Salesforce is the world's leading customer relationship management (CRM) service provider. This software-as-a service (SaaS) tool facilitates the development of business-specific solutions for marketing, sales, services, and e-commerce. With a market share of over 40%, this software is one of the most popular in the industry of cloud-based customer relationship management tools.
QA analysts are critical members of the project team, ensuring that everything is working properly and that the solution meets the expectations of the users. Together with the rest of the project team, QAs examine functional and non-functional requirements from the users’ perspective.
To help both new and seasoned Salesforce quality assurance (QA) specialists land their dream job, we've compiled a list of Salesforce interview questions and answers below.
What is a Salesforce QA?
Let's begin with an overview of what these specialists do. A Salesforce QA manager ensures the quality of all Salesforce apps, solutions, and implementations.
That’s a basic definition, but what is Salesforce QA exactly? The term "Salesforce QA" refers to the process of testing both the base Salesforce platform and any customizations that have been made to it to ensure that they are all bug-free and fully satisfying to end users. With that in mind, check out top Salesforce QA interview questions and answers below.
Salesforce interview questions and answers for all-level professionals
Salesforce job interview questions for entry-level professionals
1. What is Salesforce testing?
Salesforce testing is a type of software testing that is specific to Salesforce. It is the process of validating a Salesforce configuration and customization in order to identify vulnerabilities whenever an update, configuration, or customization is made. Additionally, end-to-end testing ensures that Salesforce integrations function as expected.
2. What is Salesforce functional testing?
Functional testing determines if the application under development meets the functional requirements outlined in the requirement document or user stories. Functional testing is classified as follows:
- Unit testing is the process of evaluating individual units of code and configuration to determine if they meet specifications.
- Integration testing involves combining and testing individual modules as a group.
- System testing is the end-to-end evaluation of a fully integrated system to determine whether or not it complies with specified requirements.
- User acceptance testing is a type of testing performed by end users or customers.
3. What is Salesforce non-functional testing?
Non-functional testing evaluates the performance, usability, and reliability of the application. It can be classified as follows:
- Performance testing determines how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload.
- Security testing is done to reveal any flaws in the security mechanisms of an information system that protect data and maintain functionality as intended.
- Usability testing evaluates how easy it is to use the application from the end user’s perspective.
- Compatibility testing ensures the application’s compatibility with different computing environments.
4. What is Salesforce manual testing?
Manual testing is the process of checking Salesforce applications for flaws by simulating actual end-user behavior in order to identify and report any issues.
5. What is Salesforce automation testing?
Automation testing is the process of testing Salesforce applications with tools like Selenium, Quick Test Professional (QTP), or scripts. The two most common methods for automation testing are:
- To ensure that a program's behavior is as expected when it is being used by an end user, one can employ a testing framework known as Graphical User Interface (GUI), which simulates user inputs like key presses and mouse clicks and then monitors the resulting alterations to the user interface.
- To validate the behavior of an application, an API-based testing framework can be used to access the application through a programming interface. Most of the time, API-driven testing doesn't involve interacting with the user interface (UI).
6. What are the advantages of the Salesforce CRM?
Salesforce's core concept is that it is a low-cost, low-maintenance, entirely cloud-based CRM service. Some additional benefits of Salesforce are as follows:
- Accelerating and improving sales
- Using a data-driven approach to customer acquisition
- Lowering costs while increasing customer satisfaction
- Automating routine and minor tasks
- Improving productivity and communication
7. What are the advantages of Salesforce Saas?
Some of the main benefits of Salesforce SaaS are:
- No infrastructure management complications
- A pay-as-you-go pricing model
- All applications can be accessed via the internet and via mobile devices
- Simple, quick app-to-app integration
- New features are available immediately
- Guaranteed availability, safety, and scalability
8. What is an app in Salesforce?
In Salesforce, an app is a container that includes a name, a logo, and a collection of tabs that work as a unit to provide a specific functionality. Users can switch between apps using the Force.com app's drop-down menu, located in the upper-right corner of each page.
9. How is sales tracking done in Salesforce?
Salesforce keeps track of sales figures, customer data, clients served, repeat purchases, and other details. With Salesforce, one can easily generate sales tracking reports, charts, and dashboards.
10. What is the difference between Force.com and Salesforce.com?
Salesforce.com is SaaS (software-as-a-service), whereas Force.com is PaaS (platform-as-a service).
