Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator (Mar 2026)

The first video sets the learning objectives for this section of this Salesforce Administrator course.

In this lecture, I will be going through how you can create a free version of Salesforce that you can play around with Salesforce. Don't worry if you REALLY mess up in your org as you can always create another free Salesforce instance/org.

There are a number of different ways to login to Salesforce and I'll be showing you some of these ways and what to look out for.

Navigating the Lightning User Interface is important to understand so that you can see how you can traverse the Salesforce features and functionality. In this lecture, I go through the Salesforce Lightning interface.

For the exam, it's important to understand the differences between the Salesforce Lightning and Classic user interfaces. In this lecture we go back in time to the start of Salesforce.com to understand why we have two user interfaces in Salesforce.

In this Salesforce session, we dive into comparing the features and functionality between the Salesforce Classic UI and Lightning UI.

In this overview lecture, we look at the different areas a user or administrator could change the user interface within Salesforce.

Salesforce has a feature to allow users to change the density settings or padding around the text to condense the user interface down so that more information can be displayed. In this lecture, we look at how a user can change their density settings as well as setting a default for the Salesforce org.

In this lecture, we take a look at how to brand and theme your Salesforce org to make it look like your companies branding and help gain adoption!

The Salesforce Lightning Chrome Extension is an application that allows Salesforce to test user interface changes/features without rolling them out across their entire user base. In this session we go over the Salesforce Chrome Extension and the functionality it has.

Get an overview of the Salesforce classic interface and how to navigate around the platform.

It's important to understand how a user can customise their user interface and the implications this can have on Administrating Classic Salesforce.

The homepage is the first page that users will see when they login. It's important that this is setup well for your particular business requirements. This video goes through how to customize the homepage using Homepage Components.

There are a number of Salesforce Admin only features that you can use to customize the user interface. This video steps through these Salesforce Admin level user interface changes that you can make.

This is where you can control the key default settings of your Salesforce Org. It also displays license information. This video goes through the Company Profile and elements of it.

Salesforce User management is an important aspect of the Administrator. This video goes through the detail of creating, updating, freezing etc of user accounts.

An important aspect of building a Salesforce App is to understand the current Salesforce Object Module so your application can fit within the platform without re-inventing what is already there.

To really make your Salesforce org your own you need to create a custom app and personalize it. This video goes through creating an app and personalizing it.

To have Data and records in Salesforce you need objects to hold the data. This video goes through creating the videos and how to make them visible as a tab so that your users can access the data as well as search for the data.

There are a lot of different fields that you can use within Salesforce to store your data in. This video goes through all the fields and when and why to use them.

Salesforce Field Dependences allow you create dependant fields in Salesforce so based on data being entered in one field this drives the data of other fields. This video goes through field dependences and their use.

Salesforce Object Relationships allow you to link records together. There are a couple of different relationships including Lookup, Master Detail & External Relationships. This video goes through what you need to know about the differences and how to set them up.

Some times you want data on records to be shown from other records. This class goes through how to can display roll up information via Summary Fields and data on records using Formulas.

Laying out how fields should be displayed on the page is important so that fields are grouped together in a logical way. This video goes through the Salesforce Page Layouts and how to customize them.

Field Histories allow you to track changes in Salesforce fields on records. This video goes through how to set up field histories.

Salesforce Record Types allow you to control which pick list values are used in different Page Layouts. This video goes through the basics of Record Types.

A Quick video for those people having issues with Record Types not working.

Understanding Salesforce's Standard fields and the impact of deleting fields is important. This video goes through both topics so you can understand the impact of deleting and un-deleting fields as well as Standard Fields.

I find people miss out on customizing their Search & Tab layouts leaving the user interface not as efficient as it could be. This video goes into setting up Salesforce Search & Tab Layouts.

In this video we will look at how you can activate your classic app in the lightning interface.

List Views allow the viewing a filtered list of records based on the criteria you have set in the list view. This video shows how to create list views.

An overview of what you will learn in this Salesforce Process Automation section of this course.

