Salesforce & Cloud Computing Interview Questions and Answers
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## Admin Questions
1. **What is CRM?**
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy and technology for managing an
organization’s relationships and interactions with current and potential customers to
improve business relationships, streamline processes, and increase profitability.
2. **What is Salesforce?**
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform offering applications for sales, service,
marketing, analytics, and more, enabling organizations to connect with customers and
manage data in a unified environment.
3. **What are different Cloud Computing Services?**
- **SaaS (Software as a Service):** On-demand software delivery over the internet (e.g.,
Salesforce, Google Workspace).
- **PaaS (Platform as a Service):** Cloud platforms for building, deploying, and managing
applications (e.g., Heroku, Force.com).
- **IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service):** Virtualized computing resources over the internet
(e.g., AWS EC2, Azure VMs).
4. **What is meant by SaaS?**
Software as a Service delivers software applications over the internet on a subscription
basis, eliminating the need for local installation and maintenance.
5. **What is meant by PaaS?**
Platform as a Service provides hardware and software tools over the internet, giving
developers a platform to build, deploy, and manage applications without managing
infrastructure.
6. **What is meant by IaaS?**
Infrastructure as a Service offers fundamental computing resources—virtual machines,
storage, and networking—on-demand, allowing users to run any software or OS.
7. **What are Governor Limits in Salesforce?**
Governor Limits are runtime limits enforced by Salesforce to ensure efficient resource
usage and multi-tenancy isolation, such as limits on SOQL queries, DML operations, and CPU
time.
8. **What is an App in Salesforce?**
A collection of tabs, objects, and other functionalities packaged as a cohesive unit to serve
a specific business process or use case within Salesforce.
9. **What is an Object?**
An object is a database table in Salesforce that stores specific types of data, similar to rows
and columns in a relational database.
10. **What are the types of Objects?**
- **Standard Objects:** Predefined by Salesforce (e.g., Account, Contact).
- **Custom Objects:** Defined by users to store custom data.
11. **What is a Field?**
A field is a column in an object that holds data for each record, such as text, date, or
number.
12. **Difference between Picklist and Multi-select Picklist?**
- **Picklist:** Allows selecting one value from a predefined list.
- **Multi-select Picklist:** Allows selecting multiple values from a predefined list.
13. **What is a Record?**
A record is a row in an object table, representing a single instance of the object with
values for each field.
14. **What is meant by Tab?**
A tab is a user interface element that provides access to an object’s data, reports, or
custom pages.
15. **What is Field Dependency?**
Field Dependency links two picklist fields so that the available values in the dependent
picklist are filtered based on the controlling picklist’s value.
16. **What is a Relationship?**
A relationship defines how two objects are linked, enabling cross-object data referencing
and reporting.
17. **What are the types of relationships in Salesforce?**
- **Lookup Relationship:** Loose coupling, records remain independent.
- **Master-Detail Relationship:** Strong coupling, child record inherits sharing and
deletion behavior from parent.
- **Many-to-Many:** Implemented using a Junction Object.
18. **What is a Junction Object?**
A custom object with two master-detail relationships that creates a many-to-many
relationship between two objects.
19. **What happens to master-detail and lookup relationships when a record is deleted?**
- **Master-Detail:** Deleting the master record deletes all detail records (cascade delete).
- **Lookup:** Deleting the parent does not delete children by default; can optionally be
configured to clear child’s lookup field or prevent deletion.
20. **What is a Roll-up Summary?**
A field on a master record that aggregates child record values (e.g., COUNT, SUM, MIN,
MAX).
21. **List out the functions of the Roll-up Summary field?**
- **COUNT:** Number of child records.
- **SUM:** Total of a numeric field on child records.
- **MIN / MAX:** Minimum or maximum value of a field on child records.
22. **What is Schema Builder in Salesforce?**
A visual tool to view, create, and modify objects, fields, and relationships in a graphical
interface.
