Announcing the Alteryx Product Certification Program!

[PatrickN]

------------Edited by a moderator 8/2/2018------------

UPDATE: The certification program has undergone changes since this blog was published. Please visit the Certification Program page for the most up to date information. Thank you!

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Certification Program Overview

In response to overwhelming customer demand, we are pleased to announce the launch of the Alteryx Certification Program.

The Alteryx Certification Program will contain a series of exams that allow you to:

• demonstrate your proficiency across Alteryx products and versions,
• to communicate your expertise in a standardized manner, and
• promote your personal brand in the global Alteryx community and marketplace.

Upon certification, you will be assigned the respective Alteryx Community badge, and will receive a PDF certificate. Personally, I'd throw a party!!

Certification Levels

The Alteryx Certification Program will consist of the following certification levels, and will change to reflect the Alteryx platform:

Designer Core (available now) – demonstrated proficiency with the fundamentals of Alteryx Designer and the favorites tools. Exam topics include: Connecting to Data, Data Types, Basic Preparation, Basic Blending, Descriptive Analysis, Help, Basic Macros & Analytic Apps, Output Data.

Designer Advanced (available Q1 2018) – advanced proficiency with Alteryx Designer. Exam topics include: Advanced Questions from Designer Core, plus Batch Macros, Data Investigation, Advanced Parsing, Advanced Analytics Apps, Spatial Analysis, Reporting, Visualization Integration, Gallery.

• Prerequisite – Designer Core

Designer Expert (available Q2 2018) – demonstrated proficiency with the full-suite of Alteryx Designer capabilities, spatial analytics and the ability to connect and work with all applicable data sources. Exam topics include: More Complex Designer Core & Advanced topics, In-DB, Iterative Macros, Predictive Models, Connectors, Web Scraping, Download Tool, Calgary Tools, etc.

• Prerequisite – Designer Advanced

NOTE: Certification levels are subject to change.

Resources Available for Exam Preparation

The following resources are available when learning Alteryx:

• Training: Getting Started
• Self-Paced Training
• Alteryx Academy
• Community Live Training
• Classroom Training
• Alteryx One Tool Examples
• Alteryx Tool Mastery Series
• Alteryx Designer Help
• Alteryx Product Documentation
• Alteryx Designer Canvas Navigation
• Alteryx Community
• Alteryx Server Help
• Alteryx Connect Help

Exams: What you need to know!

Schedule

• Exams are offered monthly — there are twelve exams per calendar year
• Each exam window begins on the first of each calendar month and closes at the end of the last day of the calendar month
• Participants may take the exam any time during the exam window

Registration

• Registration for exams is offered at www.alteryx.com/certification
• You must have an Alteryx Community account to register for an exam
• Upon registration, you will be registered for the next exam window. For example, if registering during September, you will be registered for the October exam.
• Once registered, you will have three attempts to pass an exam during the exam window

Cost

• There is no cost for the Designer Core certification exam.
• At this time, pricing has not been determined for subsequent exams.

Taking the Exam

• On the first day of the exam window (the 1^st of each month) – all registrants will receive an email with the exam URL and a personalized access code.
• The exam is offered online
• There is a two-hour time limit per exam
• Once an exam is started, it is recorded as one attempt
• It is not possible to stop an exam in-progress, and restart later
• You may use any of the preparation resources during the exam
• All questions are multiple choice
• Sample question:

Results

• Upon completion, you will receive your score immediately

• A score of 80% or above is considered ‘passing'
• If a passing score is not obtained after three attempts, you must register for a subsequent exam
• Answers are not provided for any exam and/or question
• After the exam window closes, your Alteryx Community account will be updated with the respective certification badge, and you will receive a PDF certificate

Maintaining Certification

• From the date of certification, or
• From the date of passing an incremental exam
• Certifications are valid for two years 
• Incremental exams will be offered for each major release of Alteryx
• To maintain your certification, a passing score must be obtained on incremental exams
• If your certification lapses, you must take the full certification exam to obtain your certification

We're excited about the certification program. If you have any questions or comments, please email: certification@alteryx.com

[PatrickN]

Currently, Community badges are created on a weekly basis, so you should have yours soon!


Patrick Nussbaumer | Director, Technical Enablement
Direct: 949.565.1722 | Mobile: 858.386.8924
Email: pnussbaumer@alteryx.com | www.alteryx.com<>

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[chris_love]

I passed! What a great exam, nice and taxing but well within the reach of anyone competent with designer.  Thanks Patrick and team for putting this together.

[MarqueeCrew]

Chris,

Not only did you beat my %, but you did it faster!  My hat is off to you again.

Cheers,

Mark

[Tharashasank]

Can you please let us know what kind of questions we will face in the exam.

Thanks,

DTS

[chris_love]

Everything is either around general Alteryx, settings etc, or around data prep. You'll be expected to read workflows to know what they might do and know the tools to use for some data prep use cases.

Everything is open book - so you can check in Alteryx / help. 2 hour time limit is plenty of time too.

