The Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I is probably one of the most important and complete certifications that Salesforce offers. Additionally, it is a prerequisite for many other certifications such as Dev II and it is the first step to becoming a System Architect. At Oktana we encourage our developers to achieve this certification in order to empower their Salesforce careers. It is an excellent asset to demonstrate to their peers and customers that they have the required skills to provide a successful project.
If you have already taken this certification, we recommend you to read our Salesforce Developer II Certification article.
For the purpose of this article, we have interviewed Bruno and Stefania, two new Oktana employees who completed this certification before starting to work with us. We’ll take a look at the certification description, prerequisites, and the exam itself.
Certification Audience Description:
Salesforce claims that this certification targets people who have “experience developing and deploying basic business logic and user interfaces using the programmatic capabilities of the Lightning Platform”. Bruno and Stefania agree and extend the target audience of this report to “anyone willing to undertake a developer path in Salesforce”.
Prerequisites:
There are no official prerequisites for this certification. Salesforce claims that generally, people who undertake this certification have at least 2 years of experience as a developer and 6 months of experience on the Salesforce Lightning Platform. Our developers, on the other hand, believe that you can start preparing for this certification after only 4 weeks of experience with the Salesforce platform.
About the exam:
The Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I exam has the following characteristics:
Content: 60 multiple-choice questions + 5 non qualified
Time: 110 minutes
Pass mark: 65%
Exams can either be taken online or onsite at a testing center.
No hard-copy or online materials may be referenced during the exam.
Exam Outline:
The exam is structured around 6 main topics. These are:
- Salesforce Fundamentals – Weighting 7%
- Describe the tools and technologies that power development on the Salesforce platform.
- Demonstrate expertise in working with Apex and Aura components.
- Data Modeling and Management – Weighting 13%
- Give your data structure with objects, fields, and relationships.
- Demonstrate expertise on how to import and export data in Salesforce.
- Customize without writing code by using point-and-click logic
- Logic and Process Automation – Weighting 38%
- Automate processes for every app, experience, and portal with declarative tools.
- Use Apex to manipulate data
- Write Apex triggers to perform custom actions
- Show expertise in search solutions
- User Interface – Weighting 25%
- Use Visualforce to build custom user interfaces for mobile and web apps.
- Build reusable, performant components that follow modern web standards using Salesforce Lightning Web Components
- Testing, debugging and deployment – Weighting 17%
- Write robust code by executing Apex unit tests.
- Describe the testing framework and requirements for deployment.
- Describe how to monitor and access various types of debug logs.
- Demonstrate expertise in capabilities and security implications
Bruno and Stefania agreed that the most interesting thing about this certification was learning how to break with the “developer paradigm” of wanting to make all changes using lines of code. This certification teaches you how to customize your platform by using the tools provided by Salesforce. This allows you to work more efficiently and effectively!
Preparing for the exam:
It is highly recommended to complete the Salesforce Trailhead Trailmix “Prepare for Your Salesforce Platform Developer I Credential” before scheduling the exam. In there you will find almost everything you need to know to pass the exam and ensure you’re an expert in the area. Additionally, we encourage you to complete this Study for the Platform Developer I Exam Trail to review your knowledge and learn more about the exam itself. You can also choose to take a Trailhead Virtual Bootcamp for Platform Developer I certification. The 30-day course will teach you everything you need to know and includes a $200 USD voucher to sit for the exam. The price for the course starts at $450 USD and you can register by clicking here. Bruno recommends finishing all Trails related to this certification before starting to practice on Focus on Force, which provides study guides and practice exams.
At Oktana, after new employees complete their one-month onboarding process they are ready to sit for this exam. We provide all the resources mentioned above as well as exam mockups and additional tips to ensure success.
Both of the developers we interviewed for this article think that this is a GREAT certification to have and would 100% recommend it to everyone working with Salesforce. What are you waiting for?
We are now hiring! Check out our open positions.
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