23. **What are some key features of Schema Builder?**
- Drag-and-drop to add objects and fields.
- Easily create and edit relationships.
- Visual representation of data model.
24. **What is Profile in Salesforce?**
Profiles define user permissions and access settings for objects, fields, tabs, and more,
determining what users can see and do.
25. **What is View All and Modify All in profile?**
- **View All:** Grants read access to all records of an object, bypassing sharing rules.
- **Modify All:** Grants read/write access to all records of an object.
26. **What are Permission Sets?**
Sets of additional permissions that can be assigned to users to extend their access beyond
what profiles allow.
27. **How is a permission set different from a profile?**
Profiles are baseline permission bundles assigned once per user; permission sets grant
incremental permissions and can be assigned multiple times.
28. **Can a user have multiple permission sets assigned to them?**
Yes, users can have multiple permission sets to cumulatively grant permissions.
29. **What is a Permission Set Group in Salesforce?**
A container that bundles multiple permission sets, making it easier to assign groups of
permissions as a single unit.
30. **What is Role in Salesforce?**
Roles define a user’s position in the role hierarchy and influence record-level sharing and
visibility.
31. **Can we create a user without a role and profile?**
No; every user must have a profile. Role is optional, but recommended for sharing.
32. **What are the differences between Profile and Role?**
- **Profile:** Controls object- and field-level access.
- **Role:** Controls record-level sharing and visibility hierarchy.
33. **What is the role hierarchy?**
A structure of roles controlling data access, where users higher in the hierarchy inherit
access to records owned by users below.
34. **What are the sharing rules?**
Automated rules that grant record access to users based on criteria or ownership,
extending visibility beyond the OWD.
35. **What is OWD?**
Organization-Wide Defaults set the baseline level of access for all records of an object
(e.g., Private, Public Read Only).
36. **Who are called as users in Salesforce?**
Individuals licensed to access and perform actions within a Salesforce org, identified by a
unique username and profile.
37. **What is Page Layout?**
Configuration of fields, related lists, and other elements on record detail and edit pages,
controlling UI presentation.
38. **What are features that can be controlled using Page Layout?**
Fields, sections, related lists, buttons, custom links, and visualforce components.
39. **What are Record Types?**
Mechanisms to offer different business processes, picklist values, and page layouts to
different users.
40. **What is Validation Rule?**
Formula-based rules that enforce data quality by preventing users from saving invalid
records.
41. **What is the difference between role hierarchy and sharing rules?**
Role hierarchy grants access automatically based on organizational structure; sharing
rules grant access based on record criteria or ownership, regardless of hierarchy.
42. **What is Manual Sharing?**
A way for record owners or administrators to share individual records with specific users
or groups manually.
43. **What is Flow in Salesforce?**
Flow is a declarative automation tool to collect data and automate business processes
using a visual interface.
44. **What are the interaction elements available in Flow?**
Screen, Action, Assignment, Decision, Loop, Get/Update/Create/Delete Records,
Collection Processors.
45. **What is Report?**
A list of records filtered and organized to provide insights; supports grouping,
summarization, and charting.
46. **What are different types of Reports?**
- **Tabular:** Simple lists.
- **Summary:** Grouped data with subtotals.
- **Matrix:** Data grouped by rows and columns.
- **Joined:** Multiple related reports in one view.
47. **What reports can be used to generate Dashboards?**
Summary and Matrix reports can serve as sources for dashboard components.
48. **What is Dashboard?**
A visual display of key metrics and trends using components like charts and gauges, based
on report data.
49. **What is Data Import Wizard?**
A browser-based tool for importing standard and custom object data in CSV format with
guided mapping.
50. **What is Data Loader?**
A client application for bulk import/export of data, supporting insert, update, upsert,
delete, and export operations.
---
## Developer Questions
1. **What is Apex?**
Apex is Salesforce’s proprietary, strongly typed, object-oriented programming language
for writing custom business logic.
