Delivering customer success requires the deep knowledge and domain expertise that partners are known for. That’s why more than 91% of Salesforce customers trust partners to drive their success. With your expert help, customers can experience more success than ever. Earn Accredited Professional credentials to drive more value for customers and grow your career with Salesforce. And make sure to maintain your credential every two years!
As Salesforce innovates to empower every company to become a customer company, partners must #AlwaysBeLearning to keep up. Use the new AP credential maintenance process to easily track the AP credentials you already have and the ones you need to maintain. Maintaining your AP credential is simple, free, and can be completed at your pace, directly in Partner Learning Camp (PLC).
How to maintain your Accredited Professional credential
All AP credentials must be maintained every two years to remain valid. Since the date you earned your credential is unique to you, so is your maintenance date. Maintaining your AP credential is easy, just log into PLC and complete a short maintenance course on or before the date of expiration.
All maintenance courses take between 15 and 30 minutes to complete. Maintenance courses validate your knowledge of the most up-to-date information related to the exam topic.
New enhancements made to PLC will guide you through the process.
Please note: If you are a credential holder who earned a credential July - September 2021, no action is required until all maintenance courses have been released. You will be notified when the courses are available. To ensure our learners have plenty of time to complete the required maintenance courses, we are pushing back the credential expiration dates. If you earned an AP credential on or before September 30, 2021, we are extending your expiration date to October 1, 2023. This ensures that all credential holders receive a full 90 days to complete their maintenance course prior to expiration.
Check out what's new in PLC
On your next log in to PLC, you’ll find new features and functionality related to your AP credentials:
- AP Credential Status: View your credential(s) earned and expiration dates on the Profile tab or the Credentials tab.
- Maintenance Courses on your Learner Dashboard: If you have a credential that is set to expire in 90 days or less, you will be able to enroll and complete the maintenance course relevant to your credential right from your dashboard.
- Maintain Notifications on your Learner Dashboard: Once you log into PLC, you’ll see a maintenance reminder in the top, right-hand corner. These reminders will take you straight to your maintenance course.
- Email Reminders: Once your credential is within 90 days of expiration, you’ll receive reminders 30, 60 and 90 days out. Pro tip: Once you see that first reminder, head over to PLC and complete your maintenance while it’s top of mind.
What's at stake?
You already know why earning and keeping AP credentials is so important. Salesforce credentials prove that you have the expertise needed to drive customer success. Once you maintain your credential, it will automatically be updated on your Credly profile, so you can show off your shiny badges to customers. Note! You’ll need to manually update your LinkedIn profile with the new expiration date.
Keeping your resume-worthy credentials benefits you and your company. Valid credentials keeps your company competitive and helps them stand out in the partner ecosystem. Alternatively, failing to maintain your credentials could negatively impacts your organization’s Trailblazer Score and Navigator distinctions.
Will my employer know if I renewed my credential?
Salesforce will only share your personal information, including credential and certification information, with your employer with your consent. Should you choose to consent to share personal information with your employer, please follow the instruction below:
- Open Consent Capture form
- Enter your information into the required fields
- Check the box Opt-in to share credential and certification data with your employer;
- Note: Only check the opt-in box if you wish to have your personal information including credential and certification information shared with your employer
- Review your information and selections
- Submit your form
Please note that your consent is voluntary and it can be withdrawn at any time by updating your preferences by clicking here.
What you need to know about major product releases or updates
At Salesforce, we’re proud to deliver hundreds of innovative features to you three times a year during our seasonal releases: Spring, Summer, and Winter. Sometimes during these releases there are major product innovations, meaning our product curricula and exams need updates to align with new product features and functionality.
If a product undergoes a major change, the exam will be updated. If you are a credential holder and the exam is updated significantly, you will have the opportunity to renew your credential for free through voucher incentives. If you choose not to renew using these incentives, once your credential is set to expire you must schedule your exam attempt, pay associated fees, and take the newest version of the exam.
The Health Cloud and Financial Services Cloud AP exams will go through significant updates to reflect recent product changes. Credential holders will need to take the newest version of these exams when they launch later in the year. To give credential holders time to prepare and take the latest content, credential expiration dates will be extended to start no sooner than September 30, 2023. Additional communications will be sent to credential holders who are impacted by this change.
Resources:
- Accredited Professional Overview
- Accredited Professional Exams
- Partner Learning Camp collaboration group in Partner Community
