As of Jan 2021, Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM service provider. They have more than 40% market share in the Cloud CRM space and dominates the overall CRM space with a market share of 19.7%. They were rated the world’s #1 CRM for two consecutive years and if the projected growth of Salesforce is anything to go by, the need for professionals with Salesforce training is only going to exponentially increase. This is where Salesforce enters the picture, and that is what has prompted me to write a blog on the most frequently asked Salesforce interview questions.
Top 50 Salesforce Interview Questions And Answers
This list of Salesforce interview questions is divided into 9 sections, each for different aspects of Salesforce.
- Salesforce fundamentals
- Declarative features
- Audit & reporting features
- Data modelling and data management
- Logic & process automation
- Software testing
- Debug & deployment tools
- Integration features
- Programmatic features
A. Salesforce Fundamentals – Salesforce Interview Questions
1. Can two users have the same profile? Can two profiles be assigned to the same user?
Profiles determine the level of access a user can have in a Salesforce org.
As far as the first part of the question is concerned, Yes. One profile can be assigned to any number of users. Take the example of a Sales or Service team in a company. The entire team will be assigned the same profile. The admin can create one profile: Sales Profile, which will have access to the Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns, Contacts and other objects deemed necessary by the company.
In this way, many users can be assigned the same profile. In case the team lead or manager need access to additional records/ objects then it can be done by assigning permission sets only for those users.
Answering the second part of the question, each user can only be assigned 1 profile.
2. What are Governor Limits in Salesforce?
In Salesforce, it is the Governor Limits which controls how much data or how many records you can store in the shared databases. Why? Because Salesforce is based on the concept of multi-tenant architecture. In simpler words, Salesforce uses a single database to store the data of multiple clients/ customers. The below image will help you relate to this concept.
To make sure no single client monopolizes the shared resources, Salesforce introduced the concept of Governor Limits which is strictly enforced by the Apex run-time engine.
Governor Limits are a Salesforce developer’s biggest challenge. That is because if the Apex code ever exceeds the limit, the expected governor issues a run-time exception that cannot be handled. Hence as a Salesforce developer, you have to be very careful while developing your application.
Different Governor Limits in Salesforce are:
- Per-Transaction Apex Limits
- Force.com Platform Apex Limits
- Static Apex Limits
- Size-Specific Apex Limits
- Miscellaneous Apex Limits
- Email Limits
- Push Notification Limits
3. What is a sandbox org? What are the different types of sandboxes in Salesforce?
A sandbox is a copy of the production environment/ org, used for testing and development purposes. It’s useful because it allows development on Apex programming without disturbing the production environment.
When can you use it?
You can use it when you want to test a newly developed Force.com application or Visualforce page. You can develop and test it in the Sandbox org instead of doing it directly in production.
This way, you can develop the application without any hassle and then migrate the metadata and data (if applicable) to the production environment. Doing this in a non-production environment allows developers to freely test and experiment applications end to end.
Types of Sandboxes are:
- Developer
- Developer Pro
- Partial Copy
- Full
4. Can you edit an apex trigger/ apex class in production environment? Can you edit a Visualforce page in production environment?
No, it is not possible to edit apex classes and triggers directly in production environment.
It needs to be done first in Developer edition or testing org or in Sandbox org. Then, to deploy it in production, a user with Author Apex permission must deploy the triggers and classes using deployment tools.
However, Visualforce pages can be created and edited in both sandbox and in production.
Only if the page has to do something unique (different values), it would have to be developed via Sandbox.
5. What are the different data types that a standard field record name can have?
A standard field record name can have data type of either auto number or text field with a limit of 80 chars.
For generating auto numbers, the format needs to be specified while defining the field and after that for every record that is added, the number will get auto generated. For example:-
Sr No-{1}
Sr No-{2}
Sr No-{3}
6. Why are Visualforce pages served from a different domain?
Visualforce pages are served from a different domain to improve security standards and block cross site scripting. Take a look at the highlighted portion in the below Visualforce page:-
B. Declarative Features – Salesforce Interview Questions
7. What is WhoId and WhatId in activities?
WhoID refers to people. Typically: contacts or leads. Example: LeadID, ContactID
WhatID refers to objects. Example: AccountID, OpportunityID
8. What is the use of writing sharing rules? Can you use sharing rules to restrict data access?
Sharing rules are written to give edit access (public read and write) or public read only access to certain individuals in Salesforce org. A classic example is when:- only your managers or superiors need to be given extra credentials to your records in objects as compared to your peers.
By default, all users in your organization will have organization-wide-default sharing settings of either Public Read Only or Private.
To give access to more records, which users do not own, we write sharing rules.
Example: Sharing rules are used to extend sharing access to users in public groups or roles. Hence, sharing rules are not as strict as organization-wide default settings. They allow greater access for those users.
