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Salesforce Administrator & Consultant Course Program

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A dynamic and comprehensive curriculum designed and continually updated to train and mentor aspiring Salesforce Administrators and Consultants. It covers foundational knowledge of the Salesforce environment, its setup and configuration, and the use of automation tools such as Flows and Einstein features. The program prepares participants to pass the Salesforce Admin Certification and launch their careers in the Salesforce Ecosystem.


It features real-world projects, enabling participants to apply concepts like digital transformation, marketing segmentation, sales funnelling, customer support, business analysis, and project management. With this curriculum, we saw a 100% increase in engagement and certification success rates. This program empowers participants to excel in roles such as Sales & Customer Support Admin, Consultant, and Business Analyst, within the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond.


Much of the course content I developed came together thanks to the hands-on experience and practical insights gathered while supporting companies in optimising their Salesforce instances while working as a Technical Support Engineer for Service & Sales Could Support at Salesforce Ireland. I kept this content up to date with each new salesforce release. The Salesforce-approved Admin curriculum covers:


Salesforce Environment Fundamentals:

  • What is Salesforce and its Ecosystem, what is a CRM on how it helps improve business processes and ROI

  • Customers 360° concept, Trailhead, and Career Paths and Roles overview

  • Multitenancy and Cloud technology, Company Values & V2MOM, 4th Industrial Revolution & Digital Transformation

  • Salesforce products overview, types of Orgs, how to create a Trailblazer Profile and navigate its UI

  • Salesforce Architecture and Data Model (Objects, Fields, Records, and Relationships) basics

  • Use-Cases examples on Real Estate, HR, IT, Finance, Product, Supply Chain, Operations, covering time management, accessibility, revenue increase, customer satisfaction, account planning, reporting, team collaboration, 3rd party integrations, and mobile portability


Setup and Configuration:

  • Company, Locale, Language, Fiscal Year, Currency, Time Zone Settings, type of Licenses, uses of the Organisation ID

  • User Management (create, view, manage, login as, freeze, deactivate), User Accounts, User & Feature Licenses

  • Data Security Model, in terms of Org, Object, Field and Record Access levels

  • Identify and customise the various Org-Level security controls, including Login Hours, Password Policies, IP restrictions (Trusted & Login IP Ranges)

  • Identify and customise Object Level security permission (CRED), creating and managing Custom Profiles, Permission Sets and their differences through example use-cases

  • Identify and customise Field level access permissions, and how they are controlled via Profiles & Permission Sets

  • Identify and customise Record sharing model, Org-Wide Default (Sharing Settings), Role Hierarchy and role assignment to users, Sharing Rules, Manual Sharing, Team Access, Territory Hierarchy Access

  • User Authentication, benefits, how to configure, and troubleshoot Multi-Factor Authentication, MyDomain, Single & Social Sign-Ons, Federation ID, Login Discovery & Passwordless Login

  • Salesforce Identity, Identity Standards and Protocols (SAML, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect), differences between Service & Identity Providers

Object Manager and Lightning App Builder:

  • Data Model deep dive, explain the differences between Objects, Fields, Records, Relationship Types, Schema Builder

  • Custom Objects and Fields creation in Object Manager, reviewing the different Fields' Data Types, and use-cases

  • Object Relationships (Master-Detail, Lookup, Hierarchical, Indirect, External), purpose, use-cases, benefits and limitations

  • One-to-Many and Many-to-Many Relationships with Junction Objects, Roll-Up Summary fields

  • Page Layouts, Compact Layouts, Global and Object-Specific Quick Actions comparison and use-cases

  • Custom Buttons, Links, and Search Layouts

  • Define, create, and customise Lightning Apps with App Manager, and how to control user access to them

  • Use Lightning App Builder interface to create custom Salesforce Pages, Dynamic Forms to enhance their flexibility

  • Identify the different types of Lightning Components available to create custom pages

