Alteryx Core Certification can seem overwhelming at first if you don't prioritize your learning path. I recently studied for and passed the Core Certification exam in just a few short weeks and wanted to share some tips that worked well for me. If you are new to using Designer or are looking to take the exam soon, consider using this guide as a reference for your studies. I also encourage other Core Certified members to share their own experiences because what worked for me may not necessarily work for everyone else.
First, a little background about myself: I recently graduated in 2020 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I currently work full-time as a project engineer at an engineering service company. To be a bit more concise, I did not have a whole lot of experience with data as a baseline. Before learning Alteryx, I took several online courses in Python and SQL. I also have some C++ experience from my studies prior to graduating. These are by no means “prerequisites” for the Alteryx Core Certification. However, my exposure to at least some of the fundamentals of data processing and manipulation while learning SQL helped me learn some of the Alteryx content more easily.
Now, without further ado - here is my Core Certification Guide.
- Getting Started Leaning Path (General)
- Read all available links
- Engage with all of the interactive learnings (even if you think you already know it)
- Read all of the Tool Mastery guides
- Try all of the "Try It" sections
- When trying new tools, refrain from viewing the solutions should you get stuck. Instead, try re-watching the interactive learnings or reading the tool masteries. Most of the time, you will be able to come up with a solution. Only use the solutions for checking your work at the very end!
- Your solution (process map) will not always look the same as the posted solutions. Do not fret, there are many ways to get to the same right answer! You just need to make sure your output is the same as the solution output.
- Take on the Capstone Project
- The same tip/note above applies to the capstone project. There are a lot of questions you may have that are already answered by members in the Alteryx community. You can use Google to locate those useful threads. If you cannot find your question, feel free to start a new thread 😉. Here is the link to the Alteryx Designer Forum.
- Core Certification Exam Prep Guide (Focus on Page 4-7)
- Weekly Challenges (Seriously, do these, they help)
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Challenge #2 - Preparing Delimited Data
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Challenge #35 - Data Cleansing Practice
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Challenge #38 - Data Blending for Batch Output
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Challenge #49 - Reformatting Transactional Data
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Challenge #58 - An Odd String to Date Conversion
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Challenge #68 - Elapsed Classroom Times
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Challenge #88 - Counting Combinations
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Challenge #164 - Retail Therapy
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Challenge #169 - Women’s World Cup Wins
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Challenge #189 - Billboard Top 100
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Challenge #193 - Unofficial Holidays
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Challenge #222 - Where There’s a Whale There’s a Way
- And check out the full index for even more
- Core Cert Practice Test (Take it)
- Core Certification Exam Prep Guide (Focus on Page 9-10)
- If you have been following this guide then you will already have used all of the resources on page 10 with the exception of the “Core Prep Video Series.” I felt like I already had a strong understanding of the content at this point so I did not use parts 1-3 of this resource. Please feel free to watch parts 1-3 at your own discretion. I encourage everyone to watch part 4 as I found a lot of useful information there.
- By this step, you should have all of the necessary knowledge to perform well on the Core Certification Exam!
Thank you for taking the time to read my guide - I found it to be a great method for progressing in my initial knowledge of Alteryx Designer. Hopefully, you found some useful insights and a framework you can apply to your studies as well. Remember, these are the things that worked for me. Be creative and deviate from the guide as you need, we don't all learn in the same way! Should you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave a comment below. Now go take that exam, and good luck