As far as the second part of the question is concerned, the answer is no. We cannot use sharing rules to restrict data access. It is only used for allowing greater access to records.
9. What are the different types of email templates that can be created in Salesforce?
The different types of Email templates are listed in the below table:-
| Text | All users can create or change this template |
| HTML with letterhead | Only Administrators and users having “Edit HTML Templates” permissions can create this template based on a letterhead. |
| Custom HTML | Administrators and users having “Edit HTML Templates” permissions can create this template without the need of a letterhead |
| Visualforce | Only administrators and developers can create this template. Advanced functionalities like merging data from multiple records is available only in this template |
C. Audit & Reporting Features – Salesforce Interview Questions
10. What is a bucket field in reports?
A bucket field lets you group related records together by ranges and segments, without the use of complex formulas and custom fields. Bucketing can thus be used to group, filter, or arrange report data. When you create a bucket field, you need to define multiple categories (buckets) that are used to group report values.
The advantage is that earlier, we had to create custom fields to group or segment certain data.
11. What are dynamic dashboards? Can dynamic dashboards be scheduled?
Before we understand dynamic dashboards, let us first understand static dashboards. Static dashboards are the basic dashboard types that will be visible to any user who has made a report out of his data. An example of this is what a Sales manager/ Marketing manager would be able to see on his Salesforce org. In other words, a normal dashboard shows data only from a single user’s perspective. Now comes the concept of dynamic dashboards.
Dynamic dashboards are used to display information which is tailored to a specific user. Let us consider the same example as above. In case the Sales manager wants to view the report generated specific to only one of his team members, then he can use dynamic dashboards.
You can use dynamic dashboards when you want to show user-specific data of a particular user, such as their personal quotas and sales, or number of case closures, or leads converted etc.
You can also use a normal/ static dashboard when you want to show regional or organization-wide data to a set of users, such as a particular region’s sales number, or a particular support team’s performance on case closures.
As far as the second part of the question is concerned, no we cannot schedule a dynamic dashboard. That is because whenever we open the dashboard, it will show the data generated in real-time.
12. What are the different types of reports available in Salesforce? Can we mass delete reports in Salesforce?
Salesforce Report Types
| 1. Tabular reports | Simple Excel type tables which provide a list of items with the grand total |
| 2. Summary reports | Similar to Tabular reports, but also have functionality of grouping rows, viewing subtotals & creating charts |
| 3. Matrix reports | Two-dimensional reports which allow you to group records both by row and column |
| 4. Joined reports | Multiple blocks showing data from different reports based on same or different report types |
Another important point to note here is that, only Summary reports and Matrix reports can be fed as data source for dashboards. Tabular and Joined reports cannot be used as data source for dashboards.
Can we mass delete reports in Salesforce? Of Course we can mass delete reports in Salesforce. The option to mass delete reports can be found under Data Management in Setup.
D. Data Modelling & Data Management – Salesforce Interview Questions
13. What are the different types of object relations in salesforce? How can you create them?
No list of Salesforce interview questions is complete without involving relationships between objects in Salesforce. Relationships in Salesforce can be used to establish links between two or more objects.
The different types of object relationships in Salesforce are:
- Master-Detail Relationship (1:n):- It is a parent-child relationship in which the master object controls the behavior of the dependent child object. It is a 1:n relationship, in which there can be only one parent, but many children.The main concept you need to be know is that, being the controlling object, the master field cannot be empty. If a record/ field in master object is deleted, the corresponding fields in the dependent object are also deleted. This is called a cascade delete. Dependent fields will inherit the owner, sharing and security settings from its master.You can define master-detail relationships between two custom objects, or between a custom object and standard object as long as the standard object is the master in the relationship.
- Lookup Relationship (1:n):-
Lookup relationships are used when you want to create a link between two objects, but without the dependency on the parent object. Similar to Master-Detail relationship, you can think of this as a form of parent-child relationship where there is only one parent, but many children i.e. 1:n relationship.The difference here is that despite being controlling field, deleting a record will not result in automatic deletion of the lookup field in the child object. Thus the records in the child object will not be affected and there is no cascade delete here. Neither will the child fields inherit the owner, sharing or security settings of its parent. - Junction Relationship (Many-To-Many):-
This kind of a relationship can exist when there is a need to create two master-detail relationships. Two master-detail relationships can be created by linking 3 custom objects. Here, two objects will be master objects and the third object will be dependent on both the objects. In simpler words, it will be a child object for both the master objects.
14. What happens to detail record when a master record is deleted? What happens to child record when a parent record is deleted?
In a Master-Detail relationship, when a master record is deleted, the detail record is deleted automatically (Cascade delete).
In a Lookup relationship, even if the parent record is deleted, the child record will not be deleted.
15. Can you have a roll up summary field in case of Master-Detail relationship?
Yes. You can have a roll-up summary in case of a master-detail relationship. But not in case of a lookup relationship.
