Salesforce Administrator interview questions
100 live · 31 easy · 36 medium · 33 hard
Top 10 must-know
CuratedThe 10 questions every Salesforce Administrator candidate should be able to answer cold. Mix of difficulties.
- 1What is the difference between a Profile and a Permission Set?easy
- 2What is the difference between a Lookup and a Master-Detail relationship?easy
- 3Walk me through the Salesforce sharing model from most to least restrictive.medium
- 4What is the difference between a Profile and a Role?medium
- 5When would you use a Validation Rule instead of marking a field as Required?medium
- 6Workflow Rules, Process Builder, Flow — which one would you use today and why?medium
- 7How do Field-Level Security and Page Layouts each control field visibility, and which wins?medium
- 8Walk me through the trade-offs of Public Read/Write vs Public Read Only vs Private Org-Wide Defaults.hard
- 9Walk me through Salesforce's Order of Execution when a record is saved.hard
- 10What are Salesforce's Governor Limits and which ones should an admin worry about?hard
All 100 questions
easy
- What does a Salesforce Administrator actually do day-to-day?
- What is the difference between a Profile and a Permission Set?
- What is an Object in Salesforce, and what kinds are there?
- What is the difference between a Standard Field and a Custom Field?
- What is a Record Type and when would you use one?
- What is a Sandbox and what types are available?
- What is a Page Layout and how does it differ from a Lightning Record Page?
- What is the difference between a Lookup and a Master-Detail relationship?
- What is a Custom App in Salesforce, and how is it different from a Connected App?
- What is a List View and what are the visibility scopes?
- What is the difference between a Quick Action and a Global Action?
- What is the difference between Deactivating and Freezing a user, and when would you use each?
- What is MFA in Salesforce, is it required, and how do you implement it?
- What is a Permission Set License and how does it differ from a Permission Set?
- What is My Domain in Salesforce and why does it matter?
- What is the AppExchange and what should an admin know before installing a package?
- What is a Report Type and why does it matter?
- What is a Dashboard in Salesforce and what are its key components?
- What is the difference between a Custom Button and a Custom Link?
- What is a Tab in Salesforce and how do you make a custom one?
- What is a List View Chart and how does it differ from a Report?
- What is the difference between Owner and Created By, and why does it matter?
- What are Web-to-Lead and Web-to-Case, and how do you set them up?
- What is a Person Account and what are its trade-offs?
- What is the Setup Audit Trail and what does it capture?
- What is Login History and what does it tell you?
- What is the difference between a Task and an Event in Salesforce?
- What is the difference between Files, Attachments, and Content?
- What is the Translation Workbench and when do you use it?
- What is Health Check and how should an admin use it?
- What is a Named Credential and why use it instead of a Remote Site Setting?
medium
- Walk me through the Salesforce sharing model from most to least restrictive.
- What is the difference between a Profile and a Role?
- When would you use a Validation Rule instead of marking a field as Required?
- Workflow Rules, Process Builder, Flow — which one would you use today and why?
- How do Field-Level Security and Page Layouts each control field visibility, and which wins?
- When would you use a Permission Set Group instead of individual Permission Sets?
- When would you use a Public Group versus a Queue?
- How does Field History Tracking work, and what are its limits?
- How would you mass-update 50,000 records — and what would you check first?
- What is the difference between a Standard and Custom Profile?
- How do Duplicate Rules and Matching Rules work together?
- How do you organise email templates for multiple teams and brands?
- What is the difference between a Picklist, a Multi-Select Picklist, and a Picklist Value Set?
- What is a Login Flow and when would you use one?
- When would you use Custom Settings vs Custom Metadata Types?
- What is an Auto-Number field and what should an admin watch out for?
- How does the Salesforce Mobile App differ from Lightning Experience on desktop?
- Can you build a Roll-Up Summary on a Lookup relationship? If not, what are the alternatives?
- How do Report Folders and Folder Sharing work?
- What is a Joined Report and when would you use one?
- How does Email-to-Case work and what's the setup process?
- What is a Salesforce Knowledge article and how does it differ from a regular file?
- How does Campaign Influence work and how do you configure it?
- What is the difference between Assignment Rules and Escalation Rules?
- What is the difference between View All Data, View All on Object, Modify All Data, and Modify All on Object?
- What is Dynamic Forms and how does it differ from a Page Layout?
- How would you architect Reports access for sensitive data like financial or HR fields?
- How do Opportunity Stage, Forecast Category, and Probability relate?
- What is Sales Path and how do you configure it?
- What is a Reporting Snapshot and when would you use one?
- How does Salesforce track API call usage and what are the limits?
- What is Sales Engagement (formerly High-Velocity Sales) and what's a Cadence?
- What is Einstein Activity Capture and what are its trade-offs?
- What is a Big Object and when would you use one?
- How does Salesforce Files actually work under the hood?
- What is a Bucket Field in reports and when do you use one?
hard
- Walk me through the trade-offs of Public Read/Write vs Public Read Only vs Private Org-Wide Defaults.
- How does the Role Hierarchy affect record visibility, and where can it surprise you?
- Walk me through deploying changes from a sandbox to production. What options are there, and when do you pick which?
- Walk me through the anatomy of an Approval Process — entry criteria, initial submitters, steps, and final actions.
- A flow is failing silently in production. How do you debug it?
- When would you choose Sharing Rules over Manual Sharing, and vice versa?
- How would you enforce data classification and audit access using Shield, Event Monitoring, and related tools?
- When would you reach for Apex Managed Sharing instead of declarative sharing?
- Walk me through Salesforce's Order of Execution when a record is saved.
- What is a Sharing Recalculation and when does it run?
- How do Org-Wide Defaults differ for Internal vs External (Community / Experience Cloud) users?
- Walk me through configuring Single Sign-On (SAML) with an external IdP.
- How do you architect a multi-currency Salesforce org?
- What are Salesforce's Governor Limits and which ones should an admin worry about?
- How would you design "deal team" access where different roles get different permissions on the same record?
- Walk me through migrating an org from Process Builder to Flow at scale.
- Walk me through how Forecasting works in Salesforce.
- How would you implement a tiered approval where the threshold determines the path?
- Walk me through customising the Service Console for an agent role.
- How would you architect Lead routing across regions, teams, and time zones?
- What is Salesforce Data Cloud and when would an admin need to care about it?
- How would you migrate a complex managed package to a new namespace, and what are the risks?
- Walk me through implementing a multi-org strategy (parent and subsidiary orgs).
- How do Lightning App Builder, Page Layouts, Dynamic Forms, and Compact Layouts work together?
- How would you architect a strategy for Large Data Volumes (LDV)?
- Walk me through implementing OAuth for an external integration.
- What is the difference between SOAP API, REST API, Bulk API, and Streaming API — and when would you use each?
- How would you implement cross-object validation that depends on related records?
- How would you architect a global rollout — multi-language, multi-currency, multi-region?
- What's the difference between Platform Events, Change Data Capture, and Outbound Messages?
- Walk me through the playbook for a major release that includes data model changes, code, and config.
- As an admin, when do you say "this needs Apex" vs solving declaratively?
- How do you continuously monitor org health as an admin?