Workflow rules allow you to fire immediate or scheduled actions at specific times. This lecture will introduce you to Workflow rules and the actions that you can use.

Validations are important in maintaining good data quality. Making sure that users enter the correct information at the correct time.

This will not come up in the exam but if you want to become an AWESOME Admin this is something you really need to understand. The Importance of Validation Timing

Approval Processes allow user to approve records in Salesforce. This lecture goes through how you can create complex approval processes to approve records.

Here we take a look at how to create a process builder process in Salesforce.

In this video, we take a deep dive into all the process builder actions and how you can use them to drive your process builder process.

Now it's time to get your hands dirty with Salesforce Process Builder. In this video, we go through a scenario and some of the issues you may come across in Process Builder.

The learning objectives for Salesforce Security on the force.com platform

It's important in Salesforce to get your security correct from the start. This lecture provides an overview of Salesforce's Security model.

Salesforce has a set of fundamental security settings which protect your org. This makes Salesforce very flexible on how secure you make it. This lecture reviews these fundamental security settings.

The Salesforce Organizational Wide Defaults or OWD are the fundamentals to record security in Salesforce. Without this being correct you can be in trouble! This lecture goes through how to set your OWDs on objects.

Salesforce's Security, unlike other CRM tools and applications, revolves around record ownership and a lot of the security is driven by who owns what records. This lecture goes through this record ownership security model.

Role Hierarchies allow you to organize your security model based on a Hierarchical model, a bit like an organizational chart in your company. This lecture talks about how to set up roles in the role hierarchy.

Salesforce Sharing rules allow you to go across the role hierarchy and/or open up rules to records based on criteria based sharing or role-based sharing to essentially break the very defined security model that comes from Role Hierarchies. In this lecture, you will learn this.

Manual sharing is the final security feature that allows you to manually share individual records within Salesforce. This lecture goes through these features.

This lecture teaches you how object permissions relate to record access in Salesforce.

User Profiles & Permission Sets allow you to set one or more sets of security permissions against individual users in Salesforce. This lecture goes into more depth on the Profiles & Permission Sets and what you need to know for the exam.

Having an understanding of Salesforce Reports & Dashboards is a fundamental requirement of a Salesforce Admin Guru. This section of the course goes through Reports & Dashboards in depth.

Salesforce Tabular Reports are the most basic report that you can make in Salesforce. This lecture goes through the basics of how to create Salesforce reports and the reporting interface.

I'm a great believer in letting Salesforce do the hard work so you don't have to. In this lecture I will show you how to automate your Reports!

Summary Reports allow you to group Salesforce data together and start representing your records in a meaningful way. This lecture will show you how to get the best out of Summary reports!

Matrix reports can be a little tricky to get your head around but they are great at looking at data in multiple dimensions. I go through Matrix Reports and how you can use them!

I'm always amazing how few people use table highlighting. I also go through how you can rapidly change your reports into lovely looking charts.

Bucket Fields allows you to group values together and report on these value groupings.

Salesforce Report Types are the foundations for reporting. In this video, we learn about how Report Types can be used.

Report Type Layouts allow you to select the fields you want to be available to your users to report on. You can change the name of the fields as well as if you want to show the field by default and finally a sneaky trick to put data from other objects on to your report.

Time to get your hands dirty with creating a Report Type based on a scenario.

Another feature of Reports that I don't see many people using which is REALLY powerful is adding reports to your page layouts on specific objects. This is a great way for users to visualise reports by having charts appear on the records when they look at them! I go through how to do this to make your records really pop out!

Learn about the features and functionality of Salesforce Dashboards

For the Salesforce Administrator Certification exam, it's important to understand how reports and dashboards can affect security.

An overview of what you will learn in this section of the course on Salesforce Data Management.

Salesforce has a good built-in tool for managing duplicate records. In this Salesforce video, I go through the tool and the features available to you.

In this session I go through the different Salesforce tools you can use to import and export data and the differences between them which is important to understand for the Salesforce certification. I also go through a couple of partner applications that I use regularly to import and export data.

