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Welcome to The Unoffical Complete Guide to The Salesforce CTA Review Board¶
This unoffical guide houses all my notes for the Salesforce Certified Technical Architect Review Board (or the CTA Exam for short), my personal suggestions on the best way to approach solutioning and presenting your scenario, as well as practice scenarios that are publicly available ranked in order of likeness to what you will experience during the day of your review board. Additionally this guide provides example diagrams, suggestions on what and how to study, and much more. It took me forever to accumulate all of this knowledge to prep and pass the Salesforce CTA exam, so I wanted to provide this as a resource to everyone out there to hopefully make studying for this thing at least a little bit easier.
When studying for this exam you are going to need ALL the help you can get to be able to successfully pass it. Below is a list of free resources to help you get started down the path of becoming a CTA:
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Suzanne Ferguson's CTA AMA - This may be the most valuable CTA information available online and yet so very few people have watched it or know it exists. Suzanne Ferguson, the woman behind this exam, the person that ensures it is what it needs to be, and has done so for over a decade now, lets you know EXACTLY what the expectations are for this exam. THIS IS REQUIRED WATCHING FOR EVERY CTA HOPEFUL!!
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Architect Exam Trailmixes - Studying the content in these trailmixes is definitely worth the time. You will likely notice when you take your exam that the bulk of the customer requirements outlined in the exam are all sourced from some information provided to you, or suggested to be studied in one of these trailmixes.
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The Architect Trailblazers Group - This is a good group to be a part of as an architect no matter what, but it is also a good place to find study partners, find the newest publicly available mocks provided directly from Salesforce, and a good place to ask any general questions you might have about the exam that the exam documentation may not have covered.
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The Architect Ohana Slack Channel - This slack channel is a great place for potentially finding other people who are interested in studying for the exam with you as well. It is also filled with many of the existing CTA's in the ecosystem who sometimes will provide answers to the questions you ask.
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Certified Technical Architect - Gang of Four - This site, setup by some of the most intelligent CTA's in existence (one of which is Jitendra Zaa) is the ONLY SITE THAT PROVIDES A REALISTIC LOOK AT THE EXAM! (aside from this guide maybe). Their YouTube channel is particularly amazing imo. It is the only place where you can see people presenting a scenario in a realistic way, just as they would on the board, and the only place you can find a realistic Q&A as well. EVERYWHERE else is basically just CTA's pretending imo. Most other publicly available examples of people presenting mock scenarios are borderline staged in my opinion. Their solutions are too perfect, their slide decks are unrealistically impeccable. That said, what you see on the ctagof youtube channel is exactly what you will experience on board day.
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Becoming a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect - While this book is well written and jam packed with valuable information that will benefit you. There are many suggestions in it that I believe will lead you astray and will cause you to waste more time when taking your exam than you should. So, the information within is good, but many of the diagrams suggested to be produced for the exam, as well as some of the topics suggested to be studied are not entirely accurate in my opinion.
If you get extremely serious about studying for and passing this exam and you do not work at a company that has their own CTA Coaching program you can take advantage of, it is in your best interest to find an existing CTA to at least do a few practice mocks with. If my company didn't have an internal CTA coaching course where I got to do mocks with many existing Salesforce CTA's, I'm not sure I could've passed this exam. I am trying to do my best to lower costs and the barrier of entry for this exam, and I do offer coaching myself at less than half the price of any other CTA Coach in existence at this moment in time. If you are interested in CTA coaching, you can schedule time with me or join one of my classes (if there are seats open) at the links below:
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Schedule 1-on-1 CTA Coaching Time with me here - If you'd like to just setup time for you and I to discuss any questions you have about the Salesforce CTA Exam, how to prepare for it, etc, you can schedule some time here.
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Schedule a Mock CTA Review Board Session with me - This allows you to setup a 3 hour block of time with me for you to present your a mock CTA exam solution to you, have me do a Q&A with you, and then have ~1.5 hours of feedback about areas you could improve, how to best prepare for the exam based on your knowledge level, etc.
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Sign up for the CTA Coaching Class with me here - If you'd like to sign up for my individually personalized CTA Course that provides detailed study materials, tons of dedicated 1-on-1 time with me, as well a discord server to talk to both myself and the other students in the class any time you want, this is the link for you!
Table of Contents:¶
1) The Important Exam Diagrams
6) OAuth and SAML Flows and IAM Terms
10) Reporting Notes
12) Service Cloud Object Notes
13) CPQ Object Notes
14) Field Sales Lightning (FSL) Notes
15) Mulesoft Notes
16) Large Data Volume (LDV) Notes
17) Powerpoint Hotkeys to Memorize
18) CTA Board Presentation Tips
22) Session Settings
23) Partner Relationship Management (Indirect Sales)
24) Multi-Currency
25) Entitlement Management (Service Cloud)
26) Mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS / 2-Way SSL)
27) Work Orders & Work Order Items (Without FSL)
28) Networking Basics (Firewalls, DMZs, Reverse Proxies, etc.)
29) Object, Field & Record Security
33) Payment Gateways & Processors (Chargent)
34) Document Management Systems (DMS)
35) Calculating Data Storage In Salesforce
36) Privacy and Consent Management Options
DISCLAIMER: While this study guide hopes to simplify and make studying and preparing for the exam easier and less challenging to figure out, I do not believe it is possible to pass this exam with this wiki alone. You need to practice presenting, as well as practivce judging, many CTA scenarios, which will require the assistance of many other people. In a perfect world you'll want to form a study group of 3-4 people to study this content with, but more specifically to solve and run CTA scenarios together, solving scenarios together will be more valuable than anything else.
You NEED other very strong experienced architects in your group, not just your friends or close work colleagues. The people in your group must challenge you and be ok with you challenging them in the QA portion of every scenario you solve. Their alternative perspectives will help you hone and improve your own skills.
Ideally you should also have an existing CTA coach you if possible as it will definitely increase your chances of being prepared and passing. I of course offer these services at a lower cost than anyone else in existence as of today, but you can also find other CTA's willing to coach you within the Architect Trailblazers Group, Architect Ohana Slack Channel, the Flowrepublic Coaching course, or within most large consulting firms you are likely to have an internal CTA training program you can join.
Additionally, this is NOT an official Salesforce guide, this is just a guide I painstakingly put together after thousands of hours studying for and finally passing the CTA Exam. The exam is subject to change at any time, and as much as I would love for this guide to be 100% comprehensive and contain everything you could potentially ever see on this exam, that is basically impossible for me to do.