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Maintain Your Marketing Cloud Administrator Certification for Winter ’25

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Explain the new rowset limit for the AMPscript RetrieveSalesforceObjects() function.
  • Improve security using new granular permissions for SFTP users.
  • View the history dashboard in Automation Studio.
  • Plan automations based on start-time scheduling recommendations.
  • Examine automation health and history using a CSV download.

Maintain Your Certification

If you hold the Marketing Cloud Administrator credential, keep in mind that you need to complete this module by the due date to maintain your certification. Another important part of maintaining your credential is ensuring your Trailhead and Webassessor accounts are linked.

Interested in learning more about getting certified? Check out the Marketing Cloud Administrator credential.

Note

While anyone can earn this badge, this module is designed for those who hold the Marketing Cloud Administrator certification.

Protect the Integrity of Your Certification

The quality of our certification exams and the value that our credentials provide are our highest priority. Protecting the security and confidentiality of our exams is essential to providing our customers with credentials that are respected and industry-leading.

As a participant of the Salesforce Certification Program, you’re required to accept the terms of the Salesforce Credential and Certification Program Agreement. Please review the Salesforce certification exam-taking policies in the Salesforce Credential and Certification Program Agreement and Code of Conduct Trailhead Help article for more details.

Salesforce introduced new feature enhancements over the past year. Let’s take a look at some of the more important ones.

AMPscript RetrieveSalesforceObjects() Function Rowset Limit

AMPscript, the proprietary scripting language for Marketing Cloud, allows you to create highly personalized content. For example, using certain AMPscript functions in an email, you can retrieve data from Salesforce objects in a connected Sales Cloud or Service Cloud. Then, define the email content to display for the Contact based on the retrieved data. If inefficient coding practices are used, however, a long-running function may impact email send performance.

Admins can assess the latest change to an AMPscript function and communicate with developer teams to update their use cases. The AMPscript RetrieveSalesforceObjects() function returns data from Salesforce objects based on specified criteria. Previously, there was no limit to the number of rows retrieved. Salesforce now limits the number of rows to improve overall org performance and tasks that rely on this AMPscript function. Building a rowset using large numbers of rows may have legitimate use cases but could also be the result of inefficient, less-than-optimal coding practices. To maximize performance, the rowset that this function generates is now limited to 1,000 rows.

Fine-Tune Permissions for SFTP Users

Admins are frequently tasked with understanding and managing permissions to maintain security best practices for their org. SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a method of securely transferring data from one computer to another over the internet. Improve security by granting your SFTP users different levels of access. At the user level, assign other users access to view, edit, download from, and upload to top-level SFTP folders. You can also apply an additional layer of access by customizing each user’s home directory.

Maintain security by limiting independent contractors’ access to permission controls for developers or marketers. Adding this permission control allows admins to implement SFTP access changes and updates without contacting support.

This change applies to all Marketing Cloud Engagement editions and is available on a rolling basis starting in May 2024.

Automation Updates

Admins can improve their automations with more effective monitoring and start-time management. Easily visualize performance metrics with the new dashboard for Marketing Cloud Engagement (MCE). Distribute tasks to more efficient periods using start-time scheduling recommendations. These changes apply to all Marketing Cloud Engagement editions and are available on a rolling basis starting in June 2024. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

New Automation History Dashboard

View your automations over time and improve overall automation health using the new automation history dashboard. Get information about automation status, low success rates, and high skip or error counts. You can also identify automations that overlap and could negatively impact run times. The dashboard is updated daily and loads the latest data each time you access it. Using this comprehensive dashboard, you can proactively address issues and optimize your automation processes for better performance and efficiency.

In Automation Studio, click the History tab. Apply filters to focus your search by automation, name, or status. The dashboard shows only completed automation runs. It doesn’t include automations that are in running status or scheduled status.

History dashboard in Automation Studio displaying Automation Success Rate, Activity Success Rate, Automation Success Rate Over Time, and Automation History.

Access the report on the new History tab in Automation Studio. This feature is currently only available in English.

Plan Automations Based on Start-Time Scheduling Recommendations

Automation Studio experiences significant traffic on the hour and half hour, for example, 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, and 11:30. Use start-time scheduling recommendations to help you plan automation start times and distribute tasks to run during more efficient periods. Existing automation schedules are unaffected, and you can continue to specify the exact start time.

Simply define the schedule and save the automation, and it will be paused until you set the schedule toggle to Active. You can choose Use Recommended Time, or the automation can still be run manually by clicking Run Once.

Get More Insights on Automation Health and History

The health and history report provides more details about your automations. You can now see the source, creation date, frequency, and the most recent run date and time. Automation history details are updated daily.

Evaluate your automations over time by downloading your automation history as a CSV file. Improve automation health by reviewing each automation’s success rate and identifying automations with high skip or error counts. The CSV file lists automations that have run in the past 12 months. This report is available to the Marketing Cloud Administrator role. To make this report available to another role, grant the Automation Studio | General | Access permission in all business units in the tenant.

Use these steps to download the automations history.

  1. From your top-level Enterprise 2.0 account, go to Setup Home.
  2. In the Metrics section, under Automations, click Download Automation History.
    A CSV file downloads to your computer.

Automations that support Einstein, Intelligence Reports, Data Cloud, and individually run activities are not included.

Sum It Up

You’ve learned about some of the most important Marketing Cloud feature releases over the past year. Now it’s time to test your understanding of these topics and complete the exam to maintain your Marketing Cloud Administrator certification.

Resources

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