Slack Exams

The Evolution of Slack Administration

Slack launched publicly in 2014 and reached an estimated 42 million daily active users by 2023. In 2021, Salesforce acquired the company for $27.7 billion, cementing its position in the enterprise software market.

At a small startup, managing Slack requires minimal effort. Anyone can create channels, invite guests, and install integrations. But at the enterprise level, that organic growth creates security risks and data sprawl. Large organizations use Slack Enterprise Grid to connect dozens or hundreds of individual workspaces under a single corporate umbrella. Managing that scale requires strict governance, security controls, and architectural planning. This complexity created the need for formal administrative credentials.

Proving Your Governance Skills

The Slack Certified Admin exam tests your ability to design and govern a Slack deployment. The exam contains 60 multiple-choice questions, allows 90 minutes for completion, and requires a 65 percent score to pass. The registration fee is $150.

Slack recommends candidates have six to 12 months of real-world experience managing the platform, specifically within the admin console. The credential proves you can handle policy creation, user provisioning, and workspace architecture across all paid tiers, including Enterprise Grid.

What to Expect on the Exam

The test heavily emphasizes user lifecycle management and workspace administration. You must know how to evaluate a company's organizational structure and decide whether they need a single workspace with user groups or a multi-workspace Enterprise Grid connected by shared channels.

Security and compliance form another major technical pillar. You will see questions on configuring SAML-based single sign-on (SSO) and automating user creation through SCIM provisioning. The exam also covers how to implement Enterprise Key Management (EKM) and set up custom message retention policies to meet legal discovery requirements.

App administration requires careful attention. The Slack directory contains over 2,600 third-party applications. A certified admin must know how to configure app approval workflows. If you leave app installation open to all users, you risk exposing corporate data to unvetted external services. The exam tests your ability to lock down these permissions while still allowing teams to connect their necessary tools.

Where This Fits in Your Career

This certification targets IT operations professionals, SaaS administrators, and unified communications engineers. Following the Salesforce acquisition, many organizations now blend their CRM and collaboration administration teams. Holding this credential signals to employers that you understand how to manage Slack as a secure, compliant enterprise platform rather than a casual chat tool.

At the enterprise tier, Slack acts as the central nervous system for corporate data. A misconfigured Slack Connect invitation or a missing Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy can lead to a public data breach. Hiring managers look for the Slack Certified Admin credential to ensure the person holding the keys understands the difference between an open channel and a secure, federated workspace.