Starting their business in 1999, Salesforce has served over 150,000 companies worldwide. They offer a multitude of solutions like SaaS, CRM, etc., in industries such as automotive, consumer goods, manufacturing, healthcare, education, and many more. In 2016, they introduced their AI CRM, Einstein, to provide personalized recommendations and predictive analysis to their customers. 2024 marked an iconic year for Salesforce with the development of Agentforce, a comprehensive enterprise agentic platform with an innovative AI agent.
Salesforce, the world-famous software company, is a dream place to work for many. Yet, many have no idea how to prepare for a role in Salesforce or crack their SFDC integration interview. Worry not, I have provided a long list of frequently asked Salesforce interview questions. And for your good, I have categorized them in sections, from beginner-friendly, professional, scenario-based, to commonly asked questions. You can go through them, understand their importance, and revise them to finally land your dream job successfully.
Salesforce Interview Questions for Freshers
1. What do you understand about Salesforce integration?
The term Salesforce integration refers to connecting applications or systems with Salesforce to enable efficient data flow and improved operations. This process can include data sharing, process triggering, and information synchronization across multiple platforms.
2. What’s the role of APIs in Salesforce integration?
Application Programming Interfaces, commonly known as APIs, allow Salesforce to build communication with external systems for data and functionality sharing. For smooth data exchange and process automation, Salesforce uses REST APIs and SOAP APIs.
3. What are the differences between REST API & SOAP API in Salesforce?
The major differences between the two are:
- REST API: It is lightweight, uses JSON, and is popularly used in cases of web and mobile applications.
- SOAP API: It is structured, uses XML, and is used for complicated integrations, like organizational-level applications that require strong security and support for transactions.
4. How to explain Salesforce integration projects in an interview?
To explain a Salesforce integration project in an interview, you must:
- Begin with a comprehensive overview
- Explain your role and responsibilities
- Give insights on technicalities like architecture, tools, APIs, etc
- And, end with the challenges faced, solutions, and achievements.
Professionals usually use the STAR method, which stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. This will allow you to give a clear and concise narrative about your involvement.
5. What is a Web Service in Salesforce?
Salesforce’s web service assists in communication between Salesforce and various platforms over the internet, utilizing established protocols like SOAP or REST.
6. What do you understand by a Connected App in Salesforce?
Salesforce’s connected app is an application that assists external systems in getting secure access to Salesforce data using APIs. It outlines authentication protocols and permissions management for data access.
Salesforce Interview Questions for Experienced Professionals
7. What is the process to authenticate external systems with Salesforce?
OAuth tokens, credentials, or certificates are used to authenticate with external systems. It is mainly used to authorize securely, in which case, the external system gets an access token for Salesforce data, and there is no need to store user credentials.
8. What is the troubleshooting process for an API call that returns a 401 unauthorized error?
An authentication issue is what normally leads to a 401 error. Check out the steps for troubleshooting:
- Verify API credentials or tokens
- Check the endpoint URL
- Check whether the connected app has proper permissions
9. What difference do you understand between Apex Callouts and Outbound Messaging?
Apex Callouts are Salesforce’s custom HTTP requests to external systems. They support REST or SOAP, which provides elevated control over error handling and data.
Salesforce’s Outbound Messaging sends SOAP-based messages to external systems. These messages are sent upon particular Salesforce events without any custom code.
10. How to handle data integration in bulk in Salesforce?
Salesforce uses Bulk API and Batch Apex to process huge amounts of data seamlessly, and also omits the API limits from being exceeded.
11. What are Salesforce’s Named Credentials?
Salesforce’s Named Credentials simplify callouts and enhance security. They are predefined configurations used to centrally authenticate external systems, manage URLs, and credentials.
12. What is Middleware in Salesforce integration?
It is used to moderate between Salesforce and external systems, to handle complicated data transformations and routing, and also to manage integration logic.
13. What are the limits of Salesforce APIs?
To sustain platform security and performance, Salesforce APIs have limits on:
- Number of calls based on Salesforce edition
- Regular call limits
- Timeout limits
- Concurrent call limits
14. What is the difference between Batch Apex and Future Methods for integration?
Batch Apex is usually used to manage massive volumes of data and process records asynchronously in batches.
