The Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder certification is intended for candidates who have experience in building, designing, and applying custom applications through utilizing declarative customization options of the Lightning Platform. It proves your proficiency in creating, managing, and updating data models, business logic, app security, and process automation. This designation testifies that you are knowledgeable of how the user interface, business logic, and data model are designed, how apps for mobile use are customized, how reports and dashboards are designed, how custom apps are deployed. To earn this accreditation, one has to pass the Salesforce Platform App Builder exam.
Before obtaining the certification and sitting for this Salesforce test, you need to have at least 6 months of experience in building apps on the Lightning Platform or on a similar one. In addition, you should be familiar with the options of the Lightning Platform, Salesforce license types, capabilities to increase the mobile user experience, and options of the Salesforce development environments to operate changes on the Lightning Platform. You also should be capable of designing apps to perform business processes.
Regarding the exam that you need to take to become a certified professional, it will contain 60 questions of multiple-choice and/or multiple-select and 5 more questions that are unscored. You will have 105 minutes to complete all the questions given and need to score 63%. The test is rated at $200, but if you need to retake it, be ready to spend $100. Note, that the exam is a closed-book one, so no additional materials are allowed. Besides, it’s a proctored evaluation, thus, it can be taken in an online proctored environment or onsite at a testing center.
The exam comprises five topics each of which is dedicated to specific topics. First, you need to know all about Salesforce fundamentals. This includes your ability to define the boundaries of the use cases and declarative customization in terms of programmatic customization, use the AppExchange for extending an org, implement features to work with a record, object, and field access. In addition, you should know how to optimize the Salesforce mobile user experience. Then you should demonstrate your skills in working with data modeling & management. Here, you should know how to define the suitable data model, identify the considerations on which the selection of a field data type is made, describe the options of the schema builder, and choose the options for importing/exporting data. The next topic refers to business logic and process automation. In this part, your skills to utilize the formula fields, define the options of summary fields, apply cases for approval processes, propose an effective solution for the automation of business procedures will be assessed. After that, you are expected to show your competence in working with a user interface. This part is intended to check your skills in explaining the customization options of the user interface, performing the capabilities for links, actions, and custom buttons, integrating Lightning Components in an app, and explaining the programmatic customizations. And the last topic included in this exam is dedicated to app deployment. In this domain, you will be tested on proposing a solution while operating the app lifecycle and different types of Sandboxes, explaining options while implementing managed and unmanaged packages, defining the suitable deployment plan.
As stated on the Ziprecruiter website, having the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder certification in your pocket, you can earn on average about $97,000 per year.
