Over the Christmas break, I decided to sit my Alteryx Designer Core exam and I am happy to announce that I passed! In this blog post, I will share some resources and tips I used to help pass the exam. Unlike the Tableau exam, the Alteryx exam is open book. You are free to use your notes, Google and Alteryx to your advantage to help answer the questions. I believe this makes more sense as you have these tools available to you in the real world.
Preparation Before The Exam
Exam Prep Guide
The Alteryx Designer Core Certification Exam Prep Guide provides information about the exam format and what to study for to pass the exam. The main points about the format of the exam are:
- PRICE: Free
- EXAM TYPE: Online, on-demand
- TIME ALLOTTED: 2 hours
- VERSION: The exam tests on the latest version of Designer
- ATTEMPTS: 1 attempt every 7 days
- QUESTIONS: 80
- QUESTION TYPES: 73 multiple choice questions, 7 practical application questions
- PASSING SCORE: 80
The guide also provides a detailed list of Alteryx tools being tested in the exam:
Input/Output
- Browse
- Input
- Output
- Text Input
Join
- Append Fields
- Find Replace
- Join
- Union
Preparation
- Data Cleansing
- Filter
- Formula
- Sample
- Select
- Select Records
- Sort
- Unique
Transform
- Cross Tab
- Summarize
- Transpose
Parse
- DateTime
- Text to Columns
Interactive Learning (Core Tools)
The Interactive Learning sections of the Interactive Core Cert Prep Guide provides a very good overview of the above tools. This is a valuable resource to help refresh your knowledge of the core tools in Alteryx. It may take a few hours to get through all the tools and quizzes at the end but it is worth it.
Click on each tool and select Interactive Learning to learn more about the tool.
Go through the lesson and take the the short quiz at the end to test your knowledge of the tool.
Weekly Challenges
Once you have completed the interactive learning, practice your Alteryx skills by attempting weekly challenges. There are currently over 300 challenges available with more added each week.
The following challenges are suggested in the previously mentioned Prep Guide:
- Women’s World Cup Wins
- Retail Therapy
- Counting Combinations
- Reformatting Transactional Data
- Unofficial Holidays
- Where There’s a Whale There’s a Way
- Billboard Top 100
- An Odd String to Date Conversion
- Secret Santa Assignments (BAH HUMBUG!)
- Tabulating Flu Data
- Elapsed Classroom Times
- Working Fore the Weekend
- Fuel Me Once
- Crane Leasing
- How Long Were the Lights On?
- Pumpkin Production
- Losing Daylight
If you get stuck on these challenges, the solutions are also available on the site.
Practice Exam (15 Questions)
Once you have a good understanding of how to use the core tools, it is time to try the practice exam.
Tips During The Exam
Text Inputs
There are many questions that require you to determine what the output of a specific workflow or formula is. If you are unsure of the answer these questions, use the Text Inputs tool to replicate the workflow or formula to check your answer.
Help Guides
Have help guides open to quickly reference and to help answer some questions. Here are some helpful help guides:
Have Downloads Folder and Alteryx Open
During the exam there will be practical questions which require you to download several datasets. Have your Downloads folder open and Alteryx open. When answering practical questions, drag the downloaded files directly into the Alteryx workflow to save time.
I hope these tips and resources have been helpful. Good luck with your Alteryx exam!
