Congratulations! You’re Salesforce certified — now how do you avoid losing your certification?
Salesforce.com has set up their certifications much like surfing. Once you’ve established your credentials for a given certification, you’ll need to take maintenance exams to keep the credential without having to take the full exam time and again. If you stay on the wave, so to speak, it’s pretty reasonable to keep current. As busy developers, we appreciate this rational approach to verifying that we still know our stuff.
Whether you are a developer or Salesforce admin, you will need to take the maintenance exam every release cycle. Each cycle is about four months long, which means you will take the exam approximately three times a year. Besides taking the actual exam, you will also need to pay the once-annual $100 maintenance fee.
Three Exam Types
There are three kinds of exams:
- Salesforce Certified Administrator Release Exam
- Salesforce Certified Force.com Developer Release Exam
- Salesforce Certified Pardot Consultant Release Exam
If you are an Advanced Administrator, Service Cloud Consultant, or Sales Cloud Consultant certifications, you will need to take the Administrator Exam. If you are a Force.com Developer, Force.com Advanced Developer, or Technical Architect certified, you will take the Developer exam. Lastly, if you are a Salesforce Certified Pardot Specialist or Consultant, you will take the Pardot Consultant exam.
Release Exam Details
According to Salesforce, the release exams are 30-minutes long and non-proctored. It means that, unlike your first certification, you can refer to online articles, videos, and other knowledge sources during your exam. (You must, of course, complete the exam within the timeframe allotted). To save time during their exams, many of our developers review the most recent release notes and watch videos on Salesforce.com’s YouTube channel before taking the tests.
Exam Deadlines
It shouldn’t be too difficult to maintain your certification, but you need to be careful and take the exams by the deadlines Salesforce.com establishes. The company gives you a full 8 or 9 months before that release deadline – for example, Friday, November 13, 2015, is the deadline for the Spring ’15 Release Exam. The Summer ’15 test is due February 26, 2016.
You have three chances to pass for each release exam, so there’s no excuse to risk losing your certification. If you miss the boat (or fail three times), your credentials will expire, and you’ll need to start over with the full exam again.
Take your tests now before it’s too late, and good luck!
I missed my Oct 28 deadline to take my Spring 16 exam .. What can I do?
Hi, Brianne. You can try opening a case with Salesforce at http://certification.salesforce.com/open-a-case. Unfortunately, you might need to retake the exam.