Achievement unlocked! @alteryx Designer Core certified #AYXAdvocacyAmplified

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woot woot!
Passed the Alteryx Designer Core certification earlier last month, and I thought I would share my experience:

  1. Logistics
    • Sign-up
  2. Preparation
    • Official sources: eLearning resources
    • Non-official sources: Other blog posts
  3. Content of certification
    • During the exam
    • Relevance to role
  4. Next steps

Logistics

Sign-up was effortless! Your first step is to register for the Alteryx Community by creating a community profile. I did all the usual steps: introduced myself on the forum and browsed a few topics.

When it's time to do the actual exam, you just need to navigate to the Certification page and launch the web-based exam.

Note that it's an open book exam: You may use Alteryx, the Community, and the web.

The passing mark is 80% and you can re-take it after one elapsed week should you be unsuccessful in your attempt.


Preparation

You don't need any fancy external courses, or other eLearning programs, as Alteryx's own materials are brilliant. If your focus is certification (which I can't recommend enough), then you ought to complete all of the Interactive Lessons that are categorised "Core".

I printed out the Certification Prep guide and ticked off all fo the examinable curriculum as I gained mastery in it.

At the back of the prep guide they have four "Weekly Challenges" which I highly recommend you take the time to solve once you've done all of the interactive lessons. They are (in numerical order) challenges 2 "Challenge #2: Preparing Delimited Data", 35 "Data Cleansing Practice", 38 "Data Blending for Batch Output" and 63 "Data Preparation Using Pivot Tools".

You should also complete the sample questions in the back of the prep guide, as well as the ones online in their practice test.

For a handful of the main tools: Input Data, Join, Union, Cross-tab, Summarise and Pivot, you should browse the in-app Example pages before the exam and have the app itself open for the exam.

For non-official sources, I started out with reading Louise's (@FeedMeData_) "How to Prepare for your Alteryx Designer Core Exam".

It's also a 2-hour online exam! So have your bio-break beforehand (don't do what I did and take a break in the middle LOL). Once you get to the end of the 2 hours you may have time to review some of your earlier answers.

Content of certification

A few of the questions from the guide were in my actual exam. And some of the questions that came up were "repeats" - they were asking a similar concept, but from a different angle. Remember, it's an open book exam! So have the documentation open and look up answers when you're not sure what the answer is.

I view the content of this level to be very relevant to my current role, and the certification tests the ability to perform the most important day-to-day tasks in Alteryx.

Next steps

Is the next level of certification, the Advanced Certification. I've started my own prep for the Advanced level which adds #spatial analysis, reporting, the #rlang #rstats #statistical data investigation tools, and my personal favourite #regex regulation expressions.

Tweet me at @izamryan to let me know how your own Alteryx journey is progressing!


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