65 QUESTIONS 105 MINUTES 65% PASSING SCORE $200 EXAM FEE 7 SECTIONS Prepared by VMExam • www.vmexam.com Salesforce • Administrator • Plat-Admn-301 C E R T I F I C A T I O N G U I D E Share It, Automate It, Deploy It Inside the Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II exam (Plat-Admn-301) Seven sections with Salesforce’s own published weightings and all 25 objectives, laid out as a study checklist - plus the full exam fact sheet, the prerequisite and retake terms, which "official exam guide" to ignore, what the work pays in 2026, a five-step route from sharing model to booked seat, and ten real scenario questions with a complete answer key. www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 1 SECTION 01 Exam Overview Platform Administrator II is the second step on the Salesforce administrator track - the credential that used to be called Advanced Administrator, with the same place in the hierarchy and a new name and code. It is a scenario exam: nearly every objective starts "Given a scenario", and the questions describe an org and ask what you would do to it. Everything below comes from VMExam’s Plat-Admn-301 syllabus page, cross-checked against Salesforce’s own exam guide. Certification Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II Exam code Plat-Admn-301 Level Advanced Questions 60 scored multiple choice and multiple select, plus up to 5 unscored Duration 105 minutes Passing score 65% Registration fee USD 200 plus applicable taxes (JPY 30,000) Retake fee USD 100 plus applicable taxes (JPY 15,000) Prerequisite Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator - required Languages English, Japanese, French, Spanish Delivery Online-proctored, or at a test centre; no reference materials permitted Release alignment Exam questions align to the Summer ’22 release Recommended preparation Trailhead trailmix "Prepare for Your Salesforce Platform Administrator II Certification" Three things on that table matter more than the fee. First, the prerequisite is hard : you cannot sit this exam without holding Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator. Second, the paper is 60 scored questions plus up to five unscored ones you cannot identify, so budget time for 65. Third, a warning about sources: the exam guide that still circulates as "Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator" (a 2018 PDF with section weightings of 6, 8 and 10 per cent) is the retired version. Salesforce’s Platform Administrator II exam guide is the current one, and it carries the seven sections and weightings used in this guide. SECTION 02 Who This Exam Is Built For Salesforce rates this exam Advanced and requires the first administrator credential before you can register. That points at three groups: www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 2 Certified Platform Administrators Senior Salesforce Admins Admins Moving Toward Architecture The exam is offered in English, Japanese, French and Spanish, online-proctored or at a test centre, with no reference materials allowed. The Trailhead Academy exam page has the current registration details and pricing, including the yen-denominated fees, and is where to book. SECTION 03 The Seven Sections and Their Weightings Salesforce publishes weightings for this exam, and they are lopsided in a useful way: Security and Access and Process Automation are 20 per cent each , Objects and Applications 19, and the remaining four sections share the other 41 per cent between them. The weightings are plotted below exactly as published. Security and Access 20% Objects and Applications 19% Auditing and Monitoring 10% Cloud Applications 11% Data and Analytics Management 13% Environment Management and Deployment 7% Process Automation 20% Section weightings as published in Salesforce’s Platform Administrator II exam guide and on the VMExam syllabus. They total 100 per cent. Read the weightings against the objective lists and the shape becomes clear. Fifty-nine per cent of the marks sit in three sections with ten objectives between them - sharing and access, objects and pages, and declarative automation. Cloud Applications has the most objectives (six) for only 11 per cent, which makes it the section to study for breadth rather than depth. Environment Management is 7 per cent across two objectives, but one of the ten sample questions is a change-set question, so do not skip it. 01. Security and Access (20%) • Given a scenario, determine the implications to record and field data access (Sharing model, controlled by parent, grant access by hierarchies, dashboard and report folders access, email folder access, Territory Management). • Compare and contrast the capabilities of custom profiles, permission sets, and delegated administration. • Given a scenario, determine the implications of user authentication. www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 3 • Compare and contrast the capabilities of a complex business model (Person accounts, Account, Contacts, and Contact to multiple Accounts). 