Integration-Architect Exam Dumps - Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect (Plat-Arch-204)

To provide near real-time notifications to a client that already supports CometD, an Integration Architect should leverage the Streaming API. While Platform Events are a modern alternative, PushTopic Events are specifically designed to stream changes to Salesforce records based on a defined SOQL query.

A PushTopic event is triggered when a record is created, updated, deleted, or undeleted. By creating a PushTopic on the Opportunity object, NTO defines the criteria (fields and record states) that should trigger a message to the 1subscriber. The affiliate’s CometD client can then subscribe to this topic's channel (e.g., /topic/OpportunityUpdates) to receive the data payload instantly.

Option A is incorrect because "Accept CometD API Requests" is not a standard checkbox or configuration within a Connected App; authentication is handled via standard OAuth flows, but the streaming channel must still be defined. Option C describes a Polling mechanism, which is the architectural opposite of the requested "immediate notification" and would unnecessarily consume SOAP API limits while introducing latency. By using a PushTopic, NTO ensures a decoupled, event-driven architecture that scales effectively for notification-only use cases while respecting the technical capabilities of the affiliate’s existing CometD-compatible infrastructure.

When implementing Salesforce to achieve a 360-degree view of the customer, the platform replaces legacy "siloed" applications that perform core CRM functions. Based on the business goals provided, Salesforce will be the master for Marketing, Sales, and Service.

The systems to be retired are those whose functionality is natively subsumed by Salesforce:

Email Marketing: Replaced by Salesforce Marketing Cloud or native marketing features.

Sales Activity: Replaced by Sales Cloud, which masters lead management, opportunity tracking, and activity logging.

Case Management: Replaced by Service Cloud, which provides the tools for customer support agents to resolve inquiries.

Order Management and Quoting are specifically noted as "Enterprise capabilities" that the business wants to reuse. This means these systems will stay in the landscape and be integrated with Salesforce, rather than being retired. Therefore, any option containing "Order Management" (A and C) is incorrect. Retiring the marketing, sales activity, and service systems allows the organization to consolidate its customer data into a single platform, fulfilling the primary goal of the Salesforce transformation.

To provide "instant access" and a seamless experience for Community (Experience Cloud) users, the architect must choose an authentication and provisioning strategy that handles user creation on-the-fly. While both SAML and OpenID Connect (OIDC) are viable for SSO, OpenID Connect is the modern standard for consumer-facing "Social" or external identity integrations because it is built on OAuth 2.0.

The critical component for "self-service" is the Registration Handler. When an OpenID Connect Authentication Provider is configured in Salesforce, you must associate it with an Apex class that implements the Auth.RegistrationHandler interface. This handler is executed during the SSO flow if the user does not already exist. It provides the architect with full programmatic control to:

Match the incoming identity to an existing Contact or Account.

Create a new Contact record if one doesn't exist.

Provision a new User record with the correct Profile, Permission Sets, and Locale settings.

Link the User to the correct Account hierarchy, which is vital for Community security models.

Option A suggests Just-in-Time (JIT) provisioning, which is a declarative way to create users. However, JIT is often too rigid for Experience Cloud requirements, as it has limited ability to perform complex data lookups or handle the specific linking of Contacts to Accounts required for external users. Option C is technically mismatched in common Salesforce terminology; while SAML uses JIT, the Registration Handler is the native, specific mechanism designed to work with Authentication Providers (like OIDC). By using B, the company ensures that a subscriber logging in for the first time via the IAM system is instantly and accurately provisioned in Salesforce, eliminating the need for multiple accounts.

Managing a "big surge" of requests requires an architecture that is decoupled and scalable. The Remote Process Invocation—Fire and Forget pattern is specifically designed to handle high-concurrency spikes where the user does not need an immediate functional response from the target system.67

In this scenario, if NTO used Request and Reply (Option C), each user thread in Salesforce would remain open and "waiting" for the scheduling system to process room capacity. During a surge, this would quickly exhaust Salesforce's concurrent request limits, leading8 to 503 "Service Unavailable" errors for all community users.9

By using Fire and Forget, the following happens:10

Capture Intent: The co11mmunity user clicks "Register." Salesforce captures the registration and immediately publishes a message (e.g., via a Platform Event or Outbound Message).

Acknowledgment: Salesforce receives a simple technical acknowledgment that the message was received by the bus or middleware and then releases the user thread.

Asynchronous Processing: The middleware or event bus "buffers" the requests and delivers them to the scheduling system at a rate it can handle.

This pattern protects both Salesforce and the scheduling system from being overwhelmed. Batch Data Synchronization (Option B) would be too slow for users who expect a "Registered" status within a reasonable timeframe (near-real-time). Fire and Forget ensures the community remains performant and responsive during the critical launch window while maintaining the integrity of the registration data.

When recommending Platform Events, an architect must account for the metadata lifecycle and the permanence of administrative actions. Unlike standard or custom objects, which can often be recovered from the Recycle Bin for a limited time, Platform Event definitions are handled with stricter permanence. Once a Platform Event definition is deleted, it is permanently removed from the organization's metadata, and it cannot be restored. This deletion also immediately invalidates any associated triggers, subscriptions, and stored events in the bus.