For the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam, it's important to understand what a Salesforce ID and External ID is and how they can be used in your Salesforce Data importing strategy.

In this lecture, we look at the Salesforce Data Loader and how it can be used to insert, update, upsert, delete or hard delete records in Salesforce.

In this lecture, we take a look at the Salesforce Import wizard and the features available to you as well as some of the limitations with it.

Dataloader.io is very similar in functionality to Data Loader but has several benefits over Data Loader. In this video, we go over the functionality of DataLoader.io by Mulesoft and the benefits over Data Loader

There are a number of Salesforce platform features that could stop you from uploading data into Salesforce. In this video, I go through those features.

We take a look at the best practice with Salesforce Data Management, specifically around importing and updating data.

There are a number of different ways to backup Salesforce data and it's important to understand the options for the Salesforce Certified Administrator Exam. In this video, I go through the different options available for data backup.

Salesforce Content is similar to Salesforce Files in some ways. In this video, we will go through the similarities and how to use it.

We go over the learning objectives for the Salesforce Sales & Marketing section of the certification.

We provide an overview of the Sales process in Salesforce.

The Salesforce Web to lead functionality allows you to easily integrate your website with Salesforce to capture information from customers by way of a web form. In this video we go through the functionality and how it works.

Lead scoring is a great way for your company to automatically score the leads being created in Salesforce so that Salespeople can target and work on the most valuable leads first with the highest potential for a Sale.

Salesforce auto-response rules allow you to automatically send emails based on records being created on leads and cases. In this video, we take a look at how you can use them.

Salesforce Lead Conversion is an important part of the Sales process allowing users to convert leads into Accounts, Contacts & Opportunities. In this video, we take a look at the features and functionality of lead conversion.

Assignment rules automate your organization’s lead generation and support processes. Use lead assignment rules to specify how leads are assigned to users or queues. Use case assignment rules to determine how cases are assigned to users or put into queues.

In this video, we give an overview of the Salesforce Opportunity and Sales Process.

Throughout the Salesforce Sales process, users are adding products to opportunities. In this video, we take a look at how Products & Pricebooks relate.

There are several features and tools around the standard Salesforce Sales process that Salesforce calls their "Sales Productivity Features". In this video, we go through these features.

Salesforce Campaign Management is used to link Sales to Marketing. Allowing Marketing to report on ROI of their campaigns.

Breakdown of the learning objectives of Service Cloud.

The Salesforce Case object is the key object central to Salesforce support processes. In this video, you will learn more.

Understand the key settings to case management.

Understand how to manage Salesforce support Processes.

In this video, we go through what Salesforce case escalation rules are and how to set them up.

Salesforce Email to case allows you to create cases automatically in Salesforce from an email address. In this video we go through how to setup Email to Case.

Salesforce web-to-case allows you to create a case based on a web-form on your website.

Salesforce Solutions is an older feature from Salesforce and only available in Classic. In this video, we go through solutions and the functionality.

Salesforce Knowledge is a separate product in Salesforce which has now been moved to the Service Cloud so I don't believe it will appear in the Salesforce Certified Administrator Certification exam but just in case I have left this video in the course.

Salesforce Ideas is Salesforce's idea management system to allow you to track ideas from employees or customers.

Details about Salesforce Customer, Partner & Employee Communities.

Breakdown of the learning objectives of Salesforce Mobile & Desktop Integration.

Activities include tasks, events, and calendars. With Salesforce, track tasks and meetings together in lists and reports to easily prioritize your time and keep up with your accounts, campaigns, contacts, leads, opportunities and custom objects.

Chatter is Salesforce's collaboration tool within Salesforce. This video goes through Salesforce chatter and its benefits as well the key features of Chatter.

The Salesforce1 Mobile Application is the Salesforce app to allow users to create, update, delete and collaborate on records within Salesforce.

The Salesforce AppExchange is a great market place to access free and paid for apps that you can setup in your Salesforce. I show you how easy the AppExchange really is!