SF-Data-Arch Practice Test 3 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A multinational financial services company uses Salesforce to manage customer interactions. Its data governance team must ensure that all data elements containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) are consistently classified, protected, and auditable across Production and Full Sandbox environments. The team is considering using Salesforce Data Mask to anonymize PII in Full Sandboxes. However, they are concerned that masking might alter the original data in Production. What is the most accurate statement regarding Data Mask and its role in this governance strategy?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Data Mask can be used to mask data in Full Sandboxes, and it does not affect Production data because masking occurs only during sandbox creation or refresh.. Data Mask is specifically designed to obfuscate sensitive data in sandboxes without affecting Production. It applies masking policies during sandbox creation or refresh, ensuring that PII is protected in non-production environments while maintaining data integrity in Production. This supports governance by enabling safe testing and development with realistic but anonymized data.

Answer

Data Mask permanently alters Production data when a masking policy is applied, so it should only be used in Full Sandboxes after a full backup.

Answer

Data Mask requires the use of Salesforce Shield and can only be applied to custom objects, not standard objects like Account or Contact.

Answer

Data Mask is a real-time field-level encryption service that automatically masks PII in both Production and Sandboxes, eliminating the need for separate policies.

Question 2

A Salesforce org has a data governance policy that requires all new custom objects and fields to be reviewed and approved by a data governance council before creation. A developer needs to add a new field to the Account object to support a critical business process. What should the developer do first?

Accepted Answer

Submit a request to the data governance council for review and approval, providing business justification and impact analysis.. The governance policy clearly states that new custom objects and fields must be reviewed and approved before creation. The developer should first submit a request to the data governance council with business justification and impact analysis. This ensures the council can evaluate the request against data standards and avoid unnecessary or redundant fields. Only after approval should the field be created.

Answer

Ask the Salesforce administrator to create the field as a temporary workaround and document it in a technical debt log.

Answer

Use the Salesforce Setup menu to create the field directly in production, then notify the governance council afterward.

Answer

Create the field in a sandbox and then submit a change set for deployment to production.

Question 3

Northern Trail Outfitters uses Salesforce as its system of entry for customer records, but the ERP remains the system of record for billing addresses. A data architect must design the MDM integration so that when a billing address changes in the ERP, Salesforce is updated, but address edits made in Salesforce do not flow back to the ERP. Which MDM pattern should the architect implement?

Accepted Answer

One-way synchronization from the ERP to Salesforce, with Salesforce address fields made read-only for users.. The scenario defines a clear attribute-level system of record: the ERP owns billing address, Salesforce merely consumes it. That maps to a unidirectional publish-and-subscribe integration combined with UI-level protection so Salesforce users cannot create authoritative edits. Bi-directional approaches and federation both contradict either the direction requirement or the expectation that the value is persisted and usable natively inside Salesforce.

Answer

Federated access using Salesforce Connect to display the ERP address in real time without persisting it in Salesforce.

Answer

Bi-directional synchronization with last-write-wins conflict resolution based on the most recent ModifiedDate.

Answer

Bi-directional synchronization with a survivorship rule that always prefers the ERP value for the address field.

Question 4

A retail company is implementing a data governance program and needs to define ownership and accountability for data quality. The company has multiple business units, each using Salesforce differently. The governance team wants to ensure that each data domain (e.g., Customer, Product, Order) has a clear owner responsible for data quality, definitions, and issue resolution. Which role should be assigned to fulfill this responsibility?

Accepted Answer

Data Steward. A Data Steward is the role specifically designed to own data domains, ensure data quality, define standards, and resolve issues. They bridge business and technical teams, providing accountability for data within their domain. This aligns with the governance team's need for clear ownership and accountability at the domain level.

Answer

Salesforce Administrator

Answer

Chief Data Officer

Answer

Data Governance Council

Question 5

A global insurer is preparing for a data privacy audit. The architect must demonstrate that the Salesforce org can identify where personal data lives and prove who accessed it. Which two capabilities should the architect include in the governance solution? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Data Classification metadata on fields, using the Data Classification feature to tag fields as personal or sensitive.. The audit asks two distinct questions: where personal data resides and who accessed it. Data Classification metadata answers the first by tagging fields with sensitivity categories, and Event Monitoring answers the second by retaining access and API logs for analysis. Field history, bulk exports, and platform encryption do not provide classification inventory or access evidence.

Answer

A nightly Data Loader job that exports all records for offline retention.

Answer

Field History Tracking enabled on every field in the org to record old and new values.

Answer

Enabling Shield Platform Encryption on all text fields to mask values at rest.

