Part 1 Study Guide: Understanding Integration

The study guide for Part 1 of the Integration Architect course: seven chapters, from thinking like an integration architect to the patterns, and Checkpoint 1. 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 1 is See: how systems talk, and how to read what’s needed. It covers the analysis half of the exam, the half people study least, and it ends with the patterns, the words the rest of the exam is written in. Work through it in this order:

1. Finish each chapter, then tick off its own study guide.
2. Come back here and check each exam section below. If a line doesn’t feel solid, follow it back to its chapter guide.
3. Then try the Checkpoint 1 challenge without looking: draw Steve Trucking’s landscape, size it with the zeros, and name a pattern for every arrow. If you can, Part 1 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)

The biggest section. Part 1 gives you the patterns and the parts of a call; Part 2 picks the APIs and the security mechanisms.

• DES-1, choosing the pattern: Salesforce’s six patterns by name, call-outs and call-ins, publish and subscribe, the selection tables (process, data or virtual; synchronous or asynchronous), and several patterns in one solution. Chapter 7.
• DES-2, the components of a solution: the REST request, the contract (OpenAPI, WSDL), versions, serialization, the formats, schemas and mapping; and middleware as a component, with what it gives you. Chapters 3 and 5.
• DES-3, trade-offs: started here: copy it or see it, one call each or one event for all, what happens when the design grows by one. Chapter 7.

Build Solution (23% of the exam)

Mostly Part 2. Part 1 gives you the admin’s outbound options and the habits behind error handling and security.

• BLD-2, outbound options: named and external credentials, External Services, Flow HTTP callouts, and platform events in Flow. Chapter 4.
• BLD-3, building to scale: started here: sizing every flow by transactions and by bytes, in the activity window, three years out. Chapter 6.
• A start on BLD-4, BLD-5 and BLD-6: the client owns the round trip and traces its errors; the gate in (External Client App and integration user) and the gate out; versions and change across a boundary. Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4.

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

Three of its four objectives are in Part 1. Security requirements (REQ-3) come in Part 2.

• REQ-1, systems and patterns from a landscape: drawing the landscape, the arrow that starts at the initiator, and the inventory of every arrow; then the pattern for every arrow, in Checkpoint 1. Chapters 5 and 7.
• REQ-2, constraints: capacity, the shared API allocation, the network, the windows and the people; then the mechanism’s own limits. Chapter 6.
• REQ-4, performance: Steve’s Number of Zeros: transactions, records and bytes per second, the activity window, the peaks and year three. Chapter 6.

Evaluate Business Needs (11% of the exam)

All of it is in Part 1.

• BIZ-1, functional and non-functional requirements, and the shape of the integration: who starts it, from where to where, how soon. Chapters 1 and 6.
• BIZ-2, classifying data: the company’s language, Salesforce’s Data Sensitivity Levels, and the exam’s three words. Chapter 6.
• BIZ-3, CRM success factors: it meets the requirements, and people use it. Chapter 6.
• BIZ-4, growth and regulation: 30% a year when there’s no number, growth through the child records, the obligations that come with the data, and residency. Chapter 6.

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

Two of its three objectives are in Part 1. Authentication and authorization needs (LAND-3) come in Part 2, with a start in chapter 5’s credential column.

• LAND-1, the current landscape: boxes as process boundaries, the product party, touch points, what an arrow means, browser or server. Chapters 1, 2 and 5.
• LAND-2, constraints and pain points: point to point and the arithmetic of tight interconnections, browser-level risks, and the constraints already on the landscape. Chapters 5 and 6.

Maintain Integration (8% of the exam)

Part 2. Part 1 starts the habit: normal time and failure time for every arrow, and what an admin sees when it breaks. Chapters 1 and 4.

The Threads Through Part 1

Seven chapters, and a few ideas that keep coming back. If you can explain these in your own words, Part 1 has done its job.

• Everything is knowable. Keep breaking it down; every arrow is a Lego building block. Chapter 1.
• The client is whoever dials, and the client owns the round trip. Chapter 2.
• The arrow starts at the system that opens the connection, and the label says what moves. Two conversations are two arrows. Chapters 1 and 5.
• The contract isn’t only for success, and a 200 isn’t data quality. Chapter 3.
• Everything that leaves goes through the same gate, and everything that comes in needs both the app and the user to say yes. Chapter 4.
• Draw it first. Two boxes can protect you, and the landscape becomes the inventory you run the estate from. Chapter 5.
• Do your math early. Transactions and bytes, separately, three years out. Chapter 6.
• Does anyone wait for the answer? You get a receipt, not the outcome. Chapter 7.
• Shape first, then pattern, then the mechanism. Chapters 6 and 7.
• Build for today, plan for tomorrow, plan for failure, and batch is your backup plan.
• AI drafts, a person checks. Give it the questions and the numbers, and let the tool be the judge.

Check Yourself

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

1. Think Like an Integration Architect
2. The Client and Server
3. APIs, Contracts and Data Across the Wire
4. The Admin’s Integration Toolkit
5. Understanding the System Landscape
6. Understanding Integration Requirements
7. Integration Patterns

Then the Checkpoint 1 challenge, and my walkthrough, What I Would Architect.

Where You Are on the Exam

Great work getting through Part 1. You can draw a landscape, draw the requirements out of the business, do the math, and name a pattern for every arrow. If you’re an admin, the first four chapters are already changing how you see the integrations you own. The exam draws on all three parts, though: next is Part 2: Designing Integrations That Work, where you pick the mechanism behind each pattern and check it against its limits, and then Part 3 takes you into the connected and agentic enterprise. The course page shows the path.

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

Exam section (weight)	Part 1 (this part)	Part 2 (coming)	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; 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 1, Evaluate Business Needs is done, and so are most of Translate Needs and the Current System Landscape: the analysis half of the exam. Part 2 is the build half: the APIs, bulk, events, security, reliability and orchestration, ending in Checkpoint 2. Part 3 adds middleware, virtualization, multiple orgs, agents and review, ending in the capstone. Both are being written now. Until they’re out, study those objectives from the exam guide (opens in a new tab) and Salesforce’s own documentation.

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, Integration Patterns (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-01): the six patterns and the selection tables.