02. Objects and Applications (19%) • Given a scenario, determine the appropriate solution to enhance or extend objects (master-detail, lookup, junction object, related list, record type, schema builder, and object creator). • Given a scenario, determine the appropriate solution to enhance or extend the UI/UX with applications (app manager, lightning app builder, dynamic forms, standard lightning page components, console, and lightning page analyze button). 03. Auditing and Monitoring (10%) • Given a scenario, determine the appropriate tools for monitoring and troubleshooting system activity (debug log, set up audit trail). • Explain how to ensure sensitive data is set up to support a business/legal/compliance use case in production and sandbox environments. • Explain how to review and troubleshoot security settings including pending updates that may change system access. 04. Cloud Applications (11%) • Describe the features of Salesforce which enable Sales users to conduct the sale process, including products, price books, schedules, orders, and quotes. • Distinguish and understand the implications and capabilities of Forecasting and Territory Management. • Explain how to create and maintain Salesforce Knowledge (article record types, data categories). • Explain how to create and maintain service entitlements and entitlement processes. • Describe the features of Salesforce which enable interaction between support agents and customers (Chat, Case Feed, Service Cloud Console, Experience Cloud sites, Omni-Channel). • Given a scenario, understand the standard Salesforce suite of products that enable extending the core platform. 05. Data and Analytics Management (13%) • Explain the tools and best practices for assessing, improving, and enriching data quality (data types, validation, managing duplicates, enriching, archiving). • Given a scenario, determine the appropriate analytic tools to meet complex reporting requirements (custom report types, reporting snapshots, complex charting, custom summary formulas, bucketing, joined reports, cross filters, dynamic dashboards, dashboard filters). • Understand methods to connect to, access, backup/restore, or archive data outside of the Salesforce platform (big objects, data warehouse, external objects, data lakes, third-party solutions, and Salesforce Connect). www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 4 • Given a scenario, identify the appropriate tools and methods for importing data into Salesforce (data import wizard, data loader, and external ID). 06. Environment Management and Deployment (7%) • Describe the options available to move metadata between environments (change sets, sandboxes, and AppExchange - managed/unmanaged). • Describe the capabilities and best practices for using change sets to move metadata between environments. 07. Process Automation (20%) • Given a complex scenario, determine the solution using the best tool or combination of tools to solve a business problem. • Given a scenario, identify the appropriate tool or method for troubleshooting declarative automation. • Given a scenario, explain the capabilities and limitations of each declarative automation tool. • Understand the implications of the order of execution when using automation tools. SECTION 04 What the Credential Is Worth Salesforce administration is one of the better-reported roles in IT: PayScale puts the average base salary for a Salesforce administrator in the United States at $82,567 for 2026, on 1,143 salary profiles last updated 3 September 2026, with the tenth to ninetieth percentile running from $60,000 to $112,000. Why this exam, specifically • It is the only advanced-level credential on the administrator track, and the one hiring managers look for in a senior admin. • The sharing model, order of execution and change sets are the three things that separate an administrator from a configurator. • It is a required or expected step toward Application Architect and System Architect. • Scenario questions reward people who have run a real org - the exam is closer to the job than most. That band mixes first-credential administrators with senior ones, and this exam is the clearest line between the two. The objectives that move someone toward the ninetieth percentile are exactly the heavy sections here: an administrator who can reason about a Private sharing model with hierarchies and partner roles, choose between automation tools knowing the order of execution, and move metadata through change sets without breaking production is doing work that is priced as platform ownership, not administration. www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 5 SECTION 05 Getting Certified, Step by Step 1 Confirm the prerequisite, then open a Developer Edition org Hold Platform Administrator first - Salesforce will not let you register without it. Then get a free org you can break: the sharing and automation sections are only learnable by doing. 2 Rebuild the sharing model from scratch Private organization-wide defaults, role hierarchy, owner-based and criteria-based sharing rules, public groups with and without hierarchy access, partner roles on an Experience Cloud site. Four of the ten sample questions are pure sharing-model reasoning. 