As a Slack professional, you may be looking to prove your skills by becoming Slack certified. Within the Slack ecosystem, you can become certified as a Slack Admin, Consultant, or Developer.
In this exam guide we will focus on the Slack Admin exam and help you prepare to become Slack certified.
Who’s the Ideal Candidate?
As an aspiring Slack Certified Admin you should ideally have 6-12 months hands-on experience of being a Slack Administrator and be familiar with all paid plans of the platform.
You should be used to navigating around the Slack Admin console and specifically features like: Admin Roles, User Provisioning, Settings and Policies, Channels, and App Approvals.
You will most likely pioneer best practices already within your organization including channel naming conventions, and use channels for incoming requests e.g. #help-slack.
If you need to brush up on some areas or don’t have much hands-on experience, Slack provides a training course to help you prepare too.
Key Topics
- Fundamentals (9%)
- Workspace administration (9%)
- Channel and user group administration (28%)
- User lifecycle management (14%)
- App administration (10%)
- Security (15%)
- Enabling Slack success (15%)
1. Fundamentals (9%)
The first section of the exam focuses on the fun-damentals. For this part you’ll need to be familiar with the different roles available within Slack and what features you get access to with each plan. You should know what common tasks or functions you’ll be expected to perform as a Slack Admin, workspace and org-level settings that may need to be adjusted, and the dashboards that are available too.
2. Workspace Administration (9%)
This section of the exam is worth 9% of the overall score. You should be familiar with workspace management, including when to create a workspace, workspace creation, approval processes, and workspace visibility.
On Enterprise Grid, you can have multiple workspaces, so you’ll need to know how to design these. Additionally, you may be quizzed on how to consolidate workspaces too.
3. Channel and User Group Administration (28%)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, channels and user groups make up the largest chunk of this exam.
You’ll need to know how to manage channels within Slack, when to use a channel, direct message or group message and public versus private channels.
You should know about multi-workspace channels, permissions, and sharing with an outside organization.
As someone who follows best practices, you should be able to implement naming guidelines and channel prefixes, as well be on top of channel management including deleting, archiving, and converting. This section also covers Slack User Groups too.
4. User Lifecycle Management (14%)
As a Slack Admin, you serve your users and strive to make both their lives easier and the ‘flow of work’ more efficient.
This section of the exam focuses on authentication and the increasing functionalities you get as you move up the different Slack plans. Based on a use case, you should be able to recommend the best way to create new users, and perhaps compare SCIM to JIT when provisioning users.
This includes getting users into the right workspaces/channels, having a process for Guest User requests, and deactivating users when they no longer need access.
5. App Administration (10%)
This section talks about apps, including the different scopes they can have and enforcing approval for new apps.
Workflow Builder is part of this section, so it could come up as Slack’s tool to automate processes and improve efficiency.
6. Security (15%)
Security is important with any system, so it’s no surprise this has its own section on the exam.
This will test you on how to secure your system and the options available. You’ll need to know how to manage access on desktop and mobile, as well as options for data retention.
Slack provides tools to help specifically on Enterprise Grid such as Data Loss Prevention, Audit Logs, and E-Discovery.
7. Enabling Slack Success (15%)
Post implementation, you’ll need to be able to measure your success, quantify it, and track progress. You should know what type of info the Analytics Dashboard can provide and what actions to take based on your analytic information.
Longer term, you may be expected to know how to encourage Slack etiquette, recruit Slack Champions, and potentially build a team around you. This also extends to championing best practices and running enablement sessions too.
Study Strategy
For the Slack Admin Exam, I prepared by making notes that were grouped by exam section while going through the Slack Certified Admin Prep Course on Slack Certified.
Unless you were using a partner promotion (like me) then the cost of the prep course and the exam is currently $300. This may be a bit steep compared to a Salesforce Exam at $200 with free learning via Trailhead, but the materials were enough to get me through the exam!
If you do not currently have access to Slack then consider signing up for a free trial or plan to get to grips with the basics.
In terms of strategy, you could also prepare flashcards, form a study group, attend Slack events, and reach out via the Slack Community on topics where you are not as confident as others.
Lean into whatever works for you. You are likely to have taken some form of exam before, whether it was for education or your Salesforce career; prepare in the way that you’ve learned works for you.
Exam Strategy
The exam itself is made up of 60 multiple choice questions with up to 90 minutes to complete the test. To pass, you’ll need to get 64% and you’ll get one free retake (unless you are using a partner code). More information on the specifics can be found in our differentiating guide:
As this is an online-only exam, be sure to leave some time before the exam to make sure your equipment is set up correctly and take a deep breath before going in.
Summary
It’s been helpful for me to set a target date and then tailor my study around this so I’ve got something to work towards – this may work for you too. Make sure you review your notes in preparation for the exam and to feel confident about what could come up in the exam itself.
On the test day get some last minute revision in, and fingers crossed you’ll be a Certified #SlackStar before you know it.
Resources
- Slack Community
- Slack Events
- Slack Certified Admin Prep Course
- Slack Certified Admin Exam
- Exam Registration and Policies Guide