Preface
As the Salesforce economy continues to grow rapidly, there's never been a better time to build a Salesforce-based career. Architects and architect-related skills are in higher demand than ever.
The Salesforce Certified Technical Architect (CTA) credential is ranked as one of the top enterprise architect certifications in the industry. Just run a quick search on the web for job postings, and you'll have no doubt about the value of this prestigious certificate. The very limited number of CTAs around the world gives an even more satisfying feeling of joining the club of newly certified CTAs.
This book will start by explaining a set of core concepts that every architect should master, including the data life cycle, integration, and cryptography, and build your aptitude for creating high-level technical solutions. Understanding these concepts is vital to understanding the rationale behind some of the best practices suggested in Salesforce solutions. Moreover, having that in-depth knowledge will help you significantly when it comes to explaining how your end-to-end solution works.
You will then explore specific knowledge domains that are tested in the review board. With the help of real-world examples, this book provides insights into essential topics, such as selecting systems or components for your solutions, designing scalable and secure Salesforce architecture, and planning the development life cycle and deployments. Finally, you'll work on two full mock scenarios that simulate the review board exam, helping you learn how to identify requirements, create a draft solution, and combine all elements to create an engaging story to present to the board or a client in real life.
By the end of this book, you'll have gained the knowledge and skills required to pass the review board exam and implement architectural best practices and strategies in your day-to-day work.
Who this book is for?
This book is intended for Salesforce professionals who have a solid understanding of the Salesforce platform and who have racked up several years of experience as architects. These architects would ideally like to boost their careers further by targeting the Salesforce CTA credential. The book is also intended for architects who want to add more skills to their arsenal by learning how to design secure, high-performance technical solutions on the Salesforce Platform, along with how to communicate technical solutions and design trade-offs effectively to business stakeholders and how to adopt a delivery framework that ensures quality and success.
With the current rapid growth of the Salesforce ecosystem, the borders between traditional roles in some workplaces are blurring. And with that, the value of having people with exceptional talent to link the different teams becomes vital. Future CTAs are not afraid to dig deep into business challenges and ask tough questions to reveal the real business value behind a particular requirement. They like to get to the bottom of things and roll up their sleeves when necessary to try things out in order to select the right solution approach that serves current and future potential requirements. And they do not hesitate to jump into conversations with the development teams to give guidance and best practices and then work with the project management team to prepare that cutting-edge presentation for the stakeholders.
What this book covers?
Chapter 1, Starting Your Journey as a CTA, provides general information about the book and the certificate. We will cover what the profile of a typical CTA is, how that is related to the day-to-day activities of a Salesforce architect, and why understanding the way CTAs think is essential even for senior architects who are not necessarily targeting the CTA certificate. This chapter also provides details about the review board exam setup, whether physical or virtual.
Chapter 2, Core Architectural Concepts – Data, explores the core architectural skills related to data that an architect needs to master. Part of that knowledge is platform-agnostic, although other parts are particularly important for Salesforce architects. These skills will be used intensively in later parts of this book and, of course, during the review board itself.
Chapter 3, Core Architectural Concepts – Integration and Cryptography, explores the core architectural skills related to both integration and cryptography that an architect needs to master. Part of that knowledge is platform-agnostic, although other parts are particularly important for Salesforce architects. These skills will be used intensively in later parts of this book and, of course, during the review board itself.
Chapter 4, Core Architectural Concepts – Identity and Access Management, explores the core architectural skills related to Identity and Access Management (IAM) that an architect needs to master. Part of that knowledge is platform-agnostic, although other parts are particularly important for Salesforce architects. These skills will be used intensively in later parts of this book and, of course, during the review board itself.
Chapter 5, Developing a Scalable System Architecture, provides an in-depth review of some of the most tricky system architecture areas, such as determining the right selection of systems that forms the overall solution, including both on- and off-platform components, taking into consideration the platform's capabilities, constraints, and limits. This knowledge will be enhanced further using a mini hypothetical scenario.
Chapter 6, Formulating a Secure Architecture in Salesforce, provides an in-depth review of some of the most tricky areas in security, such as understanding the declarative platform security features and how they can be used to meet record-level visibility and security requirements. This knowledge will be enhanced further using a mini hypothetical scenario.
Chapter 7, Designing a Scalable Salesforce Data Architecture, provides an in-depth review of some of the most tricky areas in data, such as designing the right data migration strategy and tools, along with the different considerations the architect needs to keep in mind. This knowledge will be enhanced further using a mini hypothetical scenario.
Chapter 8, Creating a Lean Solution Architecture, provides an in-depth review of some of the most tricky areas in solution architecture, such as selecting the appropriate combination of declarative and programmatic functionality to fulfill a particular requirement. This knowledge will be enhanced further using a mini hypothetical scenario.
Chapter 9, Forging an Integrated Solution, provides an in-depth review of some of the most tricky areas in integration, such as rationally selecting the appropriate technology used to integrate with external systems, considering the platform's capabilities and limitations. This knowledge will be enhanced further using a mini hypothetical scenario.