Future Method is used for async and lightweight functions and does not support bulk processing.
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Popular Scenario-Based Interview Questions
15. How to integrate Salesforce with a payment gateway?
Salesforce integration with a payment gateway can be simply done by using REST APIs to securely transport Salesforce’s payment data to the gateway. To get transaction updates, you can set up webhooks, and to manage authentication, you can use the Connected App.
16. What is the process of failure handling in integrations?
To manage failed integrations, you can check:
- Integration error queues
- Debug logs
- Custom logging objects
- Middleware dashboards
- Platform event subscribers with error-handling logic
17. What’s the approach for syncing customer data between Salesforce and an external CRM every day?
To do so, you can use ETL tools like MuleSoft or Informatica for daily data sync or a scheduled batch process. This way, you can ensure consistency in data by updating only the changed records for performance optimization.
18. How to handle an API call needed to recover thousands of records from Salesforce?
You can either utilize the Bulk API to efficiently collect huge volumes of data or paginate the data by using OFFSET parameters and REST API LIMIT to handle performance and remain within the API limits.
19. How do you call an external REST API from Apex?
To do so, you can utilize the HttpRequest and HttpResponse classes with the right endpoint configuration in Named Credentials or Remote Site Settings.
Some Commonly-Asked Salesforce Interview Questions
20. What are the tools & platforms used for SFDC integration?
Some tools and platforms commonly used are:
- Dell Boomi
- MuleSoft, owned by Salesforce
- Workato
- Informatica Cloud
- Zapier
21. What is the purpose of SFDC integration?
The purpose of SFDC integration is to join Salesforce with external systems like payment gateways, marketing tools, ERPs, etc., for data exchange, real-time processing, and continuous automation.
22. What is the better API for Salesforce integration, REST API or SOAP API?
It all comes down to the purpose of use. REST API is lightweight and can be used for web and mobile applications, whereas SOAP API is used for complex enterprise operations that require strict security.
23. What is the number of callouts that can be made for a single Apex transaction?
As per Salesforce’s limits, it allows 100 callouts per transaction, which includes HTTP and web service callouts.
24. What are the different integration patterns in Salesforce?
Some of the common integration patterns in Salesforce are:
- Data Virtualization
- Batch Data Synchronization
- UI Update Based on Data Changes
- Remote Process Invocation – Request and Reply
- Remote Process Invocation – Fire and Forget
25. How do you test an HTTP callout in Apex?
To ensure that your test methods are independent of real HTTP services and stay within governor limits, you can use the HttpCalloutMock interface to imitate callout responses in test classes.
26. How to enhance performance in an integration with huge datasets?
To improve performance, you can:
- Apply Bulk API for data processing
- Leverage data filtering and decrease payload size to eliminate unrequired fields
- Apply indexing on Salesforce fields to enhance query speeds
27. What is the process of debugging Salesforce integration issues?
To debug successfully:
- Check the Debug Logs and the external system
- Check errors and API call limits
- Tools like Postman can be used to independently test API requests
28. What is the process of optimizing a REST resource in Salesforce?
To do so, you must:
- Decrease response payloads by choosing only the needed fields
- Use pagination for big datasets
- Apply the right caching strategies wherever applicable
29. What is Authorization vs. Authentication in Salesforce integration?
Authentication is the verification of the user’s identity in, login process. The authorization process grants access to the users after authentication, defining permissions.
30. What’s Salesforce’s two-way integration?
In the case of a two-way integration set-up, data transfers bidirectionally between Salesforce and other external systems. This allows updates from both sides to maintain data consistency.
Salesforce: Unlock Your Career With the World’s #1 AI CRM Platform
The above list of the top 30 Salesforce questions with answers can be your ticket to a stable and successful career. Besides going through these important questions, you must have hands-on practical knowledge. So practice troubleshooting scenarios, get insights on integration patterns (very important!), APIs, and security methods.
The key concepts of the 30 listed questions, combined with best practices and deep practical knowledge, will help you to stay ahead of other interview candidates. What’s the wait? Get cracking today.
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