3 Learn the automation tools by their limits, not their features Flow is the tool, but the objectives ask which tool, how to troubleshoot it, and what the order of execution does to it. Use Flow Trigger Explorer on an object with several record-triggered flows and trace what runs when. 4 Work through Cloud Applications as a checklist Six objectives, 11 per cent: products and price books, forecasting and territories, Knowledge, entitlements, the service agent tools, and the wider product suite. Breadth, not depth - know what each thing is for. 5 Rehearse at 65 per cent, then book Sixty scored questions, 65 per cent to pass: 39 right, 21 wrong at most, in 105 minutes including the unscored items. Registration is USD 200 with a USD 100 retake, so a first miss is survivable but not free. For the rehearsal, VMExam’s Plat-Admn-301 practice exam mirrors the real format, including the multi-answer scenarios, so you can find the gaps before the exam does. SECTION 06 Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Sample Questions These ten questions come from VMExam’s Plat-Admn-301 sample questions page, presented here in shuffled order. One asks for two answers from five options. They are a faithful sample of the real format: every one names a company, describes its org, and asks what the administrator should do. Four are about the sharing model, which matches the weighting; one each covers change sets, Health Check, Dynamic Forms, Flow Trigger Explorer and reporting. The answer key is at the end of the section. Q1. Granite Peak Construction tracks projects in a custom Project object. Large projects are broken into sub-projects, and each sub-project must point to the one larger Project record it belongs to. How should the administrator model this? a) A master-detail field on Project that points to Project b) A hierarchical relationship field on the Project object c) A junction object with two master-detail fields to Project d) A lookup field on Project that points to Project www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 6 Q2. Harborview Hotels uses a Private organization-wide default for Account, Opportunity and Case. An owner-based account sharing rule already gives the Revenue Analysts role Read Only access to accounts owned by the Group Sales role. The cases on those accounts are owned by support agents. The analysts now need Read Only access to the cases on those same accounts, no access to cases on other accounts, and no new access to opportunities. How should the administrator meet this requirement? a) Set Case Access to Read Only on the existing account sharing rule b) Change the Case organization-wide default to Controlled by Parent so cases follow account access c) Create an owner-based case sharing rule from the Group Sales role to the Revenue Analysts role d) Grant the Revenue Analysts role access to view the cases on accounts its users own Q3. Kestrel Energy has eleven record-triggered flows on the Case object, built by different teams. Before changing one, the administrator wants a single view of every record-triggered flow on Case, grouped by when it runs and showing its order. Which tool should the administrator use? a) Setup Audit Trail b) Flow Trigger Explorer c) Paused and Failed Flow Interviews d) Process Automation Settings Q4. Bluefin Analytics’ security team has written its own standards for password policy and session settings, and some are stricter than the Salesforce defaults. The administrator wants Health Check to score the org against these company standards and flag every setting that falls short. What should the administrator do? a) Edit the values in the Salesforce Baseline Standard b) Compare the Setup Audit Trail against the standards each month c) Import a custom baseline into Health Check d) Review the Release Updates page for settings that differ Q5. At Larkspur Logistics, the Freight Claim custom object has a Private organization-wide default, and Grant Access Using Hierarchies is enabled for the object. An owner-based sharing rule shares every claim owned by the Claims Desk role with the Audit Reviewers public group at Read Only. The group was created with its default settings. The Claims Desk role sits in a different branch of the role hierarchy from Priya, who is directly above two members of Audit Reviewers but is not a member herself. Nothing else shares claims with her. What access does Priya have to claims owned by the Claims Desk role? a) No access, because a sharing rule reaches only the users who are direct members of its target group b) Read/Write, because managers receive edit rights over records shared with their direct reports c) Read Only, because the group’s hierarchy setting extends its shared access to the managers above its members d) Read Only, but only on the claims her two reports have opened since the rule was created www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 7 Q6. Riverstone Appliances enables partner users for its distributor accounts on a partner Experience Cloud site. The Bayview Distributors partner account is owned by Lena, an internal channel manager, and Bayview’s partner users hold that account’s