Salesforce Administrator learning path: everything to study, topic by topic

Organisation-level configuration: company information, fiscal year settings, default currency, business hours, and holidays used by case escalation rules and entitlements

Creating and managing Salesforce users; understanding licence types (Salesforce, Platform, Chatter, Community); deactivation vs freezing; username and login policies

Standard vs custom profiles; profile-level object permissions, field permissions, tab visibility, record type assignments, app assignments, login hours, and login IP ranges

Extending access beyond profiles using permission sets; grouping related permission sets into permission set groups; muting permission sets; assigning permission sets to users or groups

Building the role hierarchy to control record visibility via roll-up; how roles differ from profiles; portal and community role considerations; impact on reports and forecasting

Organisation-wide defaults as the baseline record access level; public read/write, public read only, private, and controlled by parent; external OWD; impact on overall sharing model design

Criteria-based and owner-based sharing rules that open access beyond OWD; manual sharing on individual records; account teams, opportunity teams; Apex managed sharing overview

Granting delegated admin privileges to non-sys-admin users for specific objects or roles; login access policies; grant login access for support; administrator login as another user

Salesforce standard objects (Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Case) and their standard fields; creating custom objects; object properties, deployment status, search layout, and compact layouts

Creating standard and custom fields; understanding all available data types (Text, Number, Currency, Picklist, Formula, Roll-Up Summary, Checkbox, Date, Date/Time, Email, Phone, URL, Geolocation, Long Text Area); field dependencies

Lookup vs master-detail relationships and their behavioural differences; cascade delete in master-detail; roll-up summary availability; junction objects for many-to-many relationships; self-relationships and hierarchical relationships

Using record types to provide different business processes, page layouts, and picklist values to different users; assigning record types via profile or permission set; default record type behaviour

Using Schema Builder to visualise and create the data model; adding objects, fields, and relationships directly on the canvas; best practices for data model documentation and review

Importing and exporting data using the Data Import Wizard and Salesforce Data Loader; supported objects per tool; field mapping; handling import errors; upsert with external IDs; best practices for bulk data operations

Configuring matching rules to detect potential duplicate records; defining duplicate rules with block or allow-with-alert actions; standard and custom matching rules; Data.com Clean integration overview

Maintaining data integrity through field validation, required fields, and duplicate prevention; mass transfer of records between owners; mass update and mass delete tools; data archiving considerations

Create, Read, Edit, Delete, View All, Modify All permissions at the object level; how profiles and permission sets combine additively; the permission evaluation order in Salesforce

Controlling field visibility and editability at the field level via profiles and permission sets; field accessibility matrix; hidden vs read-only vs editable; interaction with page layouts

End-to-end summary of the four layers of record visibility: OWD, role hierarchy, sharing rules, and manual sharing; troubleshooting record access with the 'Why can't I see this record?' tool; access evaluation order

Monitoring administrative changes with Setup Audit Trail; enabling field history tracking on standard and custom objects; limits on tracked fields; archived audit trail download

Enforcing Multi-Factor Authentication; Salesforce Authenticator; session security levels and session timeout; trusted IP ranges; high-assurance sessions and connected app policies

Overview of Salesforce Shield platform: Platform Encryption, Event Monitoring, and Field Audit Trail; event log files and available event types; use cases and licence considerations

Using Salesforce Health Check to assess the security posture of an org; understanding the baseline security standard; remediating high-risk settings; custom baselines and Health Check scoring

Creating validation rules to enforce data quality at save time; writing validation rule formulas with functions such as ISBLANK, OR, AND, ISPICKVAL, PRIORVALUE; error message placement; bypass strategies

Building guided user interactions with Flow Builder screen flows; screen components (text, picklist, lookup, display text); navigation options; deploying screen flows via Lightning pages, custom tabs, and Experience Cloud

Automating record changes with record-triggered flows; trigger contexts (before-save, after-save, scheduled, async after-save); creating, updating, and deleting related records; when to use before-save vs after-save triggers

Core Flow Builder elements: Decision, Assignment, Loop, Get Records, Create Records, Update Records, Delete Records, Subflow; flow variable types; flow formulas and text templates

Designing multi-step approval processes; entry criteria; approval steps and approver assignment (user, queue, related user, hierarchy); final approval and rejection actions; recall actions; email approval response

Migrating Workflow Rules and Process Builder automations to Flow Builder; Migrate to Flow tool; feature parity mapping; retirement timeline awareness; equivalent Flow patterns for common workflow actions

Handling flow faults using fault connectors and fault paths; sending fault notification emails; Flow debugging in run mode and debug mode; reading flow interview logs; rollback behaviour on fault

The complete Salesforce order of execution on record save: system validations, before-save flows, before triggers, system and custom validations, duplicate rules, after triggers, assignment rules, escalation rules, after-save flows, Apex processes, and commit

Standard report types vs custom report types; defining object relationships in a custom report type; primary and related objects; with- and without- child record options; controlling field availability in a report type

Four report formats and their appropriate use cases; grouping rows in summary reports; grouping rows and columns in matrix reports; multiple report blocks in joined reports; format limitations

Standard field filters, filter logic, and filter operators; date filters and relative date values; cross-filters to include/exclude records based on related objects; row limits on tabular reports

Grouping field values on the fly with bucket columns (text, numeric, picklist); creating summary formulas that calculate metrics across groupings; displaying formulas at appropriate grouping levels

Creating dashboards from report sources; dashboard component types (chart, gauge, metric, table, Visualforce, Lightning component); conditional highlighting; dashboard filters; refresh schedule

Dynamic dashboards that show data as the logged-in user; maximum concurrent dynamic dashboards per org; dashboard subscriptions for email delivery; scheduling and recipient limits

Organising reports and dashboards into folders; folder-level sharing with users, roles, and public groups; enhanced folder sharing; viewer, editor, and manager access levels

Building record pages, home pages, and app pages with Lightning App Builder; standard and custom Lightning components; page activation and assignment by profile, record type, or app; dynamic forms

Differences between Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience; Lightning Migration Assistant and Readiness Check; features not yet in Lightning; rollout strategies and user opt-out controls

Finding, evaluating, and installing managed and unmanaged packages from AppExchange; security review and installation for admins vs all users; package versioning; upgrading and uninstalling packages

Developer, Developer Pro, Partial Copy, and Full sandboxes; refresh intervals and data copying behaviour; sandbox templates; use cases for each sandbox type; sandbox activation and login

Outbound and inbound change sets for metadata deployment between connected orgs; deployment connections; adding and validating components; deployment best practices; change set limitations vs SFDX / metadata API

Configuring the Salesforce mobile app; mobile navigation menu; Lightning pages for mobile; push notifications; offline access; mobile-only features and limitations

Classic and Lightning email templates; merge fields in email templates; Salesforce Inbox and Einstein Activity Capture overview; email relay configuration; deliverability settings and bounce management