A roll-up summary field is used to display a value in a master record based on the values of a set of fields in a detail record. The detail record must be related to the master through a master-detail relationship.
There are 4 calculations that you can do using roll-up summary field. You can count the number of detail records related to a master record. Or, you can calculate the sum, minimum value, or maximum value of a field in the detail records.
16. Explain the term “Data Skew” in Salesforce.
“Data skew” is a condition which you will encounter when working for a big client where there are over 10,000 records. When one single user owns that many records we call that condition ‘ownership data skew’.
When such users perform updates, performance issues will be encountered because of “data skew”. This happens when a single user/ members of a single role own most of the records for a particular object.
17. Explain skinny table. What are the considerations for Skinny Table?
In Salesforce, skinny tables are used to access frequently used fields and to avoid joins. This largely improves performance. Skinny tables are highly effective, so much so that even when the source tables are modified, skinny tables will be in sync with source tables.
Considerations for skinny tables:
- Skinny tables can contain a maximum of 100 columns.
- Skinny tables cannot contain fields from other objects.
- For full sandboxes: Skinny tables are copied to your Full sandbox organizations, as of the Summer ’15 release.
18. Which fields are automatically Indexed in Salesforce?
Only the following fields are automatically indexed in Salesforce:
- Primary keys (Id, Name and Owner fields).
- Foreign keys (lookup or master-detail relationship fields).
- Audit dates (such as SystemModStamp).
- Custom fields marked as an External ID or a unique field.
19. How to handle comma within a field while uploading using Data Loader?
In a Data Loader .CSV, if there is a comma in field content, you will have to enclose the contents within double quotation marks: ” “.
E. Logic & Process Automation – Salesforce Interview Questions
20. For which criteria in workflow “time dependent workflow action” cannot be created?
Time dependent workflow action cannot be create for: “created, and every time it’s edited”.
21. What are the types of custom settings in Salesforce? What is the advantage of using custom settings?
There are two types of custom settings in Salesforce: List Custom Settings and Hierarchy Custom Settings.
List Custom Settings are a type of custom settings that provides a reusable set of static data that can be accessed across your organization irrespective of user/ profile.
Hierarchy Custom Settings are another type of custom settings that uses built-in hierarchical logic for “personalizing” settings for specific profiles or users.
The advantage of using custom settings is that it allows developers to create a custom set of access rules for various users and profiles.
22. How many active assignment rules can you have in a lead/ case?
Only one rule can be active at a time.
23. What are custom labels in Salesforce? What is the character limit of custom label?
Custom labels are custom text values that can be accessed from Apex classes or Visualforce pages. The values here can be translated into any language supported by Salesforce.
Their benefit is that they enable developers to create multilingual applications which automatically presents information in a user’s native language.
You can create up to 5,000 custom labels for your organization, and they can be up to 1,000 characters in length.
24. What is the difference between a Role and Profile in Salesforce?
As mentioned in one of the previous Salesforce interview questions, a profile will ultimately control access to which records a user has in a Salesforce org. No user can work on the Salesforce org without being assigned a profile. The Profile is therefore mandatory for every user.
Role however is not mandatory for every user. The primary function of the Role/ Role hierarchy is that it allows higher level users in hierarchy get access to records owned by lower level users in the hierarchy. An example of that is Sales Managers getting access to records owned by Sales Reps while their peers do not get access to it.
25. What are the examples of non-deterministic Force.com formula fields?
Before I mention some of the examples, let me give you an introduction to deterministic and non-deterministic formula fields. Formula fields whose value will be static are referred to as deterministic fields. Whereas, formula fields whose value will be changed dynamically or whose values will have to be calculated on the fly, they are referred to as non-deterministic formula fields. A classic example of that is a formula returning the current date and time.
Some examples of non-deterministic fields in Force.com are:
- Lookup fields
- Formula fields whose reference spans over other entities
- Fields having dynamic date functions like:- TODAY() or NOW()
F. Software Testing – Salesforce Interview Questions
26. Why do we need to write test classes? How to identify if a class is a test class?
Software developers from around the world will unanimously agree that writing code in test classes makes debugging more efficient. Why? That is because test classes help in creating robust and error-free code be it Apex or any other programming language. Since Unit tests are powerful in their own right, Salesforce requires you to write test classes in Apex code.
Why are they so powerful? Because test classes and test methods verify whether a particular piece of code is working properly or not. If that piece of code fails, then developers/ testers can accurately locate the test class having the faulty bug.
Test classes can be determined easily because every test class will be annotated with @isTest keyword. In fact, if we do not annotate a test class with @isTest, then it cannot be defined as a test class. Similarly, any method within a class which has the keyword testMethod, is a test method.
27. What is minimum test coverage required for trigger to deploy?
In Salesforce, if you want to deploy your code to production, then you must make sure that at least 75% of your Apex code is covered by unit tests. And all these tests must complete successfully.
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