Chapter 10, Development Life Cycle and Deployment Planning, provides an in-depth review of some of the most tricky areas in development life cycle and deployment planning, such as the ability to recommend a suitable comprehensive test strategy and mitigate the different project risks. This knowledge will be enhanced further using a mini hypothetical scenario.
Chapter 11, Communicating and Socializing Your Solution, provides an in-depth review of some of the most tricky communication areas. This includes explaining a crucial set of soft skills that an architect needs to master in order to present an end-to-end solution to the review board judges or, in real life, to internal or external clients, such as the ability to articulate the benefits, limitations, considerations, and design choices behind a proposed solution architecture in a justified and rational manner and being prepared to handle objections and adjust on the fly. This knowledge will be enhanced further using a mini hypothetical scenario.
Chapter 12, Practice the Review Board – First Mock, puts all the knowledge and skills covered in the previous chapters into action. You will be introduced to your first full hypothetical scenario. We will solve it step by step, beginning with identifying the requirement, creating a draft solution, and combining all the elements to create an engaging story to tell the judges or, in real life, internal or external clients.
Chapter 13, Present and Defend – First Mock, puts all the knowledge and skills covered in the previous chapters into action. We continue with the previous chapter's hypothetical scenario and use the draft solution to create a refined end-to-end solution and presentation. You will get hands-on experience by following a step-by-step guide where the solution is reviewed, adjusted if needed, and the artifacts' final versions are created. You will then use all of that to deliver an engaging story to tell the judges or, in real life, internal or external clients.
Chapter 14, Practice the Review Board – Second Mock, puts all the knowledge and skills covered in the previous chapters into action. You will be introduced to your second full hypothetical scenario. We will solve it step by step, beginning with identifying the requirement, creating a draft solution, and combining all the elements to create an engaging story to tell the judges or, in real life, internal or external clients.
Chapter 15, Present and Defend – Second Mock, puts all the knowledge and skills covered in the previous chapters into action. We continue with the previous chapter's hypothetical scenario and use the draft solution to create a refined end-to-end solution and presentation. You will get hands-on experience by following a step-by-step guide where the solution is reviewed, adjusted if needed, and the artifacts' final versions are created. You will then use all of that to deliver an engaging story to tell the judges or, in real life, internal or external clients.
Appendix, Tips and Tricks, and the Way Forward, provides a collection of tips and tricks to help the candidate on the day of the review, starting with best practices to follow during the presentation, followed by tips regarding time management. We then highlight different strategies used by other CTAs to pass the review board exam, and provide a set of suggested activities that a candidate who is targeting the review board should consider, including how to prepare for the last mile, what resources and groups are available in terms of getting support, and how to get into the right mindset on the day of the review board exam.
To get the most out of this book
This book is designed to help you gain the required knowledge and skills to pass the CTA exam using hands-on examples. We will be covering the seven knowledge domains that a CTA needs to master in order to pass the exam. We will tackle a mini hypothetical scenario for each domain. We will be developing the solution progressively, creating and then recreating solution artifacts as we discover and weigh different design decisions. This is precisely what many architects do in their daily lives. They dig deeper into details and, at every stage, they build a clearer picture of the solution and the correct elements required to make it. They revisit previous decisions and adjust or change them if needed.
You are strongly advised to practice recreating the solution, reconsider other alternatives, and weigh the pros and cons of each. Build your familiarity with the artifacts and diagrams needed to explain your solution. You will find that you become quicker and more efficient in creating them. Moreover, the quality of your outcome will also improve.
Diagrams will be provided at every stage and will progressively evolve; you will notice that these artifacts might end up very different from what we started with. The ability to evolve your solution and flexibly change its elements while still maintaining the end-to-end solution picture is a crucial skill that a CTA must master. You will learn much of that throughout the book.
The Salesforce Developer Edition org is recommended to try out certain functionalities. You can sign up for a free org using the following link: https://developer.salesforce.com/signup.
You can use any diagramming tool, free or paid, or even draw the diagrams on paper or a flipchart. To practice the virtual Salesforce CTA review board, you need to become familiar with tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel or Google Slides and Sheets (the latter is preferred).
Journey Towards Becoming a Salesforce CTA – Book Club
We have created an exclusive book club for you on our Packt Community page, to share knowledge and have insightful discussions around the topics covered in this book. This book club is for all the readers, existing architects, and anyone who aims to achieve the Salesforce CTA certification.
You are welcome to discuss the book, share your own experiences, views, and best practices on designing modern, practical, and robust architectures on the Salesforce platform, and help us grow the number of Salesforce CTAs globally.
Download the color images
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781800568754_ColorImages.pdf.
Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "The logged-in, existing community user creates a Community_Invitation__c record and sets the required values, such as an email address."
A block of code is set as follows:
{
"alg": "HS256",
"typ": "JWT",
"kid": "228",
}
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "A data warehouse (DW or DWH) is a central repository of current and historical data integrated from one or more disparate sources."
Tips or important notes
Appear like this.
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