Get Experience Cloud Certification – Demand is High and Supply Low!

Last Updated on July 16, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta

*Disclaimer– Any questions you find in this article are practice questions created by me. Please treat them as pointers – it does not bear any relationship with Salesforce certification examination questions.

As a newly minted Experience Cloud Certified Consultant, I am sharing my study experiences with you and want you to be the next one to ace it! Along with this certificate, I also cleared Development Lifecycle & Deployment Designer certification! So, get ready and dive in!

Personally, I have not come across any documentation to prepare for this exam except Trailhead community cloud module – one of the best learning tools. So, if you are wondering whether the Trailhead module is sufficient to pass the exam then, rest assure that it is – this is my personal opinion. In addition to Trailhead module, I created at least 20+ digital experiences in my developer org while helping people in the Trailblazer community – I actively solved problems other people had with their Experience Cloud development requirements; I can not stress enough the importance of this hands-on experience in enabling me to pass the exam! Treat theTrailhead Experience Cloud module as a base – or as an introduction to the Experience Cloud. To ace the exam, however, there is no substitute for hands-on experience.

Compared to Sales and Service Cloud consultant exams, passing Experience Cloud certification is not much difficult. Salesforce states that Experience Cloud consultant exam is designed for anyone who has experience implementing and consulting on the Salesforce Experience applications in a customer-facing role. The certification is targeted toward the Salesforce Experience Cloud Consultant or Partner who wants to demonstrate their skills and knowledge in designing, configuring, building, and implementing Salesforce Experience applications, using the declarative customization capabilities of the Communities platform.

Set a strict timeline for the exam preparation

After deciding to appear for the exam, it is time to gather information about the exam and think about what steps you will put in place in order to ace it. Once you have a concrete timeline, begin to think about how you will integrate a sound study plan around the rest of your responsibilities – work/home balance etc. Having a concrete date to study towards will help you stay motivated to study for your certification exam. 

Learning styles differ widely – so, there is no magic formula that one can follow to clear an exam. The best practice is to study for few hours daily – rain or shine! Below are some details about the exam and study materials: 

• 60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions – 90 mins
• 57% is the passing score
• If you do not have previous experience with Communities, then follow the guides mentioned below in the order they are listed:
  • Trailhead Experience Cloud module
  • Setup and manage Salesforce Experiences PDF document
  • Using Templates to Build Experiences PDF document

If you are offered a project, or a task, that involves – building out a Service Cloud Console, setting up a community, creating entitlements, or implementing knowledge base – then, by all means, accept it! Nothing is better than real-world experience. If not, use your Salesforce Developer edition org and try to set up features and functionalities that a vibrant community would need. 

What you need to know

On a very high level, you have to understand following topics to clear the exam: 

1. Community License types:- In a given scenario, which license type would be most appropriate?
   1. For example, Gurukul on Cloud (GOC), has a requirement to grant community access to their customers so that they can create and manage cases. Which license type should be used here?
      

      

2. What is a sharing architecture? What is the best way to leverage the architecture when working with external users? 
3. What is the significance of a Superuser and Partner Role hierarchy? Make sure you understand Partner Role limits and best practices. 
   1. For example, GoC, has a requirement to allow a manager in partner account to view data belonging to other managers and their direct reports. How would you address that?
4. Understand when to use Sharing Set vs Sharing Rule vs Apex Managed sharing. 
   1. For example, GoC is using Customer Community license (HVPL) to grant community access to their customers. At times, when customers are traveling, they usually call GoC’s call-center (support office) to lodge a case. How can a GoC’s Admin make sure that when a customer remotely logs into Salesforce, they have access to the case lodged with the support agent?
      
5. Familiarize yourself with different types of Experience templates and know when to use which template – for instance, given a scenario, how would you know which template is the most appropriate one?
   1. For example, unfortunately, on a given week, all GoC Developers are on leave. You, as an Admin, receive a requirement to quickly create a responsive community which is optimized for search engine. How would you know which community template would be the most appropriate one?
6. Understand the community builder, community workspace and community settings inside out. There are plenty of questions related to these topics. 
   1. For example, GoC implemented second partner community for 9.3K channel partners. The System Administrators at GoC noticed that partners use politically incorrect words – like stupid, idiot, etc. – on Chatter. As a Community Cloud implementation expert, how would you handle such a situation? How do you make sure obscene words are not used during communication?
      
7. Make sure that you understand how to implement gamification in the community, promote the upcomingevent among the community members, etc., and implement reputation feature in Community. 
   1. For example, GoC created a video to encourage partners to sign up for their upcoming training program. As a Community Cloud implementation expert, which feature of the community will you use to fulfill this requirement?
8. Understand when to use Page Variation. You can use them to try out different page layouts and styles to create variations that are aimed at distinct audiences.
9. Know when to use Guest user access instead of community login. Guest user access means that folks can access community page without logging in. A community with public discussions, known issues, and solutions posted by other community members or customer support, allows existing and potential customers to view information without logging in. The best example is Salesforce Trailblazer community. 
10. Know what Social and Single Sign-on features are. Make sure you know how these features can be enabled.
11. Master the ways of enabling Community access for different kinds of users.
    1. For example, GoC implemented their first partner community with Salesforce vanilla implementation. Until now, GoC was using on-premises .NET community. However, now they are planning to migrate their community users from their legacy system to Salesforce community. Here is the question – what items are required to set up a community user in Salesforce? Your options are: 
       • Account
       • Contact
       • Active community 
       • Excel sheet with all user details (so that Data Loader can be used to bulk load user) 
12. Understand the significance of Global Header. 
    1. For example, GoC implemented three communities for channels partners (EMEA, APAC, and North America). One partner can be part of all three communities based on their geographical presence. What is the best way to grant partners access to multiple communities? Your options are:
       • Create multiple Logins
       • Enable Single sign-on
       • Enable global header
       • Grant delegated admin access
13. Next item to understand is the importance of Knowledge Articles with respect to Communities. 
14. Last but not least, master how to manage Report and Dashboard access issues and know when to use AppExchange apps.

In the exam, take your time, and read each question very carefully. Summarize the question and answer; untangle all the Salesforce objects or features that are being referenced. Even if you do not know the answer, eliminating one or two wrong answers will increase your likelihood of a correct response.

–> Do not forget to check study guide that contains complete syllabus of the Experience Cloud consultant exam. 

Conclusion

If you have good hands-on experience with all the above topics, passing the exam will be a cinch; and, you will be able to earn the much coveted Experience Cloud consultant certification! However, if you do not have enough experience with the Experience Cloud, and you plan to become a Salesforce Certified Experience Cloud consultant, then, I suggest you draw a 2-3 months plan to prepare for it. 

I hope that you find these tips and resources useful. If you do put the time and effort in, you are certain to succeed. Happy studying and good luck!