To sign up for and take the exam, you only need to meet a few basic criteria: first, you have to want to do it; second, I recommend preparing for the exam; and third, you must have internet access. Simple, isn’t it? The first two points probably don’t need explanation, so let’s focus on point number three here. To sign up for the exam, you must create an account on the Salesforce partner website called Webassessor, available at https://webassessor.com/salesforce. Webassessor is a platform from Kryterion, which Salesforce uses for exam registrations. The following screenshot shows the Webassessor login page. Of course, if you don’t have an account there yet, you can create one using the Create a new Webassessor™ login now button.
Figure 12.1: Webassessor login page
After logging in, you will see a dashboard where you can find many things, including links to Salesforce Help describing exams, their formats, and similar items. I encourage you to explore the contents of the page yourself because here we will focus on the most important functionality, which is the Register for an Exam tab. It is in this place that Salesforce allows us to register for exams.
Upon entering the aforementioned tab, you will see a list of all exams or exam groups conducted by Salesforce. To register for the Salesforce Certified Administrator exam, simply expand the Administrator Exams tab. As you can see in the following image, Salesforce offers three formats in which this exam can be conducted:
- Online Proctored
- Onsite Proctored
- Event Proctored
The three formats can be seen in the following screenshot:
Figure 12.2: Webassessor Register for an Exam tab
The three formats shown here differ in terms of where the exam takes place and to some extent how the exam is conducted. However, they do not differ in the scope of material or types of questions that you may encounter. Besides providing a brief description of each exam format, I would like to outline the pros and cons associated with them. Nevertheless, I must say that they are subjective as I have my favorite exam format, but more on that later.