Question 6

Universal Containers uses Salesforce Sales Cloud as its CRM and a legacy AS/400 system for order fulfillment. Customer records exist in both systems but are keyed differently: Salesforce uses the Account ID (15-character), while the AS/400 uses a legacy customer number. The data architect must enable ongoing synchronization of customer master data between the two systems without creating duplicate records. Which approach should be used?

Accepted Answer

Create a custom external ID field on the Account object and populate it with the legacy customer number, then use that field as the matching key in the integration.. The cross-system key mapping problem is solved by storing the legacy identifier in a custom external ID field on the Salesforce Account. This field is indexed and can be used by the integration's upsert operation to match and update the correct record, preventing duplicates. It also preserves the legacy key in the source system, avoiding disruption to existing processes.

Answer

Enable Salesforce Duplicate Management with a matching rule on the Account Name and Billing Street fields, and rely on it to prevent duplicates during integration loads.

Answer

Use the Salesforce Account ID as the primary key in the AS/400 system and overwrite the legacy customer number with the 15-character Salesforce ID.

Answer

Configure a Salesforce-to-Salesforce (S2S) connection between the two systems and let Salesforce automatically reconcile customer records.

Question 7

A data architect is designing a master data management solution where customer records from Salesforce and a legacy system must be merged into a single golden record. The legacy system uses a customer ID that is a 10-digit number, while Salesforce uses a 15-character ID. The architect needs to create a unique cross-system identifier. Which approach best ensures uniqueness and traceability?

Accepted Answer

Use a composite key consisting of the source system code and the native ID, stored in an external ID field. A composite key of source system code and native ID provides a globally unique identifier that also indicates the record's origin. This is essential for master data management, as it allows the organization to trace data back to its source and perform accurate merges. It also supports upsert operations in Salesforce via an external ID field.

Answer

Use Salesforce's 15-character ID as the single identifier for all systems

Answer

Use the customer's email address as the unique identifier

Answer

Generate a random UUID for each customer and store it in a custom field

Question 8

A data architect is migrating 8 million Contact records from a legacy CRM into Salesforce Sales Cloud. The legacy system stores phone numbers as free-text strings in multiple formats (e.g., '(415) 555-1212', '415.555.1212', '4155551212'). After migration, users must be able to search for Contacts by phone number and have the numbers display consistently. Which approach should the architect use to ensure phone numbers are searchable and standardized?

Accepted Answer

Pre-process the legacy data in the ETL layer to normalize all phone numbers to a single format, then load them into the standard Phone field.. Normalizing phone numbers during the ETL process before loading them into the standard Phone field ensures that all values conform to one format. This makes the standard field's search indexing effective and provides consistent display without custom code. The other options either leave inconsistent data at rest or rely on features that do not automatically normalize free-text input.

Answer

Store the original free-text phone numbers in a Text field and create a formula field that formats the number for display.

Answer

Store phone numbers in the standard Phone field and rely on Salesforce's automatic normalization and search indexing.

Answer

Create a custom Text field with a validation rule that enforces a specific phone number format, and load the raw values.

Question 9

A financial services firm is migrating 10 million transaction records into a custom object Transaction__c. The legacy system uses a composite key of AccountNumber and TransactionDate to uniquely identify transactions. The target Salesforce org has a unique external ID field Transaction_Key__c. The architect needs to ensure that re-running the migration does not create duplicate records and that updates to existing transactions are applied. Which approach should be used?

Accepted Answer

Populate Transaction_Key__c with the concatenation of AccountNumber and TransactionDate, then use the Data Loader's Upsert operation with Transaction_Key__c as the external ID field.. Concatenating the composite key into the external ID field and using Upsert allows the migration to match existing records by that key. Upsert updates existing records and inserts new ones, preventing duplicates. This is the most efficient and standard method for handling composite keys in large migrations, as it leverages Salesforce's built-in matching and bulk processing capabilities without custom code.

Answer

Create a custom Apex trigger to check for existing transactions before insert and update them if found.

Answer

Use the Data Loader's Update operation with a SOQL query to fetch existing records and match them by AccountNumber and TransactionDate.

Answer

Use the Data Loader's Insert operation and rely on Salesforce's duplicate rules to prevent duplicates.

Question 10

What is the primary function of a skinny table in Salesforce?

Accepted Answer

To improve performance by avoiding table joins.. Skinny tables are used to optimize performance by flattening data from multiple related objects into a single table. This removes the need for joins when querying across related records, which significantly speeds up SOQL queries and reporting. They are a powerful tool for large-scale data environments where complex relationship traversal is the main bottleneck for query latency.

Answer

To provide more storage for large objects.

Answer

To automatically archive old records.

Answer

To encrypt data for security compliance.