  • Design custom Formula Fields to perform calculations and display data, and Validation Rules to enforce business logic, data quality & integrity with use-cases


Sales and Marketing Applications:

  • Explain the standard Sales Process in Salesforce, define key Objects involved, Paths configuration and customisation

  • How to use Campaigns to track marketing efforts in Salesforce, create and manage them in Hierarchies to monitor KPIs

  • Campaign Members and their Statuses, how Campaign Influence and Primary Campaign Influence models work

  • Define Leads and their role in the Sales Process, how to Qualify and Convert them into Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities

  • Field Mapping for custom Lead fields, Web-to-Lead, Lead Assignment Rules

  • Purpose and benefits of Lead Scoring, and how to implement it using Formula Fields

  • Define Opportunities and their role in the Sales Process, how to track their progression with Stages in the Pipeline

  • Big Deal Alerts, Opportunity Teams & Splits, Compare Revenue and Overlay Splits

  • The use of Record Types to simplify the Salesforce UI where multiple Processes need to be reflected in a single Objects

  • Create custom Record Types and configure their access, Page Layouts, Record Pages and Picklist Subsets, Salesforce Record Page Layers

  • Create custom Processes for the use of Lead, Case, and Opportunity Record Types

  • Define Accounts & Contacts and their role in the Sales Process, key relationships with other Objects

  • Differences between Contact & Contact Roles Objects, Contacts to Multiple Accounts implications, purpose of Person Account Object, and Account Teams

  • Define and differentiate Product, Opportunity Product, Pricebook and Pricebook Entry and explain their role in the sales process

  • Compare Standard and Custom Pricebooks and identify use-cases for Custom Pricebooks, configure Pricebooks with multiple currencies

  • Explain the Opportunity - Product - Pricebook Data Model, add Products to Opportunities and configure Product Schedules

  • Compare Revenue and Quantity Schedules and their use-cases

  • Define the Contract and Quote objects and explain their roles in the sales process, create Contract records and associate them with Opportunities

  • Enable and configure automated Contract Expiration Notices, Quotes, and create Quote records from Opportunities

  • Synchronise Quote records with their parent Opportunities, generate Quote PDFs and customise Quote Templates

Service & Support Applications:

  • Explain a typical customer support process in Service Cloud, identify its key features, and describe how they contribute to customer support processes

  • Describe the Lightning Service Console and customise its features

  • Case Management in Salesforce and its importance in customer service processes, tools available in Salesforce to automate it

  • Queues and how they enable workload distribution, Case channels using Web-to-Case and Email-to-Case

  • Case Assignment Rules to route Cases to appropriate users or Queues, Auto-Response Rules to enable automatic email responses, Escalation Rules to enforce SLAs

  • Use and creation of 3 different types of Macros to automate repetitive tasks in Service Cloud

  • Role and creation of Quick Text in streamlining and standardising communication.

  • Purpose and benefits of Omni-Channel in Service Management, how it dynamically routes work items based on service agent availability and skills, and a 40 pages setup guide

  • Configure Omni-Channel Queue-Based Routing, create a Service Channel, Routing Configuration, Presence Configuration and Presence Statuses, associate a Routing Configuration with a Queue

  • The use of Omni-Supervisor to monitor a service team’s availability and backlog

  • Salesforce Entitlements to manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs), how to enable and configure them

  • Entitlement Processes with Milestones to track key stages in the service process, Milestone Tracker Lightning Component

Productivity and Collaboration:

  • What these concepts entails in a business context

  • Key Productivity and Collaboration features in Salesforce to improve user efficiency and communication

  • Activities Types in Salesforce, how to create, update, and manage Tasks, Events, Calendars.

