How I Passed the Education Cloud Consultant Exam

At the beginning of the year I took the Nonprofit Cloud Consultant exam on a bit of a whim. I ended up passing on my first attempt in large part due to my time working at nonprofits back in the day when NPSP stood for Nonprofit Starter Pack. I heard from several colleagues that there was a lot of crossover between Nonprofit Cloud Consultant and Education Cloud Consultant. So after working with a customer who leveraged Education Cloud as part of my day job, I figured I might as well attempt the Education Cloud Consultant credential.
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​There aren’t quite as many resources for Education Cloud exam study as there were for Nonprofit Cloud. And while there is a team Trailhead curated Trailmix, I didn’t use it in my studies. What I did do, was focus on a few key Trailhead modules that covered the basics of EDA (the education data architecture, which serves as the backbone of the Education Cloud). I also signed up for an Education Cloud Trial Org using this link: Education Data Architecture (EDA) Trial Page.
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About The Exam

Source: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/credentials/educationcloudconsultant

​Here's the breakdown of what you need to know in order to pass this exam. If you've read my blog before, you'll know that I always emphasize the importance of reading the exam guide. It's always the most important step in any exam preparation.
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​Education Cloud Applications, Settings, and Configuration: 23%

• Explain the capabilities and limitations of Education Data Architecture (EDA), including compatibility with other Salesforce products and features.
• Install and configure EDA.
• Install and configure Advisor Link.

Implementation Strategies: 18%

• Given a scenario, determine how to facilitate a successful implementation (plan, gather requirements, design, build, test, document, deploy, and optimize).
• Advise on governance, change management, staffing, and adoption best practices, including community resources for long-term solution success.
• Given a scenario, identify timing considerations for a successful deployment.

Solution Design: 19%

• Explain the similarities, differences, and relationships between EDA account models and standard Salesforce Account-Contact data models.
• Given a scenario, design an appropriate and scalable solution for a higher-education customer.
• Know where to find available open-source solutions.
• Given a scenario, determine when it is appropriate to use EDA, other Salesforce solutions, open-source solutions, and third-party applications.

​Domain Expertise: 19%

• Given a business challenge, determine the Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for marketing and engagement.
• Given a business challenge, determine the Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for recruitment and admissions.
• Given a business challenge, determine the Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for student success.
• Given a business challenge, determine the Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for advancement and alumni relations.

Integration and Data Management: 17%

• Given a scenario, explain integration considerations for connecting higher-education systems in an Education Cloud implementation.
• Given a scenario, explain data migration considerations in Education Cloud.
• Given a scenario, analyze the implications and design considerations of large data volumes.
• Given a scenario, explain data management considerations in Education Cloud.

Analytics: 5%

• Given a scenario, determine the appropriate reporting solution in Education Cloud.
• Given a scenario, explain the security and data visibility considerations when designing reports and dashboards to serve different personas.

Here's Where To Focus

If you haven't figured it out yet, the industry clouds (with a few exceptions, i.e. Commerce) tend to be an installed package with a set of custom objects and custom code that overlay the standard Salesforce data model. Education Cloud is no different. 

The Education Cloud data model is similar to Nonprofit Cloud but has a few custom attributes that allow for student recruitment, advising, enrollment and course management. These are the key capabilities of Education Cloud along with alumni engagement (where Education and Nonprofit cloud start to blur together a bit).

So it should come as no surprise that understanding the Education Data model is very important. Here are the key components of the EDA data model:

• Accounts- In addition to the "household model" you might be familiar with from NPSP, there is an account model option in EDA called "administrative account". Administrative accounts can be departments, education institutions, sports teams or academic programs. 
• Affiliation - a junction object that connects a contact to an Account.
• Program Enrollment - a junction object that links the contact and the academic program record together.
• Term- a school term or academic session with a start and end date.
• Course- a class that fulfills a certain number of credit hours.
• Course Offering- a unique instance of a course associated with a specific term.
• Course Connection- an object representing the relationship between a student and a course offering.

​Here's how all the objects fit together:

Source: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/highered_heda_build/highered_heda_build_courses

In addition to the data model, I would recommend spending some time understanding the types of reports that the Education Cloud is designed to generate and how to go about customizing report types to visualize data that users of the Education Cloud might want to generate.

Finally, read up on the Student Advisor Link (SAL), a custom app designed to work with Education Cloud. The complete details of the SAL can be found on the Power of Us Hub here: https://powerofus.force.com/s/article/SAL-Install-Package.

Which is a great seguey to my final area I would recommend focusing on, the Power of Us Hub! Know what you can find there vs. the Trailblazer Community. Also, understand the difference between the standard Salesforce Release cycle (three times a year) and packages like the SAL. They are not the same!

​Similarities And DifferenceS

• You might notice that the exam guide for this exam is MUCH shorter than the exam guide for the Nonprofit Cloud Consultant exam. While this doesn't mean that this exam is any easier, it does mean that this exam has a narrower focus. Which can be good or bad depending on how familiar you are specifically with the EDA architecture and use cases for using Salesforce for student enrollment, admissions and advising. 
• Relationships and Affiliations are key to both exams:
  • Affiliations connect contacts with accounts. In EDA these accounts can represent education departments, sports teams or prospective employers.
  • Relationships connect contacts with other contacts. Of particular importance is the Reciprocal Method setting for relationships. This setting determines how EDA generates your reciprocal relationships (i.e. daughter-mother and mother-daughter). There are actually two options you can choose from: list setting and value inversion. Know how picking one or the other effects relationship creation!
• Both exams assume you are familiar with the capabilities of Marketing Cloud and Pardot, and test that you are capable of recommending one over the other. At a high level, here are the key differences between Pardot and Marketing Cloud. TL;DR: Marketing Cloud has more capabilities, but with those capabilities comes additional complexity. 

Source: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/student-recruitment-and-admissions-with-education-cloud/build-awareness-and-target-admissions-prospects-with-marketing-tools

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​Top 5 Resources To Prepare

Here are the top five resources I used to prepare and pass the Education Cloud Consultant exam:

• Education Data Architecture Basics
• ​Manage Your Education Data with EDA
• ​EDA Reports
• ​Student Advising with Salesforce Advisor Link
• Education Cloud Consultants Training & Certification Guide ​

​In Conclusion

Overall, I'm glad I took the time to study for this credential. Learning about the architecture of the EDA model was really interseting, and seeing how sophisticated some of the features of Education Cloud have become was really impressive. Especially since so many of these features have been developed (at least in part) by the Salesforce Community.