In the process of the Data School, the second Alteryx Certification is not just scheduled for us in DSDE2 yet, but I decided to try to pass it a bit earlier since I am feeling quite comfortable using Alteryx. I want to share a few thoughts about the exam and about the differences to the previous Alteryx Core Exam. If you want to read up on the Core Exam, I highly recommend my colleagues Blogpost Tackling the Alteryx Core Certification.
The practical exercises in the advanced exam are quite tough. The four practical exercises contribute for 50% of the points and you have about 15-20 min for each one. They can easily be completed within 5-10 min because they don’t require long workflows. The main challenge within these tasks is to find a working approach to the problems. Once you got this figured out, the rest is pretty much the same as in the core exam, just with some additional tools. Therefore, the time is less of an issue. I finished the exam 15 minutes earlier and could spend this time going over my answers to the theoretical part again.
The Advanced Exam has its focus on the topics of Spatial Analysis, Macros, Applications, Predictive Analysis, Data Parsing and Reporting.
- Spatial Tools in Alteryx are quite fun, because they allow you to follow the progress visually on a map. This is especially great for finding errors within your workflow. Analyzing any spatial data is quickly done using these tools. The only problem I have had with it, is that many different tools are able to do the same task, which can get quite confusing. The use cases for the particular tools aren’t separated as well as, for example, in the Preparation Palette – some exam questions were targeting just that.
- Macros and Apps are also an important topic. The theoretical questions here are mostly build around the different interface tools. As they are quite easy to lookup these are some safe points. For me the practical macro exercise was quite hard, as I had to write a complicated batch macro which took me a bit longer than planned, but since the time wasn’t my problem, that was ok.
- While I really liked digging into the Spatial Tools and Macros, the Reporting Tools in Alteryx aren’t exactly what is great about the program. Especially when you are used to working with Tableau, which has much more functions and is user friendlier, working with the Reporting Tools can be quite frustrating. Getting to know where you can tick different checkboxes in order to change the output of the Reporting Tools isn’t the most fun part, but I guess it has to be learned – at least to some degree.
- The Predictive Analysis Tools go deep into the field of statistics, this can be helpful if you want to do some statistical analysis. These Tools can get complicated, but they are also only briefly touched within the exam.
- And the last important part of the Tools to be mentioned here are the Parsing Tools. Here Regular Expressions are briefly touched, but the exam doesn’t go too deep into the understanding of regex. With the knowledge of the basic regex Syntax this part is quite easy to pass.
If you fail one practical exercise you need to get at least 34 of the 40 theoretical questions correct. So, I highly recommend getting to know every single tool that is part of the exam very well. Then it doesn’t hurt too much if you can’t complete one of the four practical questions.
But as with the core exam, you should just try it out and see how you perform. It’s free and you can redo it after just one week. So, failing at the first try doesn’t hurt too much and you can learn quite a lot about the exam and in which areas you still need to improve.
