Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Guide - A Book Review

As I said in a previous post I recently sat (and passed) the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder Exam. One of the tools I used to prepare for this exam was the Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Guide from Packt. This is another book I got as part of a Humble Bundle deal. As such this review is somewhat coloured by the price I paid for this book in PDF form: about £1.

Probably the most important question to ask about this book is “will this help me pass the exam”. This is a pretty simple one - yes. I’m pretty sure I’d have passed the exam without the book but it was certainly easier with a guide to the exam, the additional example questions and the breakdown of the sections. There is nothing in the book that you could not get from the help documentation or Trailhead but having the important parts condensed down into a few hundred pages makes it easier to study and revise.

Having said a few hundred pages it’s probably worth mentioning the length. In the edition I had there are 389 pages. There are quite a few pages advertising another book at the end, index etc but there must be a solid 350 pages of content. This is not a book you can just consume the night before the exam to pass! You need a week or two to get the most from the book.

As a primarily programmatic developer the book helps show the clicks-not-code platform that this exam tests. The book presents a scenario that is woven through the chapters which you can build as you go in your own org. Personally I did not do that - the projects in Trailhead were enough. However I can see this being helpful if you had the time to follow along.

I’m not sure I could recommend the book at full price - you can pass the exam without it. But at a reduced price it’s probably worth it for the additional confidence it gives