[SeanAdams]

 AAArgh - now I wish I'd taken a screenshot.

I think I came out with 86 or 87% but took much longer than you both ( @chris_love; @MarqueeCrew)

Looking forward to the next one @PatrickN 

[trevor_filipiak]

Hi all,

Can anyone speak about how this certification compares/contrasts with the Alteryx Certified Professional certification? 

That exam covered designer, server, API, and the Alteryx community in general. Is this new product certification a subset of Alteryx Certified Professional? If so, is it part of a pathway?

[chris_love]

My understanding @trevor_filipiak is that the Alteryx Certified Professional would still exist for partners, though I guess it's likely in the long run that it will be phased out and replaced once all aspects of this new certification are complete.

This new certification is open for customers and partners alike and covers a subset of the ACP exam. It doesn't have a practical element and only focuses on data prep and the "core" elements of the application, i.e. not spatial / predictive or server. Those will be covered by future certifications.

Also the new certification platform is very modern, is timed and much slicker than the old platform.

Obviously I'm assuming / guessing some of this so perhaps @PatrickN will confirm.

[trevor_filipiak]

@chris_love Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

@PatrickN I would be very interested in some additional clarification about how ACP fits into the overall roadmap and vision given the new product certifications above. Thanks!

[simon]

This is great and thanks for letting us know. Once completed, can you post certificate to LinkedIn like Udacity Nanodegrees?

/Simon

[jdunkerley79]

93.9% but way slower than @chris_love and @MarqueeCrew

As @SeanAdams says looking forward to the next one...

[PatrickN]

Hi @trevor_filipiak, @chris_love is correct.  The ACP, or Alteryx Certified Professional exam, is only for partners and will eventually be replaced by the product certification exams.  We are running both in parallel while we develop the product certification exams.

The goal will be to phase out the ACP exam during 2018.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

-Patrick

[PatrickN]

Hi @simon - yes, if you would like to, you may post your PDF certificate on LinkedIn.

[PatrickN]

Hi @Tharashasank - the exam consists of the following question types:

• Multiple Choice
  • Select 1 answer
  • Select 1 or more answers
• True/False
• Matching Questions (match options on the left with options on the right)

As far as the types of questions, you may find questions:

• That show input and output data and ask you to select the tool(s) used to generate the output
• That show a tool and a desired output and ask you which configuration of the tool would generate the output
• That show a business problem and ask you to select a workflow that could be used to accomplish the task

Here is an example problem:

[Garrett]

Great, comprehensive exam on fundamental Alteryx Designer skills!

Didn't get that perfect score, but I did manage to trump some ACEs. :)

[Tharashasank]

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3970  Thanks for sharing the information.

[chris_love]

Boom! @Garrett hats off to ya, fast and accurate. 

[JoeS]

I think these are a great idea and thoroughly enjoyed taking the test.

My results didn't quite top @Garrett for accuracy, so the timing says I must have rushed it a little!

Top work @PatrickN and the team

[syedjawadhassan]

From where we can download the software to practice and how much is its validity. Please guide

[PatrickN]

@syedjawadhassan - You may download a trial version of the software that is valid for 14 days at www.Alteryx.com.   It is highly recommended that you have a valid license when taking the exam.

[Claje]

I took a bit more time than pretty much everyone else who has posted so far, but I'm pretty happy with my score :)

[LilianH]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I had fun taking this exam, especially because I learned a couple tricks that I haven't used before! 

[SeanAdams]

You and your team have got to be proud of the success so-far @PatrickN - 56 people already have the certification badge, and given that the exam only opened 6 days ago, that's very impressive!

Onward and upward!

[TaraM]

What a great way to spend my Saturday morning. Thank goodness I passed! I am disappointed in my time and score, however, I did learn something I didn't know before, so I'd say that was a success!

I took my sweet 'ole time as I was trying to get 100%, but you can see how well that went for me! Whatevs a pass is a pass.

[jarrod]

A few minutes slower than @Garrett, but same score. Still didn't get the 97.2% that @Claje obtained... 

Will we ever get to see what questions we missed?

[SteveM]

Those times and scores are quite intimidating to novices. Is there anyone who is not an employee or partner who can provide some insight for new users as to how difficult the exam is? I'd like to register in November and take during December.

[SydneyF]

Hi @SteveM!

I am a new employee at Alteryx and I just passed the exam today. The times and scores of these ACE's are definitely intimidating as a new user (I have been using Alteryx since my start date, about 7 weeks ago), but the exam is definitely manageable if you take your time and use your resources.

The exam is open book, so during the exam I had an instance of Alteryx open as well as a web browser with Community. Whenever I came to a question I wasn't 100% confident on, I would look it up (either on Community or though the help documentation) or build out a workflow in Alteryx. The input data in the questions are easy to duplicate with the text input tool. You also have the ability to go back and look over your questions, so during the exam I kept a running list of questions I wanted to look over again once I had made it through. 