11. What is the Salesforce testing lifecycle?
The Salesforce testing cycle consists of five basic steps:
- Requirement gathering, when the business requirements of the application being developed are identified
- Test planning, when the test strategy, objectives, and plan are defined
- Test environment setup, which involves gaining access to a Salesforce sandbox and configuring test data
- Test execution, which involves running the test cases and documenting any bugs identified
- Test closure, which is the process of writing up a test summary after all test cases have been run and all bugs have been fixed
12. What is the difference between WhoID and WhatID?
WhoID refers to information regarding contacts and leads, whereas What ID only refers to objects.
13. What types of reports are available in Salesforce?
The following are types of reports in Salesforce:
- A tabular report presents the total in table format.
- A matrix report is a detailed report that groups data based on both rows and columns.
- A summary report is a detailed report where groups are made based on the columns.
- A joined report combines two or more reports into a single one.
14. What are the three types of object relations in Salesforce?
Using the object relationship overview, the related list feature of Salesforce lets you link the records of both standard and custom objects. You can create various types of relationships to connect business cases with customers. Salesforce supports the following types of object relations:
- One to many
- Many to many
- Master-Detail
15. What is a Salesforce dashboard and how many reports can be added to it?
A dashboard is a visual representation of data from a report. It can contain up to twenty reports at once.
16. What is an audit trail?
If your company has multiple Salesforce administrators, the audit trail allows you to track all of the recent changes made by other admins. It can store up to six months of data.
17. What is a Salesforce Community Cloud?
Salesforce.com's Community Cloud is a social platform that connects and facilitates communication among an organization's employees, partners, and customers.
Community Cloud has been renamed "Experience Cloud" to more accurately reflect the wide variety of interconnected digital experiences that can be built, from portals, websites, and help centers to forums and even mobile apps.
18. What is Salesforce Service Cloud?
Salesforce Service Cloud is a CRM platform for customer service and support. Service Cloud is designed for automating case routing and accelerating case resolution for support agents, whereas Sales Cloud focuses on sales activities.
19. What is Salesforce Sales Cloud and what are its main features?
Sales Cloud is Salesforce-integrated sales automation software designed to support sales, marketing, and customer service. It is a fully customizable product that consolidates all customer data on an integrated platform that includes marketing, lead generation, sales, customer service, and business analytics, and it also provides access to tens of thousands of applications.
The main features of Sales Cloud are:
- Lead management
- Account and contact management
- Opportunity management
- Pipeline and forecast management
Salesforce job interview questions for intermediate-level professionals
Connected apps provide a framework for integrating third-party software with Salesforce through APIs and industry-standard protocols. Authentication, authorization, and SSO for third-party apps are all handled with industry-standard protocols like SAML, OAuth, and OpenID Connect. With connected apps, Salesforce administrators can manage access to the apps and make sure security rules are followed.
21. What are workflows and what are workflow actions?
A workflow in Salesforce is a container or business logic engine that enables the time-saving automation of standard internal procedures and processes. It works as follows: If the criteria are met, the actions are executed. If they are not, the record will be saved but no action will be executed.
There are two types of workflow actions in Salesforce:
- Immediate actions are executed right away upon record creation or modification.
- Time-dependent actions are carried out after a specific period of time, such as 10 days before a record's close date, when the Salesforce workflow rules will re-evaluate the record to ensure that the rule criteria are met.
22. What are triggers? How are they different from workflows?
Triggers in Salesforce are called Apex triggers. A trigger is a unique code that is executed before or after a record is inserted or updated and is available specifically for frequently repeated actions, such as lead conversions.
The difference between a trigger and a workflow is that a trigger is a piece of code, while a workflow is an automated process that does not require any code.
23. What is Apex?
Apex is a strongly typed, object-oriented programming language that allows developers to execute flow and transaction control statements on Salesforce via an API. On top of that, Apex enables programmers to incorporate business logic into their code.
24. What is the required minimum test coverage for deploying a trigger?
75% code coverage is required for each individual Apex class, with an organization-wide average of 75% code coverage. This includes classes and triggers.
