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Plat-Arch-204 Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect Exam

December 26, 2025 by admin

The Plat-Arch-204 exam is the Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect exam, designed for experts in building scalable Salesforce integration solutions, covering APIs, middleware, and data exchange. It features 60 multiple-choice/multi-select questions, lasts 105 minutes, costs $400 USD, and requires a 67% passing score, with no formal prerequisites but deep technical knowledge in integration patterns, Salesforce APIs, and security.
Exam Format & Logistics

Exam Code: Plat-Arch-204
Name: Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect
Questions: 60 (multiple-choice/multiple-select + up to 5 unscored)
Time: 105 minutes
Passing Score: 67% (around 40 correct answers)
Cost: $400 USD (plus taxes)
Prerequisites: None officially, but strong technical background needed.

Key Topics Covered
Integration Patterns & Architecture
Salesforce APIs (REST, SOAP, Bulk, Streaming)
Identity & Security (OAuth, Certificates)
Data Management & Governance
Middleware Solutions
System Design for Scalability & Performance

Preparation Resources
Official: Salesforce Trailhead modules, Architect Journey, Whitepapers.
Practice: Exam simulators and study guides available from various third-party providers

Examkingdom Plat-Arch-204 Salesforce Exam pdf

Best Plat-Arch-204 Salesforce Downloads, Plat-Arch-204 Salesforce Dumps at Certkingdom.com

Sample Question and Answers

QUESTION 1
A large business-to-consumer (B2C) customer is planning to implement Salesforce CRM to become a
customer-centric enterprise. Below is the B2C customer’s current system landscape diagram.
The goals for implementing Salesforce include:
Develop a 360-degree view of the customer.
Leverage Salesforce capabilities for marketing, sales, and service processes.
Reuse Enterprise capabilities built for quoting and order management processes.
Which three systems from the current system landscape can be retired with the implementation of Salesforce?

A. Order Management, Case Management, and Email Marketing
B. Sales Activity, Order Management, and Case Management
C. Email Marketing, Sales Activity, and Case Management

Answer: C

Explanation:
Comprehensive and Detailed 250 to 350 words of Explanation From Salesforce Pl14atform
Integration Architect documents: In the rol15e of a Salesforce Platform Integration Architect,
evaluating a legacy landscape requires a clinical mapping of current system functions against
Salesforces native capabilities, while strictly adhering to the “Constraints and Goals” provided by the
business. The objective here is to maximize the ROI of the Salesforce implementation by
consolidating redundant systems into the core platform.
According to Goal 2, the business intends to utilize Salesforce for Marketing, Sales, and Service
processes. Salesforce is architected to handle these three domains through its core clouds: Marketing
Cloud (replacing the legacy Email Marketing System), Sales Cloud (replacing the Sales Activity
System), and Service Cloud (replacing the Case Management System). By consolidating these three
specific functions into Salesforce, the organization achieves Goal 1, which is the creation of a 360-
degree view of the customer. When these activities occur on a single platform, the data is unified,
eliminating the silos that existed in the previous landscape.
However, the architect must also respect the technical constraints defined in Goal 3, which explicitly
states the need to reuse enterprise capabilities built for quoting and order management. In
architectural design, this designates the “Quoting System” and the “Order Management System” as
systems of record that must remain in the future-state landscape. These systems likely contain
complex, proprietary logic or are tightly coupled with back-end ERP systems like SAP Business Suite,
making them “non-negotiable” for retirement at this stage.
Therefore, because Email Marketing, Sales Activity, and Case Management map directly to
Salesforces primary strengths and are not excluded by the “reuse” requirement, they are the three
systems that should be retired. This strategic retirement simplifies the integration architecture,
allowing the architect to focus on building robust integration patterns (such as Request-Reply or Fireand-
Forget) between Salesforce and the remaining Quoting and Order Management systems.

QUESTION 2
An integration architect has built a solution using REST API, updating Account, Contact, and other
related information. The data volumes have increased, resulting in higher API calls consumed, and
some days the limits are exceeded. A decision was made to decrease the number of API calls using
bulk updates. The customer prefers to continue using REST API to avoid architecture changes. Which
REST API composite resources should the integration architect use to allow up to 200 records in one API call?

A. Batch
B. SObject Tree
C. Composite

Answer: B

Explanation:
When designing high-volume integrations, the Salesforce Platform Integration Architect must
distinguish between standard REST resources and “Composite” resources to optimize API
consumption. The Salesforce REST API provides several composite resources to group multiple
operations into a single call, thereby reducing the overhead of multiple HTTP requests and helping to
stay within daily API limits.
According to Salesforce documentation on Composite Resources, the sObject Tree resource
(/services/data/vXX.X/composite/tree/) is specifically designed to handle multiple records in a single
request. While it is primarily marketed for creating complex hierarchies (parent-child relationships),
it has a unique limit that allows for up to 200 records to be processed in a single call. These records
can even be unrelated records of the same type. This is a significant advantage over the standard
Batch and Composite resources.
The Composite resource and the Batch resource both have a much lower limit of 25 subrequests per
call. While each subrequest in a Batch call could technically be a collection operation, the question
specifically asks for the resource that natively supports the “200 records” threshold preferred for
bulk-style updates within the REST framework. By utilizing the sObject Tree resource, the architect
can bundle 200 record updates into a single transaction, effectively reducing API consumption by a
factor of 200 compared to individual REST calls. This aligns with the requirement to avoid major
architectural changes (like switching to the Bulk API 2.0) while solving the immediate problem of
exceeding daily governor limits. In the context of the Integration Architect exam, understanding
these specific payload limits is crucial for selecting the most efficient “Request-Reply” or “Data
Synchronization” pattern.