2. **What is the use of Apex?**
Apex enables developers to execute flow and transaction control statements on Salesforce
servers in conjunction with calls to the API.
3. **What are Apex Data Types?**
Primitive (Integer, String, Boolean, Date), sObject types, Collections (List, Set, Map), and
Enums.
4. **How can you handle exceptions in Apex?**
Using `try...catch` blocks, optional `finally`, and custom exceptions extending `Exception`.
5. **What is a static resource in Salesforce?**
A bucket to store and cache files such as JavaScript, CSS, images, or ZIP archives for use in
Visualforce or Lightning.
6. **What is the difference between public and global classes in Apex?**
- **public:** Visible within the same namespace (org).
- **global:** Visible across namespaces, including managed packages.
7. **What is Asynchronous Apex?**
Apex operations executed asynchronously, decoupled from a synchronous transaction to
handle long-running tasks.
8. **What is Heap Memory?**
The memory area where Apex stores objects and collections; has limits per transaction
(e.g., 6 MB for synchronous).
9. **Explain types of Asynchronous Apex.**
- **Future Methods**
- **Batch Apex**
- **Queueable Apex**
- **Schedulable Apex**
10. **What is Batch Apex, and how does it work?**
Batch Apex processes large data sets by dividing them into manageable chunks and
executing in discrete transactions.
11. **Difference between Future Method and Queueable?**
- **Future:** Simple async calls, limited parameter types.
- **Queueable:** Chaining support and complex types, better monitoring.
12. **Difference between Batch Apex and Future Method?**
- **Batch Apex:** Handles large volumes with chunking, supports query locator.
- **Future:** Best for small asynchronous calls, no chunking.
13. **List out the features of Batch Apex?**
- Chunk processing (scope)
- `start`, `execute`, and `finish` methods
- Parallel processing
- Job monitoring and retries
14. **What is Trigger in Salesforce?**
Apex code invoked before or after record insert, update, delete, or undelete operations.
15. **Explain the difference between trigger.old and trigger.new in Apex?**
- **trigger.new:** List of new sObject versions.
- **trigger.old:** List of old sObject versions before changes (not available in insert).
16. **Explain types of triggers?**
- **Before triggers:** Modify records before saving.
- **After triggers:** Access system-set fields (e.g., record IDs).
17. **Best practice and considerations for Trigger?**
- One trigger per object.
- Delegate logic to handler classes.
- Bulkify code to handle multiple records.
18. **What are Trigger Context Variables?**
Variables that provide context about the trigger execution, such as `isInsert`, `isUpdate`,
`new`, `old`, and operation mode.
19. **How can you access and modify records in a trigger?**
Use `Trigger.new` or `Trigger.newMap` for modifications in before triggers, and perform
DML operations in after triggers if needed.
20. **What are trigger events in Salesforce?**
`before insert`, `before update`, `before delete`, `after insert`, `after update`, `after delete`,
and `after undelete`.
21. **What is Trigger Syntax?**
```
trigger TriggerName on ObjectName (events) {
// logic
```
22. **What is SOQL?**
Salesforce Object Query Language, used to retrieve data from Salesforce objects.
23. **What is SOSL?**
Salesforce Object Search Language, used for text-based searches across multiple objects
and fields.
24. **Difference between SOQL and SOSL?**
- **SOQL:** Returns records from one object at a time with specific fields.
- **SOSL:** Returns records from multiple objects based on text search.
25. **What is a List?**
An ordered collection of elements allowing duplicate values.
26. **What is a Set?**
An unordered collection of unique elements.
27. **What is a Map?**
A collection of key-value pairs, where each key is unique.
28. **Write the Syntax of List?**
```apex
List<DataType> listName = new List<DataType>();
```
29. **Write the Syntax of Set?**
```apex
Set<DataType> setName = new Set<DataType>();
```
30. **Write the Syntax of Map?**
```apex
Map<KeyType, ValueType> mapName = new Map<KeyType, ValueType>();
```