25. What are custom objects in Salesforce?
In Salesforce, custom objects are represented by standard database tables. They enable the linking of one object or instance to many child records, and each child can be equally linked to many parents. So, in order to store all of an organization's data in Salesforce.com, a custom object must be defined. Once you define a custom object, you can:
- Create custom fields
- Connect the custom object to other records
- Display the custom object data in related custom lists
- Record track events and tasks for custom objects
- Create page layouts
- Create a custom tab for the custom object
- Make dashboards and reports to analyze custom object data
- Share your customized tabs, apps, objects, and any other related components
26. What are the different dashboard components?
Salesforce dashboard components include:
- Gauges, which are components of a dashboard that display a single value within a range of custom values
- Metrics, which display a single key-value pair. All metrics positioned above and below one another in the dashboard column would be presented as a single element.
- Tables, which display report data in a column format
- A visualforce page, which is used to build a customized component or display data that isn't supported by other component types
- Custom S-components, which contain data that is executed or displayed in a browser, such as an Excel file, an ActiveX Control, a Java applet, or a custom HTML web form
27. What is an sObject type?
Any object that can be stored in the Force.com platform database is referred to as an sObject. Apex supports the use of a generic sObject abstract type to represent any object.
28. What are Lightning components, and how are they used?
Lightning components can be used for various purposes, such as:
- Drag-and-drop support for Lightning App Builder and Community Builder components
- Adding additional Lightning components to Lightning Pages
- Adding Lightning components to Lightning Experience Record Pages
- Overriding Standard Actions
29. What tools are included in Lightning?
Here’s a list of Lightning tools:
- Lightning Component Framework, which offers components and extensions that can be used to create reusable custom components, standalone apps, and Salesforce1 Mobile App customizations
- Lightning App Builder, which is a user interface tool that allows you to quickly create apps using drag-and-drop components
- Lightning Connect, which is an integration tool that allows Salesforce to get data from any OData-compliant external source
- Lightning Process Builder, which is a tool for visualizing and automating business processes
- Lightning Schema Builder, which is a visualization tool for viewing and creating objects, fields, and relationships
30. What is the difference between SOQL and SOSL?
In Salesforce, you can only perform a single-object search using SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language), but you can query any type of data field and then perform Data Manipulation Language (DML) operations on the results.
Salesforce Object Search Language (SOSL) allows you to search for multiple objects at the same time. However, in SOSL, you can only search for texts, emails, and phone numbers. DML operations on the search results are not permitted.
31. What are bucket fields and how are they used in Salesforce?
Salesforce bucket fields can be used to group records based on their field values. However, these fields are never created on the Salesforce platform and can only be located in the report section.
32. What are sandboxes and what are their types?
A sandbox is a replica of a Salesforce production environment that can be used for learning, development, and testing purposes. Depending on the type of sandbox and the production group's edition, the sandbox's contents and size may change.
Sandboxes are classified into four types:
- Developer Sandbox
- Developer Pro Sandbox
- Partial Data Sandbox
- Full Sandbox
33. Can you write getter and setter methods in Salesforce?
In Salesforce, the getter method can be used to retrieve the value of a variable on visual force pages, while the setter method can be used to set the value of that variable.
34. How would you establish a many-to-many relationship in Salesforce?
To establish a many-to-many connection, you have to use a junction object. Junction objects are custom objects that combine two Master-Detail relationships into a single structure.
35. What is the difference between a role and a profile in Salesforce?
A role facilitates the administration and control of Salesforce access that influences report generation. In addition, it enables the control of user access to data within an organization. A role is assigned to users who can access the data and perform operations on it. Users with a particular role may share their reports with the rest of the team.
A profile is a required component for using Salesforce within an organization. It is mandatory for all users to verify their identity for legal authorization, and it aids in the protection of an organization's data from unauthorized access. It also determines the types of records that a user can access.
36. What are some causes of data loss in Salesforce?
The most common causes of Salesforce data loss include:
- Data and date-time changes
- Migrating numeric, monetary, and percentage values from other data types
- Any alteration to the multi-select picklist other than picklist deletion
- Changing from text-area to email, phone, URL, and text
Salesforce job interview questions for advanced-level professionals
37. How are Standard and Custom Controllers different?
Standard controllers are made for standard Salesforce pages and have the same logic and functions as any standard Salesforce page. They work well with both standard objects and custom ones.
Custom controllers belong to an Apex class that extends the functionality of a standard controller and executes page logic without the use of standard controllers. Custom controllers are used to bypass the current user's security and permissions and run a Visualforce page in system mode.
