Salesforce Platform Administrator II Exam (2026): What It Tests

The Salesforce Platform Administrator II exam, which most people still call Advanced Administrator, needs 65% to pass. That's a lower pass mark than the Admin exam's 68%. It's not the easier exam. You need the Admin certification before you can sit it, and the guide goes well past it: territory management, entitlement processes, Knowledge, reporting snapshots, joined reports, change sets and the order of execution.

The other detail that catches people out is the release. The exam guide says the questions align to Summer '22. Salesforce has shipped more than a dozen releases since, so you'll be tested on the platform as it was four years ago, not the org you log into at work.

Everything below was checked against the official exam guide and Salesforce documentation on October 26, 2026. Where we couldn't confirm something from an official Salesforce source, we left it out.

The exam at a glance

60 multiple-choice and multiple-select questions, plus up to 5 unscored questions mixed in at random.
105 minutes.
Passing score: 65%.
US$200 to register, US$100 to retake, plus local taxes.
Prerequisite: the Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator certification.
Taken at a test center or online with a proctor. No notes or online materials allowed.
Questions align to Summer '22.

65% of 60 is 39 correct answers, so you can miss 21 and still pass. On Admin you need 41.

Don't let the lower number set your expectations. Eleven of the guide's 25 objectives open with "Given a scenario", and three more ask you to compare or distinguish between options. Where Admin often asks what a feature does, Admin II more often asks which one you'd pick, and what happens when you do.

The section weights, read as a study budget

Security and Access: 20%, about 12 questions
Process Automation: 20%, about 12 questions
Objects and Applications: 19%, about 11 questions
Data and Analytics Management: 13%, about 8 questions
Cloud Applications: 11%, about 7 questions
Auditing and Monitoring: 10%, about 6 questions
Environment Management and Deployment: 7%, about 4 questions

Salesforce publishes percentages, not question counts, so the counts are estimates.

The first three sections are 59% of the exam. That's where most of your study time goes.

Security and Access (20%)

The guide lists four objectives: record and field access (the sharing model, Controlled by Parent, Grant Access Using Hierarchies, report, dashboard and email folder access, Territory Management), profiles versus permission sets versus delegated administration, user authentication, and complex business models such as person accounts and contacts related to multiple accounts.

Delegated administration is a good example of the detail this section tests. A delegated admin can manage users in the roles they're given and work with custom objects, but Salesforce's documentation is specific about the limits. They can't assign profiles or permission sets that include Modify All Data, and they can't create or modify relationships on the custom objects they manage. A scenario question can hinge on either rule.

If sharing still feels shaky after Admin, fix it here first. It's tested directly in this section and comes back in Data and Analytics, where sharing decides what a report or dashboard shows.

Process Automation (20%) and the workflow rule question

This section asks you to choose the right tool or combination of tools for a complex scenario, troubleshoot declarative automation, know each tool's capabilities and limits, and understand the order of execution.

Look at how the guide describes the candidate: someone who can "create flows, workflow rules, approval processes, and formula fields." Workflow rules are still in the guide.

On the platform, Salesforce ended support for Workflow Rules and Process Builder on December 31, 2025. Existing rules and processes keep running, but there's no customer support and no bug fixes, and Salesforce recommends moving to Flow Builder. The Admin exam's objectives don't include workflow rules. The Admin II guide, aligned to Summer '22, still lists them.

So for this exam, know what a workflow rule could and couldn't do, as well as when Flow was the better choice. Just don't build anything new with one at work.

Order of execution is the objective worth learning exactly. The current Apex Developer Guide lists it this way, among other steps:

Record-triggered flows set to run before save.
Before triggers.
System validation and custom validation rules.
Duplicate rules, then the record is saved but not committed.
After triggers, then assignment rules and auto-response rules.
Workflow rules.
Record-triggered flows set to run after save.

Two consequences come up in scenarios. A before-save flow can change a field before your validation rule ever checks it. And a workflow rule runs before an after-save flow, not after it.

Objects and Applications (19%)

The first objective is data model design: master-detail and lookup relationships, junction objects, related lists, record types, Schema Builder and Object Creator. The second is the user interface: App Manager, Lightning App Builder, Dynamic Forms, standard Lightning page components, Console apps, and the Analyze button on Lightning pages.