QUESTION 3
A business requires automating the check and updating of the phone number type classification
(mobile vs. landline) for all incoming calls delivered to its phone sales agents. The following conditions exist:
At peak, the call center can receive up to 100,000 calls per day.
The phone number type classification is a service provided by an external service API.
Business is flexible with timing and frequency to check and update the records (throughout the night
or every 6-12 hours is sufficient).
A Remote-Call-In pattern and/or Batch Synchronization (Replication via ETL: System -> Salesforce) are
determined to work with a middleware hosted on customer premise. In order to implement these
patterns and mechanisms, which component should an integration architect recommend?

A. ConnectedApp configured in Salesforce to authenticate the middleware
B. An API Gateway that authenticates requests from Salesforce into the middleware (ETL/ESB)
C. Remote Site Settings configured in Salesforce to authenticate the middleware
Answer: A
Explanation:
In this scenario, the architecture involves a Remote-Call-In pattern or Batch Synchronization, where
an external system (the middleware or ETL tool) initiates communication with Salesforce to update
records. For any external system to securely access Salesforce APIs and perform these updates, it
must be authenticated and authorized.
The Connected App is the foundational framework that allows an external application to integrate
with Salesforce using APIs and standard protocols, such as OAuth 2.0 and SAML. By configuring a
Connected App, the architect can define which permissions (Scopes) the middleware has, such as the
ability to access data via the REST or Bulk API. This is the correct choice because the middleware
needs to “log in” to Salesforce to push the phone classification data back into the Account or Contact records.
Option B, an API Gateway, is typically used to manage and secure requests going out of an
organization to external services, or to provide a facade for on-premise APIs; it does not handle the
inbound authentication into Salesforce itself. Option C, Remote Site Settings, is a configuration used
solely to permit Salesforce to make outbound calls to a specific external URL (for example, if
Salesforce were calling the phone classification service directly via Apex).
Given that the business is flexible with timing (allowing for nightly or 12-hour syncs) and handles
100,000 calls, a Batch Synchronization pattern via an ETL tool is highly efficient. The ETL tool will
authenticate against the Connected App using a secure OAuth flow (such as the JWT Bearer Flow for
server-to-server integration), retrieve the new phone numbers, call the external classification API,
and then bulk-update the Salesforce records. This setup ensures a secure, scalable, and manageable
integration that respects Salesforce’s security architecture while meeting the high-volume data
requirements of the call center.

QUESTION 4
A company captures orders and needs to send them to the Order fulfillment system. The user is not
required to have confirmation from the Order fulfillment system. Which system constraint question
should be considered when designing an integration to send orders from Salesforce to a fulfillment system?

A. What latency is acceptable for orders to reach the fulfillment system?
B. Can the fulfillment system implement a contract-first Outbound Messaging interface?
C. Which system will validate order shipping addresses?

Answer: A

Explanation:
When designing an integration where the user does not require immediate confirmation, the
architect is moving away from a synchronous “Request-Reply” pattern toward an asynchronous “Fireand-
Forget”16 or “Batch Processing” pattern. In such scenarios, the most critical architectural
constraint is defining the latency requirements.
Latency dictates the technical choice of the integration tool. If the fulfillment system needs the order
within seconds of creation to begin a high-speed picking process, the architect might choose
Salesforce Outbound Messaging or an Apex Callout triggered by a Platform Event. If the system only
needs to process orders once an hour or overnight, a Batch ETL process is more appropriate.
Understanding the acceptable delay (latency) ensures that the solution meets business expectations
without over-engineering for real-time performance where it isn’t required.
While Option B (Outbound Messaging) is a valid technical capability, it is a specific solution rather
than a high-level “system constraint question” that drives the initial design phase. Option C (Address
Validation) is a functional requirement regarding data integrity, but it does not define the
architectural framework of the integration as effectively as latency does. By identifying the latency
threshold, the architect can determine if the integration should be near real-time, hourly, or daily,
which in turn influences how the system handles error recovery, retries, and transaction volumes.

QUESTION 5
Northern Trail Outfitters requires an integration to be set up between one of its Salesforce orgs and
an External Data Source using Salesforce Connect. The External Data Source supports Open Data
Protocol. Which configuration should an integration architect recommend be implemented in order
to secure requests coming from Salesforce?

A. Configure a certificate for OData connection.
B. Configure Special Compatibility for OData connection.
C. Configure Identity Type for OData connection.

Answer: C

Explanation:
Salesforce Connect is a powerful tool for data virtualization, allowing users to view and manage data
in external systems (via OData) as if it were stored natively in Salesforce. However, a critical security
decision during the setup of an External Data Source is determining the Identity Type.
The Identity Type determines how the external system authenticates the Salesforce user.
There are two primary options:
Named Principal: Every Salesforce user accesses the external system using the same set of
credentials. This is easier to maintain but provides less granular security tracking in the target system.
Per User: Each individual Salesforce user must provide their own credentials for the external system.
This ensures that the data visible in Salesforce respects the user’s specific permissions in the external source.
Configuring the Identity Type is the fundamental way an architect secures OData requests because it
defines the authentication boundary between the platforms. While certificates (Option A) can be
used for transport layer security, the “Identity Type” configuration is the specific Salesforce Connect
setting that governs how a session is authorized. Option B (Special Compatibility) is a technical
setting used to handle non-standard OData implementations and does not directly relate to securing
the request. By recommending the correct Identity Type, the architect ensures that the integration
adheres to the “Principle of Least Privilege,” ensuring that users only see the external data they are
authorized to access.