have an active rule in place?

Answer: No, the error is thrown. Instead, the old escalation will be marked inactive,

and the new escalation rule is considered an active rule.

100. What is the business hour criteria in Escalation Rules?

Answer: Business hours let you specify when your support team is available. If

business hours are set on the escalation rule, then escalation actions occur only

during business hours.

101. What is solution management in Salesforce?

Answer: Solutions tab in Salesforce provides a repository of the detailed description

of customer issues. The customer support representatives quickly answer inquiries

at any time; solutions help improve support agent productivity and customer

response time, streamlining communication and improving customer satisfaction.

Note – Currently, the Solutions tab and object are not available in lightning and

Salesforce Classic support.

102. What is a Case Assignment Rule?

Answer: We can define criteria that determine how Cases are automatically routed

to a particular user or Queue when created in Salesforce.

103. What is Web-to-Case?

Answer: It allows you to capture user requests directly from your company’s

website and automatically generate new cases using Web-to-Case.

But remember, we can only generate up to 5000 cases per day using this setting.

104. Can we define an auto-reply in case of email to the case in Salesforce?

Answer: Yes, we can use auto-response rules, which defines which template to be

sent.

105. What is the support process in Salesforce?

Answer: Support Process is only for the “Status” picklist, as you might know. The

picklist values available in the status of a case record type determine a support

process. It is only a business-relevant feature as the status field is the most

process-specific field on a case. The status field cannot be customized on a record

type; it should be customized in support.

106. Can we have multiple record types using the same Support Process?

Answer: Yes, multiple record types can refer to the same support process

107. How to give users access to knowledge articles?

Answer: We need to assign user knowledge license by marking the knowledge user

checkbox as true on the user detail page

Chapter 13: MVC Architecture

108. What is MVC architecture?

Answer: It’s a code design pattern that separates your code into the parts

Model – In Salesforce, our subjects are models.

View – How data is represented on UI

Controller – Apex classes can be considered as controllers

The use is a better structure of your code, making it easier to change and maintain

it. With little impact, you should, for instance, be able to replace the entire view

without changes to the model or controller logic.

In Salesforce, VF pages use MVC architecture.

Chapter 14: Data Importa

109. What is a data import wizard?

Answer: Import wizard is an OOTB tool to import data in Salesforce

We can use it only if we want to import less than 5000

Moreover, remember import wizard doesn’t support all standard objects, for

example, Products, Cases, etc. but supports all custom objects.

110. What is Upsert, and how are external IDs beneficial?

Answer: Upsert combines insert and updates into a single call. Upsert uses an

indexed custom field or external ID to determine whether to create a new record or

update an existing record.

If the external ID is not matched, then a new record is created

Existing record is updated If the external ID is matched once.

If the external ID matched multiple times, then an error is thrown

111. Can Users mass transfer records to which they do not have read access?

Answer: No

112. How can we import more than 50000 records considering import wizard

allows only 50k records?

Answer: We can use a data loader.

113. Can we delete records using import wizard?

Answer: No

114. Can we schedule data loads in Salesforce | Free download Salesforce

Interview Questions?

Answer: We can schedule it using Data loader CLI.

Note Windows machines support this.