  • Activity Timeline to view and manage Activities related to specific records

  • The use of Chatter as a social collaboration tool, key features, Licences, Polls, Chatter Groups Types

  • Enable and configure Feed Tracking, how to follow records using Chatter to receive updates in the Feed

  • Create and send Email in Salesforce, add attachments, merge fields and templates in the Email Composer

  • Compare Classic and Lightning Email Templates, and templates created in the new Email Content Builder

  • Compare Salesforce Gmail and Outlook Integrations and their features, Einstein Activity Capture and its features

  • Use Salesforce Files to upload and manage files/documents

  • AppExchange marketplace main features, identify the different types of apps available and try them out

  • Compare and define Managed and Unmanaged Packages

  • Describe the use of Lightning Components, Bolt Solutions and Flow Solutions installed from AppExchange

  • Describe the key benefits, features, and limitations of using the Salesforce mobile app

  • Customise the mobile experience with navigation items, Quick Actions and Compact Layouts


Data & Analytics Management:

  • The role of reporting in making data-driven business decisions, use-cases for reporting

  • How to create Reports with the appropriate Report Type and Filters with Report Builder, comparison of the different Report Formats

  • Further customise reports' layout using Groupings, Summaries, Summary Formulas, Row-Level Formulas and Report Charts

  • Reports & Dashboards sharing with specific Users, Roles or Public Groups using Folders

  • Comparison between standard and custom Report Types and how to create them

  • The different types of Charts, how they can be used in Dashboards and their use-cases

  • Create Dashboards to visualise key business metrics, Filters and Dynamic Dashboards to control the data users can see

  • The importance of Data Management in Salesforce Orgs, common Data Quality issues in Salesforce, such as Missing, Duplicate and Inconsistent Data

  • How poor Data Quality can negatively impact decision-making and business processes, strategies Admins can implement to improve and maintain it

  • The concept of Technical Debt and its impact on system efficiency

  • Duplicate Record Management is in Salesforce, common causes, analytic and operational issues they can generate

  • Matching and Duplicate Rules to identify and manage duplicate records

  • How to run Duplicate Jobs to identify duplicates across Orgs, how to monitor duplicates with the use of custom Report Types

  • Data Import Wizard, Data Loader, Date Loader.io: Salesforce Data Import and Export tools features, benefits, limitations, how to use them and demos

  • Identify situations where data may need to be imported into/exported from a Salesforce Org

  • Why unique Record IDs are essential for data import, update and delete functions, with applicable use-cases


Workflow/Process Automation:

  • Why we automate tasks and why we use Flows, their importance in Salesforce

  • Capabilities and limitations of Flow as declarative tool, comparison with Workflows (Process Builder)

  • Flow Builder, Canvas, Toolbox. Elements & Resources and how they work within Flows to store and manipulate data

  • Differentiate between Flow Types: Screen, Triggered (Record-Triggered, Schedule-Triggered, Autolaunched)

  • The role and importance of Approval Processes in business operations, its key components (Entry Criteria, Approvers, Actions), and use-cases

  • How to create an Approval Process including Initial Submission Actions, Approver Steps, and Final Approval/Rejection Actions

  • How to automate an Approval Process submission using Flow

  • Introduction to AI, Language Processing, Machine Learning, Dataset, and Einstein Tools (Activity Capture, Article Recommendations, Bots, Classification Apps for Service, Discovery, GPT, Next Best Action, Prediction Builder, Search, 1 Platform)


Project Management & Business Analysis:

  • Project Lifecycle: Initiation, Planning, Executing, Testing, Deployment, Training, Support, Monitoring & Control, Improvement, Closure, Post-Launch

  • Methodologies such as Agile, Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban

  • User Stories, Epics & Tasks, Product Backlog, Constraints (Project Scope, Time, Costs), Quality

  • SMART Goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound

  • How to start a project, Project Charter & Project Plan documentation, Project Value, KPIs

  • Requirements Decomposition & Work Breakdown Structure

  • Project Management Tools: JIRA, Monday.com, Asana

  • Burndown Charts, Story Points, and Velocity, Types of Salesforce Implementations: In-House, Third Party, and Hybrid


Certification Support & Workshops in collaboration with Salesforce and their in-house experts


Resources:

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