One Dynamic Forms detail is easy to get wrong. Hiding a field with a visibility rule is not security. Salesforce's documentation says hidden fields are for user convenience, not field-level security, and their values still show in reports, dashboards and list views. If the requirement is "these users must not see this field", the answer is field-level security, not a visibility rule.

The sections Admin doesn't cover

Three sections have no real equivalent on the Admin exam.

Cloud Applications (11%) covers products, price books, schedules, orders and quotes; Forecasting and Territory Management; Salesforce Knowledge (article record types, data categories); entitlements and entitlement processes; and the tools agents use with customers, such as Chat, Case Feed, the Agentforce Service Console, Experience Cloud sites and Omni-Channel. Plenty of working admins never touch these. Set up what you can yourself in a Trailhead Playground or Developer Edition org rather than only reading about them.

Auditing and Monitoring (10%) covers debug logs, Setup Audit Trail, handling sensitive data in production and sandboxes, and reviewing security settings, including pending updates. It rewards exact details. For example, the Setup Audit Trail page shows the 20 most recent setup changes, and you can download the last 180 days.

Environment Management and Deployment (7%) covers change sets, sandboxes, and managed and unmanaged packages from AppExchange. It's only about four questions, but they're among the easiest to prepare for, because the rules are fixed and well documented.

Data and Analytics Management (13%)

Four objectives: data quality (validation, duplicate management, enrichment, archiving), advanced reporting (custom report types, reporting snapshots, complex charting, custom summary formulas, bucketing, joined reports, cross filters, dynamic dashboards and dashboard filters), data outside Salesforce (big objects, external objects, data warehouses and data lakes, Salesforce Connect), and data import tools (Data Import Wizard, Data Loader, external IDs).

The reporting list is long, and most of it you can try hands-on in a few minutes. Build one of each you can before you sit the exam.

Why "aligns to Summer '22" matters

The guide uses current product names, such as Agentforce Sales, Agentforce Service and the Agentforce Service Console, but its questions still align to Summer '22. Even its maintenance paragraph is out of date: it says you maintain the certification three times a year, while Salesforce's maintenance schedule now lists one badge per year.

Two habits help:

Study the guide's objectives, not the latest release notes. Where the platform has moved on, as with workflow rules, know how it worked then and what's true now.
Re-open the official guide before you book. Outlines do change, and when this one is refreshed the weights and the release will move with it.

How to split your study time

Start with Security and Access, Process Automation, and Objects and Applications. Do them hands-on, not just from reading.
Use the superbadges Salesforce recommends in the guide: Object Relationships, Flow Optimization, Record-Triggered Flow, Formulas, Approval Process Management and Approval Process Troubleshooting. Most of them map straight onto the two 20% sections.
Give Cloud Applications hands-on time. Set up a price book, a forecast, a territory model, an entitlement process and a Knowledge article record type.
Treat Auditing and Monitoring and Environment Management as fixed, small slices. Don't skip them: together they're about ten questions.
Practice under time pressure. 105 minutes for up to 65 questions is about a minute and a half per question, and scenario questions take longer to read.

Frequently asked questions

Is Platform Administrator II the same as Advanced Administrator?

Yes, it's the same certification. Trailhead's credential page still sits at a URL ending in "advancedadministrator", and Salesforce's recommended Trailmix and prep course still use the old name in their links.

What's the prerequisite?

You must hold the Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator certification.

What's the passing score?

65%, which is 39 of 60 scored questions.

Is it harder than the Admin exam?

The pass mark is lower, but the objectives go deeper and more of them are scenario-based. It also covers areas Admin doesn't, such as entitlements, territory management, change sets and debug logs.

How do I keep the certification once I pass?

Complete the Platform Administrator maintenance badge on Trailhead once a year. The same badge maintains both Admin and Admin II. Salesforce's schedule lists the current cycle as due April 16, 2027, but dates can change, so your Trailblazer profile has the final word.

I failed. What now?

A retake costs US$100. Before you rebook, read your section results against the weights above. We wrote a full guide: Failed a Salesforce Certification? Here's What to Do Next.

Practice against the current outline

Our Platform Administrator II practice exam has 100 original scenario questions across all seven sections of the guide, and every option comes with an explanation, including why each wrong answer is wrong. Every fact behind the questions was checked against official Salesforce documentation. Five preview questions are free.

Try the Platform Administrator II practice exam

Still working toward the Admin prerequisite? Our Platform Administrator course is free, and we covered that exam in Salesforce Admin Exam (2026): What the Exam Really Tests.