Part 2 Study Guide: Designing Integrations That Work

The study guide for Part 2 of the Integration Architect course: nine chapters, from Salesforce as an API provider to choosing and defending a design, and Checkpoint 2. Each chapter has its own study guide with the full checklist; this page puts them together by exam section.

About this study guide. It’s built only from this course’s own content and the published Salesforce exam guide’s list of objectives. It is never based on real exam questions, and it doesn’t claim to know what’s on the exam. If you’ve taken the exam, please don’t send me questions from it: the certification agreement forbids sharing them, and memorizing answers is the wrong way to become an architect anyway.

How to Use This Page

Part 2 is Design: the mechanisms behind each pattern, how they’re secured, how they fail and recover, and how you choose and defend a whole design. It’s the build half of the exam. Work through it in this order:

Finish each chapter, then tick off its own study guide.
Come back here and check each exam section below. If a line doesn’t feel solid, follow it back to its chapter guide.
Then try Checkpoint 2’s challenge, at the top of module 7 of chapter 16, without reading on: give every Steve Trucking arrow its mechanism, identity, failure plan and running cost, and add up the event deliveries for the whole org. If you can, Part 2 has come together.

By Exam Section

The weights come from the published exam guide. Check the current version before you book: Salesforce revises it.

Design Integration Solutions (28% of the exam)

Part 2 finishes most of the biggest section.

DES-4, the right Salesforce APIs: REST first, many in one call, GraphQL and the UI API; the Bulk API in and out; the event bus and the Pub/Sub API. Chapters 8, 10 and 11.
DES-5, security mechanisms: keys, certificates, the handshake and two-way TLS; protecting what crosses, the flows, External Client Apps and named credentials. Chapters 12 and 13.
DES-1, choosing the pattern: events, the reversed arrow, and orchestration or choreography. Chapters 11 and 15.
DES-3, trade-offs: no rollback across systems and the saga; pattern first, then mechanism; the forces, the trade-off card, combining mechanisms and their licences. Chapters 15 and 16.

Build Solution (23% of the exam)

All six objectives, in depth.

BLD-1, API design, Salesforce as provider and consumer: the doors in, your own Apex REST door, webhooks; callouts, their answers and their tests. Chapters 8 and 9.
BLD-2, outbound options: callouts in code, where a callout can run, call then write, and outbound messages. Chapter 9.
BLD-3, building to scale: the Bulk API, locking, count in and count out, the size of the truck. Chapter 10.
BLD-4, error handling: every arrow out and in, the log, retries without duplicates, the return receipt. Chapter 14.
BLD-5, security in and out: one integration, one identity; the flows; External Client Apps in, named credentials out; tokens and secrets. Chapters 12 and 13.
BLD-6, resilience to updates: three releases a year, API version retirement, release updates and the preview sandbox. Chapter 14.

Translate Needs to Integration Requirements (22% of the exam)

REQ-3, security requirements: what must be protected past the channel, what never travels, and the identity each integration needs. Chapter 13.

Evaluate the Current System Landscape (8% of the exam)

LAND-3, authentication and authorization needs: the three doors attackers used from 2024 to 2026, and one identity per integration, read from the landscape. Chapter 13.

Maintain Integration (8% of the exam)

All of it is in Part 2.

MNT-1, performance monitoring: what Salesforce shows you, and the slow tail. Chapter 14.
MNT-2, escalation and recovery: alerts on patterns and silence, an owner and a runbook, recovery in three sizes. Chapter 14.
MNT-3, reporting: who reads which report, the measures, targets per capability. Chapter 14.

Evaluate Business Needs (11% of the exam)

Done in Part 1.

The Threads Through Part 2

Nine chapters, and a few ideas that keep coming back. If you can explain these in your own words, Part 2 has done its job.

Every door is a door. Know which one each caller uses, its version, and who’s behind it. Chapter 8.
Call, then write. And a person waits only when the business needs the answer now. Chapters 9 and 15.
Count the records in one trip, then count in and count out. Chapter 10.
The arrow starts at whoever opens the connection, even when the news goes out. Chapter 11.
Count deliveries: events times outside subscribers, for the whole org. Chapters 11 and 16.
Trust is checked, not assumed, and every certificate has an owner and a date. Chapter 12.
One integration, one identity, and a stolen token is exactly as powerful as you designed it. Chapter 13.
Every arrow, out and in: where do I log, who do I tell, how do I retry; how will they retry and recover? Chapter 14.
There’s no rollback across systems. Every step has an undo, and every wait a deadline. Chapter 15.
Pattern first, then mechanism, and both options, fairly, before “in my professional opinion”. Chapter 16.
AI drafts, a person checks. The classes, the configuration, the record: check every line, and own the call.

Check Yourself

Each chapter’s study guide has its own Check Yourself questions. Work through them in order:

Then Checkpoint 2, Steve Trucking Under Load: try its challenge first, then read the walkthrough.

Where You Are on the Exam

Great work getting through Part 2. You can pick the right door in and the right way out, move data at scale, design with events, secure every arrow, plan for every failure, coordinate work across systems, and choose and defend a whole design. Together with Part 1, that’s every objective on the exam taught at least once. Next is Part 3: The Connected and Agentic Enterprise, where you widen the view: middleware, virtualization, Data 360, many orgs, agents, and reviewing someone else’s design, ending in the capstone.

Here’s the whole exam, and where each part of it is taught:

Exam section (weight)	Part 1	Part 2 (this part)	Part 3 (coming)
Design Integration Solutions (28%)	DES-1: the patterns; DES-2: the parts of a call and middleware; a start on DES-3	DES-4: the right Salesforce APIs; DES-5: security mechanisms; DES-1: events and coordination; DES-3: choosing and defending a design	DES-2: virtualization; DES-3: review and trade-offs; DES-4: the story of the APIs
Build Solution (23%)	BLD-2: the admin’s outbound options; a start on BLD-3 to BLD-6	BLD-1: Salesforce as provider and as client; BLD-2: callouts in code; BLD-3: bulk at scale; BLD-4 and BLD-6: errors and resilience; BLD-5: security in and out	BLD-2: the older options, in the story of integration
Translate Needs to Integration Requirements (22%)	REQ-1, REQ-2, REQ-4	REQ-3: security requirements	—
Evaluate Business Needs (11%)	BIZ-1 to BIZ-4: all of it	—	—
Evaluate the Current System Landscape (8%)	LAND-1, LAND-2	LAND-3: authentication and authorization needs	—
Maintain Integration (8%)	A start: failure time, and what you see when it breaks	MNT-1 to MNT-3: monitoring, recovery and reporting	—

After Part 2, every exam section has been taught. Part 3 goes deeper on the trade-offs and the wider enterprise, and its capstone puts all of it together on one scenario. It’s being written now. Until it’s out, work through both parts’ Check Yourself questions, then the official exam guide’s list, objective by objective.

Explore

Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect Exam Guide (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-01): the official list of objectives and their weights.
Salesforce Architects, Data Integration with Salesforce (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-07): Salesforce’s own decision guide.