Although my time was definitely slower than a lot of these Alteryx rockstars, I was able to comfortably pass. I think as long as you don't try to rush, you'll find the exam totally doable.

Good Luck!!

[Imagine]

OK... Here are progressive scores from a mere mortal. I had two strikes on me before passing!

I found this open book exam to be a great way to study and get better. I learned the skills I needed to pass by literally searching the materials in this community (Thank you all!) and trying things out in Alteryx. 

[zionarun]

Just cleared Alteryx Designer core Exam

Feedback:

Congratulations - you passed the Alteryx Designer Core certification exam!  You will be receiving a PDF certificate via email, as well as a new badge on the Alteryx Community.

Thank you for your participation in the Alteryx Certification program.

Any idea when badge will arrive and whether I can use in our resume

[harsha384]

I had fun participating in the exam. Few new things to learn. Although time and score wasn't that competitive.

[Hollingsworth]

Was gunning for perfect so went back and reviewed all. I changed a few so I don't know if that helped or hurt. I learned a few things so time was well spent.

[michele]

Slightly slower than others, but quite accurate ;) I am looking forward the Expert/Advanced/Server exams! 

[NickC]

Finally got round to completing the the Alteryx Certification!

Learnt a thing or 2 in the process as well :)

[JosephAdjei]

Definitely, learned a lot from this exam. I'll recommend it to everyone.

[JoeM]

This week, we went live with our certification page! Check it out!

[rmjose]

Hi,

How long does it take to receive the pdf certificate via email?

Thanks,

Rose Jose

[PatrickN]

Hi @rmjose - certificates will be sent out no later than the first of the following month, but we're working towards getting them out sooner as we build out the program.  We appreciate your patience.

[rmjose]

@PatrickN Thank you! 

[Praj]

Hi @PatrickN,

Do we get any registration confirmation? I just registered for the exam but never got any confirmation on my email!

[PatrickN]

Hi @Praj - not at this time.  We will be adding a confirmation email in the near future.  I can confirm that you are registered.

[Praj]

@PatrickN, thanks for letting me know!

[sekarsdream]

Hello ,

I have passed my exams last week, yet to receive the pdf certification can you please tell me normally by when i wold be getting the certification?

Regards

~Rajasekar

[pav_ros]

Hello,

I'm a bit puzzled about exam registratorn. My Community account registered with my personal email, but exam registration form wants me to use my work one.

So, how does it work to update my Community account with exam results in this case and how PDF version reflects registration info?

[PatrickN]

Hi @sekarsdream - certificates and badges will be distributed on the 1st of December.  For future exams, certificates and badges are distributed on the first day of the month following the exam.

[PatrickN]

Hi @pav_ros - the email address used during the registration process is used to send the exam URL on the first of the month.  Upon starting the exam, you will be asked for your community ID (yours is pav_ros).  We update community badges using the community ID.  Please let us know if you have any other questions.

[tonyppham]

Hello @PatrickN, 

Can you elaborate (or point to a webpage) more on the topics covered within the Designer Core exam? The blog mentions the following topics but how deep into those topics should I study to prep for the exam? Is there a practice exam or a more comprehensive exam prep guide that I can look into? I just want to be sure that my colleagues and I do not go into the Core or Advanced (when available) exams with a false sense of preparedness. 

1. Connecting to Data
2. Data Types
3. Basic Preparation
4. Basic Blending
5. Descriptive Analysis
6. Help
7. Basic Macros & Analytic Apps
8. Output Data.

Thanks!

Tony

[JoeM]

@tonyppham - check out our certification home page for more detailed info!

 Check it out! 

There we have all the tools that go into these categories, some short videos, and a sample exam.

[borodri]

Patrick,

I'm new to the community and just signed up for the certification, and like others, I didn't get a confirmation email.

I guess all I have to do is go back to the Certification page beginning of next month and see if I can access the exam, right?

[PatrickN]

Hi @borodri - you will receive an email with your exam link at the start of the next exam window.  In this case, it will be January 2nd.

[Ozzy_Campos]

Thank you for putting these certifications together, I passed the designer core and look forward to the challenge of the advanced.  The designer was a little more challenging than I expected, and perhaps I am missing a few things, but I found there to be big gaps in between the interactive lessons, tool mastery series and challenges.  The interactive lessons were good information but pretty basic, the mastery series had some interesting components, and the challenges are more geared towards "figuring it out", as opposed to exam questions where you have a little over a minute to answer each one.  Is it possible to put together a comprehensive document that gives us a little more info on what to focus on?  Maybe mimic an established exam, where they have a "Body of Knowledge" that you're expected to master...Still a lot of work for the exam taker and tests the knowledge,   

And I think a good approach would be to have one or two comprehensive datasets that are downloaded with the exam, so the test taker still has to be very comfortable with the tools and concepts, but can test and fine tune the approach quickly rather then having to start over with a new piece of data for each question.  

Anyways, just some suggestions after taking the first certification.