38. What are the various data types that can be associated with a standard field record name?
Typically, a field record will have a maximum length of 80 characters and will be formatted as either an auto-number field or a text field with a read-only data type. It depends on whether the field name contains a text-based or numeric ID. To generate auto numbers, the format must be specified when defining the field. Numbers will be generated automatically as new records are added. Here’s an example:
Sr No-{1}
Sr No-{2}
39. Which fields are automatically indexed in Salesforce?
Salesforce automatically indexes the following fields:
- Custom fields with an external ID or unique field designation
- Fields with primary keys (ID, Name, and Owner)
- Audit dates (e.g., SystemModStamp)
- Foreign keys (e.g., Lookup and Master-Detail relationship fields)
40. What are the different types of collections in Salesforce Apex?
A collection is the type of variable used to store an array of records (data). Salesforce includes the following collection types:
- Lists
- Maps
- Sets
41. What is a transaction in Apex?
In Apex, a "transaction" is a collection of operations that are executed as a unit, including DML operations that are responsible for querying records. If an error occurs while saving a single record, all DML operations within a transaction are either successfully completed or rolled back entirely.
42. What are maps in Apex?
Maps are used to store data as key-value pairs, where each unique key corresponds to a single value.
Check out their syntax:
Map<String, String> country_city = new Map<String, String>();
43. What is Apex class?
Apex classes serve as templates for creating Apex objects. These classes are comprised of additional classes, variables, user-defined methods, exception types, and static initialization code.
44. What are the advantages of using Batch Apex over regular Apex?
Batch Apex has many advantages over regular Apex. Typically, Apex processes 100 records per cycle when running SOQL queries, while Batch Apex processes 200 records per cycle.
Batch Apex can retrieve 50,000,000 SOQL queries, while Apex is limited to retrieving only 50,000. The Apex heap size is 6 MB, while that of a Batch Apex is 12 MB. Apex classes are more likely to experience errors when processing large numbers of records than the Batch Apex equivalent. The second is usually flawless.
45. Can you give an example of a Salesforce API and its application?
Salesforce provides various APIs so that developers can easily integrate across Salesforce. Some examples include:
- REST API enables simple integration of Salesforce applications via HTTP methods in XML or JSON formats. It is the best option for building mobile applications and external clients.
- Bulk API provides programmatic access for quickly loading and querying large amounts of data in Salesforce.
- Streaming API is used to trigger and receive notifications whenever changes are made to Salesforce data based on the specified criteria.
46. What email template types can be created in Salesforce?
The list of email templates that can be created in Salesforce is as follows:
- Text templates can be created or modified by all organization members.
- HTML with Letterhead can be created by admins and users with the 'Edit HTML Templates' permission.
- Custom HTML templates can be created by admins and users without using a letterhead.
- Visualforce templates can be created by admins and developers using Visualforce. They offer advanced features such as combining recipient data from multiple records.
47. How many ways can a record be shared?
Salesforce provides the following methods for sharing records:
- Role Hierarchy: When a user is assigned to a role, the user above that user in the role hierarchy gains access to records and inherits permissions.
- Organization-Wide Default (OWD): OWD enables the configuration of public read-only or public write-only permissions for all users in an organization.
- Manual Sharing: The owner or a person with a higher position in the role hierarchy can grant users or a group of users manual access to records or files.
48. What is a wrapper class in Salesforce?
In Salesforce, a wrapper class is a type of container class that includes a group of objects as its segments. It can be used to enclose data that has been collected. The wrapper class that serves as a custom object, as well as its properties, are defined by a programmer. In addition, instances of a wrapper class assist in representing distinct objects in the corresponding table on a Visualforce page.
49. What is a Visibility Enum?
The term "visibility enumeration" indicates whether a cached value is only visible in its own namespace or in all namespaces.
50. What binding types does Salesforce support?
Three types of Salesforce bindings include:
- Data bindings, which refer to the data set contained within a controller
- Action bindings, which are associated with action methods in the controller
- Component bindings, which refer to other Visualforce components
Before you go
We hope that our comprehensive blog post on Salesforce interview questions and answers will help you prepare for your upcoming interview. Given the technical nature of the questions, however, keep in mind that it's important to be ready to give more specific examples of how you've used your relevant experience, skills, and qualifications in the past. We wish you luck in your upcoming interview!
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