With all the new admins this year, including several of our own, and the recent passing of the deadline for the Salesforce Exam Maintenance, now seems like the perfect time to discuss the process to maintain a certification.
Wait, exam maintenance? Don’t you only need to pass the exam once to be certified? Well, yes. You only need one exam to gain your certificate. But Salesforce needs to make sure you’re keeping up with new releases. That’s where Salesforce Exam Maintenance comes in.
Salesforce created these certification programs to give a measurable scale of Salesforce knowledge to helps employees market useful skills they have learned and provides employers a way to confirm a possible new hires background with the platform.
This seems straightforward, but Salesforce is adding new features multiple times a year, meaning those that have taken the test even just a few years ago will have been certified on features that have either been replaced or upgraded past recognition.
How Salesforce Certificate Maintenance Works
Enter certification maintenance. Depending on the certifications that you hold, you will be required to take a number of non-proctored online exams per year. These shorter exams focus on the changes that have been made for each release to ensure that anyone with a Salesforce certification has been tested on the most recent features. Salesforce also provides training and information needed to easily pass the short exams.
However, if one was to miss a deadline for these online exams the certification would lapse and they would need to start over in obtaining the certification with the full proctored exam. No one wants to go through that process again unnecessarily.
To stay up to date on your certifications, you will use the same web assessor account to schedule the maintenance exam. There is also an annual maintenance fee for your admin certificate of $100 (it’s another $100 if you also have a dev certificate).
When you take the exam, you can start it at any time of the day and are not required to work under a time limit. The tests are only a few questions and seem easy, but as a certification holder it is your responsibility to make sure you fully understand the topics that are being tested.
Remember, completing the exams provides you nothing if you don’t understand why the answers are correct. You worked hard to get certified, and maintaining knowledge of the platform is always easier than starting fresh down the road.
Make sure you keep up with the schedule for exams and don’t let deadlines pass you by.