partner roles. The Opportunity organization-wide default is Private, and no sharing rules or teams apply. Which internal users can see opportunities owned by Bayview’s partner users? a) Only Lena, because she is the owner of the partner account record b) No internal users, because records owned by partner users stay within the partner account c) Every internal user, because partner opportunities are shared with the whole company d) Users in Lena’s role and the roles above it Q7. On the Account record page at Solstice Media, the Cases related list is long and mostly closed cases. Account managers want the page to show only the account’s open cases, with columns chosen for them, while the page layout stays unchanged for other uses. Which standard component should the administrator add to the Account record page? a) Dynamic Related List - Single, filtered to open cases b) Related List Quick Links, including Cases c) Related List - Single, set to Cases d) List View, set to an Open Cases list view of the Case object Q8. A sales director at Ardent Biotech saves an Open Pipeline report in a folder that is shared with the whole sales team with Viewer access. Two sales reps run the report at the same moment and get different numbers of rows, and one of them sees a column that the other does not. What explains these differences? (Choose 2 answers) a) Each rep sees only the opportunity records that their own sharing access allows b) The report runs with the director’s access, because she created and saved it c) Viewer access shows each rep a cached copy of the results from their last run d) Viewer access limits each rep to the columns they added to the report themselves e) A field hidden by a rep’s field-level security does not appear in that rep’s results Q9. Ashford Credit validated an inbound change set in production on Monday. The validation ran the Apex tests and passed with sufficient code coverage. The release window opens on Wednesday, nothing has been deployed to production since the validation, and the team wants the deployment to finish as quickly as possible. What should the administrator do on Wednesday? a) Deploy the change set again and choose to run all Apex tests in the org b) Upload a new copy of the change set, because a validated one can no longer deploy c) Deploy with the Default test option, which skips Apex tests in production d) Use Quick Deploy on the validated change set, which deploys it without rerunning Apex tests www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 8 Q10. Northstar Clinics’ Referral record page uses Dynamic Forms, and the Referring Provider field is marked Required in its properties on that page. Referrals are also loaded nightly with Data Loader, and some arrive with no referring provider. Every referral, however it is created, must have the field filled in. What should the administrator do? a) Also mark the field Required on the Referral page layout b) Create a validation rule that rejects a referral with no provider c) Mark the field Required on the action layout used to create referrals d) Remove Edit access on the field for the integration user’s profile Answer key Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 d a b c c d a a, e d b SECTION 07 Where to Go Next Salesforce’s own preparation route is the Platform Administrator II trailmix on Trailhead, which maps module by module onto the seven sections. One timing note: the Trailblazer Community becomes read-only on 30 October 2026 as it moves to Slack, so if you are planning to lean on community threads for the harder sharing questions, look them up now and keep what you find. Quick reference • Official exam guide — help.salesforce.com • Registration and exam page — trailheadacademy.salesforce.com • Preparation trailmix — trailhead.salesforce.com • Exam syllabus + practice test — vmexam.com/salesforce Before you book — the guide in one card Exam code Plat-Admn-301 Passing score 65% Questions 60 scored + up to 5 unscored Duration 105 minutes Registration fee USD 200 + tax Retake fee USD 100 + tax Prerequisite Platform Administrator (required) Level Advanced Heaviest sections Security and Access, Process Automation (20% each) Lightest Environment Management (7%) Sections 7 Objectives 25 www.vmexam.com Salesforce Plat-Admn-301 Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II (Plat-Admn-301) 9 Good luck - and read every scenario twice. The exam rarely asks what a feature does; it asks what happens to a particular user in a particular org when you turn it on, and the second reading is where the detail that decides the answer usually lives. Guide prepared by VMExam. Exam facts, the seven sections and the weightings follow VMExam’s Plat-Admn-301 syllabus page and Salesforce’s current Platform Administrator II exam guide, which agree; objective wording is reproduced as published. The retired Advanced Administrator guide is named in the text so readers can recognise it, and is not used as a source. The pay figure is PayScale’s and is cited inline; sample questions are reproduced from VMExam’s sample set. Verify the current exam details and fees with Salesforce before you book.