A CTA review board scenario: design a complete architecture for a fictional client across all six domains.
Sample scenario (typical CTA-style):
> Global financial services firm. 50,000 internal users in NA, EMEA, APAC. 5M customers. Regulatory: GDPR (EU), SOX, FINRA, MAS. Multi-product (banking, wealth management, insurance). Existing: legacy CRM (Siebel), separate marketing tool (Salesforce Marketing Cloud already), ERP (SAP), compliance system. Goal: unified Salesforce-centred customer experience over 24 months.
Architecture across six domains:
1. Sharing & Visibility:
- Multi-org: separate Salesforce orgs for NA, EMEA, APAC due to data residency.
- OWD: Account Public Read internally; Private for sensitive (HR, deal teams). External: Private.
- Role hierarchy mirroring org structure.
- Apex Managed Sharing for compliance-driven access (advisor sees only their book).
- Communities/Experience Cloud for advisors and customers; Sharing Sets for HVPU.
- Audit: Field Audit Trail (Shield) for 7-year regulatory retention.
2. Data Architecture:
- Financial Services Cloud for vertical data model (Householding, Financial Account, Insurance Policy).
- Custom objects for unique products.
- External Id fields for SAP / Siebel integration.
- Data Cloud for unified customer profile across regional orgs.
- Big Objects for transaction history archive.
- Snowflake for analytics warehouse.
- MDM: Salesforce as customer SoT; SAP as financial SoT.
3. Integration Architecture:
- Mulesoft as integration backbone.
- Inbound: Bulk API 2.0 from SAP daily; CDC subscriber from compliance system real-time.
- Outbound: Platform Events to fulfilment systems; Pub/Sub API to data warehouse.
- Real-time API: account lookup against SAP via Mulesoft synchronous flow.
- Marketing Cloud Engagement integration via Marketing Cloud Connect.
4. Identity & Access Management:
- Okta as IdP, federating to all 3 Salesforce orgs.
- MFA mandatory (regulatory).
- Session settings strict (15-min timeout, IP restrictions).
- My Domain + custom branded login.
- OAuth for integrations; Connected Apps with strict scopes.
- Just-in-time provisioning for org access.
5. Development Lifecycle & Deployment:
- Salesforce DX with Git source control.
- Per-region sandboxes + shared dev hub.
- CI/CD via GitHub Actions + Copado.
- Quality gates: PMD, ESLint, 85%+ test coverage.
- Release cadence: monthly minor, quarterly major.
- Feature flags via Custom Metadata.
6. Communities/Mobile:
- Customer Community Plus for individual customers (account, policies, advisor).
- Partner Community for advisor partners.
- Salesforce Mobile App for internal users.
- Custom mobile app for high-volume external scenarios (using Mobile SDK).
Cross-cutting:
- Center of Excellence with 3 architects (one per region) + lead.
- Phased rollout over 24 months.
- Change management with full training programs.
- Continuous improvement post-launch.
Risk mitigation:
- Compliance: Shield + Field Audit Trail + Privacy Center.
- Performance: Custom Indexes, archive tier, Big Objects.
- Resilience: circuit breakers, fallback caches, async patterns.
- Operational: 24x7 ops, regional support coverage.
Sequencing:
- Phase 1 (months 1-6): NA org foundation, core CRM.
- Phase 2 (months 6-12): EMEA org with regulatory.
- Phase 3 (months 12-18): APAC org, Communities.
- Phase 4 (months 18-24): Optimisation, AI/Agentforce, advanced analytics.
This is a high-level CTA-style architecture covering all six domains. Real CTA exam expects depth in each.
Senior architect insight: the CTA exam tests breadth across domains AND ability to articulate trade-offs. You can't be expert in everything, but you must show coherent thinking across the whole.