The Alteryx Certification Exams are a great challenge when learning how to use Alteryx Designer. Being quite new to Alteryx, I found them helpful to focus on what tools to learn. After having recently passed the Alteryx Advanced Certification I thought I would share a guide of what resources I used in case it may help anyone else taking the exam.
Alteryx Advanced Prep Guide
A good place to start is with the Advanced Prep Guide. It goes through the exam format and topics covered in the exam which I will briefly go through. There are also a few practice questions at the end which are helpful for getting a feel of what the questions will be like.
Exam Format
The exam consists of 40 multiple choice questions worth 1 point and then 4 practical application questions at the end worth 10 points each. For the practical questions a data set is provided which you will use to find the answer to a multiple choice question.
There is two hours to complete the exam and 80% is needed to pass.The timing is very important, I would recommend skipping any 1 point questions you cannot answer quickly, writing down the question number and going back to it after the practical questions at the end.
Exam Topics
The main topics covering in the exam are as follows, with the specific tools on the exam below:
- Advanced Preparation
- Advanced Joins and Parsing
- Spatial Analytics
- Reporting
- Macros
- Applications
- Alteryx Gallery
I found the most important things I brushed up on before the exam to be advanced parsing with RegEx, understanding how the spatial tools worked, the options of the various reporting tools and how each of the 3 main types of macros worked.
Resources for Learning
- Interactive Lessons or Live Training are a good place to start if unfamiliar with any of the tools on the exam.
- There are some great workflows that can help understand how many of the tools come together under Help >> Sample Workflows. For example ‘Find all customers within 30 miles of a store’ for understanding spatial tools and ‘Create a report layout’ to see how reporting tools are used together.
- Finally of course the Weekly Challenges are great for practice if you are a hands on learner like me!
Alteryx Advanced Certification Prep Videos
Alteryx has a six part Advanced Certification Prep video. They cover the main topics and some of the most common tools that will come up in the exam. I found the prep videos very helpful, especially the practice exam questions in the videos. The final video goes more in depth into the exam format and example questions.
- Part I – Spatial Analytics in Alteryx
- Part II – Building Macros
- Part III – Building Apps
- Part IV – Reporting/Publication
- Part V – Advanced Prep/Parsing Concepts and Tools
- Part VI – Recap and Exam Day Overview
Final Thoughts
- Pay attention to time, the practical questions took me much longer than I thought. Trying to be quick for the 1 point questions can really help.
- It’s an open book exam, don’t forget you can google or search the help at any time.
- Don’t be afraid to give it a go! The exam is free and can be retaken after 7 days. Even if you fail, you will be given a score on how you did on each topic which can help to know what areas to work on.
Please feel free to reach out if this guide helped at all and good luck!
