As Salesforce Admins, we have clear core responsibilities that define our day-to-day roles. We manage users, data, and product, provide actionable analytics, and oversee security. But we’re currently in the third wave of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution: contextual and generative AI, characterized by prompt-based generative AI, real-time AI applications, and autonomous agents.
This means admins all over are questioning, “Where does AI fit into our roles?”
AI is widespread and the technology continues to advance. At Dreamforce this year, Salesforce announced the launch of Agentforce, its suite of autonomous and assistive AI agents. Agents are designed to help admins increase customer success to support their users and customers. To see this in action, watch the Agentforce Dreamforce Keynote: Build the Future with AI Agents.
Salesforce also announced that AI certification exams, currently including certified AI Associate and certified AI Specialist, will be free for Trailblazers to attempt through December 2025. This demonstrates the importance of this knowledge base for Salesforce professionals and Salesforce’s investment in your professional growth and continued education.
The AI Associate certification is a foundational knowledge layer of AI as it relates to CRM. This exam is very high level and focuses on AI basics, Salesforce’s trusted AI Principles, and the ethical and responsible handling of data. The end goal of an AI Associate is being able to identify how AI can support their organization’s business processes and have discussions with stakeholders that consider ethical implications.
The AI Specialist certification expands upon the basics tested by the AI Associate exam by putting these principles into practice, actually using generative AI within Salesforce. Admins are a key audience for this exam because they already have the foundational knowledge of Salesforce’s core capabilities as well as an understanding of their organizational processes and user needs. In fact, in the AI era, most admins will also be AI Specialists since they are the product owners and CRM specialists.
The good news is that admins have an advantage when it comes to this exam—they already have incredible familiarity with the Salesforce Platform including configuration, processes, best practices, testing, and troubleshooting. Therefore, the goal for admins venturing into AI is to understand how their existing knowledge functions within the context of Agentforce features such as Prompt Builder, Agent Builder, and the Einstein Trust Layer.
If you’re new to AI, first try out a large language model (LLM) outside Salesforce like ChatGPT. You can get a sense of how they work while building a study plan for the exam. You can simply ask the LLM to help you build a study plan for the Salesforce AI Specialist exam. Your request is called a prompt, and you’re getting a sense of how you can structure your prompts. Now, this prompt is a very broad statement without a lot of perimeters. When I did this with ChatGPT, it gave me an 8-week recommended study plan broken into 2-3 day focus areas for the week’s topic.
But in my case, this exam is a priority and I want to fast-track my study plan. I can modify my prompt to inform the LLM how much time I have to study (maybe I prefer a 4-week study plan), what areas I need to focus on (include the percentages of the exam topic breakdown), and what my current experience/exposure level is.
Wow. Even though I shortened the time frame, I got more detailed results and even some study resources. This is a great way to practice your prompt-building skills as well as set yourself up with a study plan.
Keep in mind that if you use an LLM to create a study plan, you should review it yourself for practicality, relatability, and what works for your schedule. This is an important reminder when using AI tools—verify the output before using.
Now let’s take these prompt building blocks to Salesforce.
Now that you’ve seen AI in action outside of Salesforce, let’s take it to our comfort zone: within the platform. The exam is broken down into five objectives.
Security is one of the core responsibilities of a Salesforce Admin, and the Einstein Trust Layer builds on our existing knowledge base. Approach this section by focusing on what you already know and how the Einstein Trust Layer adds on additional security components. In fact, this addresses several of the questions I get asked consistently as a Salesforce Admin, including the external accessibility of data. The Einstein Trust Layer allows you to assure stakeholders that there is a zero-data retention policy, ensuring no third-party retention, training, or access to your data is possible. Another key concept in this exam objective is implementing grounding features. This is a dream come true for admins that can specify which data points within Salesforce contribute to the AI response.
Generative AI in CRM applications is where you can start to specialize in your own organization’s functionality. Do you use Sales Cloud? Service Cloud? Learn what features are available to you and identify use cases where you can make the most of these AI features, such as Einstein Lead Scoring, Einstein Sales Emails, Einstein Service Replies for Email, and Einstein Call Summaries.
Prompt Builder is the largest percentage of the exam and, thankfully, tends to be the feature admins are most drawn toward using. The reason admins tend to excel in this section is because we have all had situations where we wished we could just combine different data points for a summary, which helps us connect the dots and generate real-world use cases. Data management is also one of the core responsibilities of a Salesforce Admin, so we’re familiar with the data points in our organization and can easily identify which ones will be essential for properly grounding a prompt.
Plus, the best part about being a Salesforce Admin is building on the platform! Prompt Builder is a low-code tool and gives us a chance to do this using the different skills we already excel at, such as custom configuration and automation via Flow.
You’ve most likely heard the term Agentforce, and this is another major objective of the AI Specialist exam that dives into Agentforce actions and using the Agent Builder. Agentforce offers both standard and custom actions, and as an admin it’s our job to determine which to use and how to watch our agents as well as our user adoption. As admins, we’re often focused on how to create a more streamlined and better user experience so that we can increase CRM adoption. Setting up agents is a big win for your users because you can create conversational AI assistants to answer questions or help with common tasks for them, or create autonomous agents to manage automation and simplify your business processes.
Last, but not least, we move on to Model Builder. This is important for admins to know because it covers when to use generative versus predictive AI models and also allows you to bring your own LLM and connect it to Salesforce using Data Cloud.
Learning about AI in general is a great foundation for any aspiring Salesforce AI Specialist. As admins, we have several other resources to use in preparing for this exam.
To learn how to use Salesforce AI products, take the Drive Productivity with Einstein AI trail which offers videos, articles, and hands-on challenges to help you get familiar with using AI in Salesforce. Then, when you’re ready to schedule your exam, check out the Cert Prep: AI Specialist trail which offers flashcards and sample exam questions. If you learn best in a classroom setting, join us at an AI Now Tour event and participate in hands-on workshops with the Salesforce Trailblazer Relations Team. You can also get hands-on and dive into Agentforce with the #BuiltWithAgentforce Quest.
And for more great content, join us during the Agentforce World Tour for exciting sessions, demos, training, and the chance to build your own agent and participate in an Agentforce Hackathon.
In conclusion, admins make great AI Specialists because they already understand the Salesforce Platform, and they know the data points inside and out that make AI initiatives successful. Admins have the growth mindset to approach this exam by building on their current skill set with hands-on experience.
With Agentforce, AI is deeply embedded in Salesforce which means that as the product managers of their CRM, admins will inevitably need to at minimum understand AI features, even if they aren’t the ones writing the prompts and implementing agents.
By approaching this exam with your existing admin skills, understanding the core responsibilities, and doing hands-on preparation through Trailhead, Salesforce events, and referencing Help articles, you can become a double-threat admin + AI Specialist. Who’s with me and plans on taking the AI Specialist certification exam prior to December 2025?
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