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As any Core-Certified Alteryx enthusiast, I wanted to take my superhero status to the next level – crack the Advanced certification exam.
Mastering the Tools
The starting point for me was the Exam prep guide, which gave me more insight on the format and the topics covered. With the help of the Tool Mastery series and example workflows in Designer, I started unraveling each tool. I started to realize how each of them could be super helpful for my use cases at work. I even ended up thinking about new use cases and where I could add value to my organization. Coming from my experience of automating use cases within the financial services industry and not having any logistics use cases to work with, I was sure that spatial analytics couldn’t play much of a role. Also, with my basic understanding, I felt the tools were very similar to each other and couldn’t get my head around differentiating one from the other... (P.S. It didn’t take much effort to be honest!)
How many of you have thought you could get away with passing the advanced certification while skipping the spatial tools category? Trust me, I was one of them! I started mastering all other tools just so that I could completely skip spatial and score enough to achieve the passing score.
After couple of failed attempts and the number of questions I had to skip, I made up my mind to get my cold feet out there and commit some time to get comfortable with the spatial tools. I started taking notes, one by one, and at one point, I was overloaded with information!
Advanced Certification Prep
While looking for any easy way out, I came across one of the prep materials shared by @JoeM, the Advanced Certification Prep Part 1, which shifted my entire thought process! I realized that it is actually about knowing which tool(s) to use when approaching a problem statement, by finding the right combination of available tools. I started spending more time to go through solved use cases and trying to understand why one tool was preferred over another.
Best tip that worked for me: Adding Browse tools to already-solved examples and see the geographical area literally changing at each step. This was the woohoo moment that gave me insight on just how magical these tools on the dark green tool palette are.
Weekly Challenges
The next step for me was to go to the Weekly Challenges board and hunt down spatial ones. Even though I initially peeked into a few spoilers, I started getting more comfortable as I kept solving.
Having said that, it still took a few attempts to get my certification across the line. As it is, I believe Alteryx certification exams are all about getting you up to speed and help you master the tools. From my personal experience, it is during the exams that I have learnt a lot. So, don’t get discouraged with the number of failed attempts – it is part of the learning journey.
So now that you have a path laid out, why wait? Register for the certification right away!