Beyond metadata management, the architect must consider the Event Retention window. High-volume platform events are stored for 72 hours, allowing subscribers to use a Replay ID to recover missed messages. However, this durability is predicated on the definition existing; if the definition is deleted, the historical data in the bus becomes inaccessible. Option A refers to Real-Time Event Monitoring, which is a separate product feature used for security auditing rather than general integration. Option B describes a specific system event (AssetTokenEvent) used for IoT device authentication, which is a niche use case and not a general consideration for platform event architecture. Therefore, understanding the permanent nature of metadata deletion is a fundamental "Maintenance" and "Governance" consideration that the architect must highlight to ensure the stability of the enterprise's event-driven landscape.

In this architectural scenario, the Integration Architect must navigate two critical technical "bottlenecks": the 9-second API Gateway timeout and the 90-second backend processing time. Since the backend takes significantly longer than the gateway allows for a synchronous connection, a standard Request-Reply pattern will fail. Furthermore, having 3,000 concurrent agents perform synchronous callouts would risk hitting Salesforce's concurrent long-running request limits.

The most scalable and user-friendly solution is to implement an Asynchronous Request-Reply pattern using Platform Events and the empAPI.

When an agent clicks "Check Eligibility," Salesforce sends an initial asynchronous request to the ESB (MuleSoft). The ESB immediately acknowledges receipt with a 202 Accepted status, freeing up the Salesforce UI thread and avoiding the API Gateway’s 9-second timeout. Once the backend eligibility system completes its 90-second process, MuleSoft acts as a client to Salesforce, performing a Remote Call-In to publish a specific Platform Event containing the result and the original Request ID.

On the frontend, the Lightning UI uses the empAPI (Enterprise Messaging Platform API) to subscribe to the streaming channel for that Platform Event. Because the empAPI uses CometD technology to maintain a single long-lived connection, it can efficiently push the response to the agent's screen the moment it arrives, without requiring the agent to manually refresh or click a "Check Update" button (as suggested in Option B). This provides a "real-time" feel despite the long backend latency.

Option A is non-viable because synchronous polling would exacerbate the load on the API Gateway and likely lead to governance limit issues within Salesforce. By using Platform Events and empAPI, the architect ensures the solution remains within Salesforce's execution limits while providing a seamless, automated experience for a high-volume call center environment.

The CIO's concern regarding "viability" and "scaling" is rooted in the risks associated with tightly coupled, point-to-point integrations. Using @future methods for direct callouts creates a "spaghetti" architecture where Salesforce must manage the specific endpoints, authentication, and error logic for every external system.

The architect should recommend implementing an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). An ESB acts as a centralized middleware layer that provides mediation, routing, and orchestration. By moving the integration logic to an ESB, Salesforce only needs to send a single message to the bus. The ESB then takes responsibility for delivering that data to multiple business units and external systems. This decouples Salesforce from the downstream systems; if a target system changes its API or is replaced, only the ESB configuration needs to be updated, not the Salesforce Apex code.

While External Services (Option A) provide a low-code way to call APIs, they still represent point-to-point connections and do not solve the broader orchestration and scaling challenges. ETL tools (Option C) are designed for bulk data movement and would not satisfy the need for the near real-time updates that the existing callout logic likely supports. An ESB provides the "quality of service" features—such as guaranteed delivery, retries, and protocol transformation—that are necessary for a growing enterprise to maintain a stable and scalable integration landscape.

When designing a solution to view large volumes of archived data (over 20 million records) without physically storing them back in Salesforce, a Data Virtualization pattern is the architecturally preferred approach. This pattern allows users to view and interact with external data in real-time without the overhead of data replication, which would otherwise consume significant storage and impact platform performance.

To maximize declarative configuration, the Salesforce Platform Integration Architect should recommend Salesforce Connect. Salesforce Connect allows for the creation of External Objects, which behave much like standard objects but point to data residing outside of Salesforce. This is achieved by having the middleware (ESB) expose the Historical Data store via an OData (Open Data Protocol) endpoint. Once configured, call center agents can view historical case items directly on the Case record page using standard related lists or lookups, all configured through the point-and-click interface rather than custom code.

The provided landscape diagram illustrates a clear path from Salesforce through middleware to the Historical Data Store. Option A leverages this by using the ESB to bridge the protocol gap. Because the data store is already "fine-tuned to be performant with search queries," Salesforce Connect can efficiently query only the specific historical records needed for the current case view.

In contrast, Option B requires a "Request and Reply" pattern using Apex callouts and custom Lightning components. While functional, this is a code-heavy approach that increases technical debt and does not meet the "maximize declarative configuration" requirement. Option C, using "Fire and Forget" with Platform Events, is unsuitable for a synchronous "view data" request; Platform Events are asynchronous and would require a complex, custom-built UI to "wait" for and display the response. Therefore, the combination of OData and Salesforce Connect provides the most seamless, scalable, and low-maintenance solution for call center agents.