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Path to Pipelines Certification Part III: A “Pipelines-centric” Empower Recap

By Esther LaVielle posted 05-18-2022 14:17

  

 
Is it mid-May already? 2022 is flying by and I’m currently digesting all the notes I took at my very first Empower conference at Quickbase. One of the best things about attending virtual conferences is that attendees can decide how they spend their time without distractions. The goal I set for myself was to go to as many Pipelines sessions as I could to pick up tips that will help with passing the Pipelines certification exam. Since I decided that I will take the exam at the end of June, this was my chance to connect with the exam authors, listen to Pipelines product managers, learn from other session attendees, and keenly observe how our expert trainers approach educating users on setting up and troubleshooting Pipelines.

Here's how I made my experience at Empower 2022
Pipelines-focused

Day 1 Monday, May 10th at 10:45 AM EST/7:45 AM PST: Keynote Address

Started out my day attending the keynote by CEO, Ed Jennings. He dropped hints of new features and enhancements to Pipelines that addressed integration trends and requirements from existing customers. I immediately checked the agenda and added Pipelines sessions to my personal schedule.

 

Day 1 Monday May 10th at 12:pm EST/9:30 AM PST: Success Strategies for Pipeline Builder Certification

This hour-long Pipelines certification review session, hosted by Jamie Kantor and Karyn Layher, truly reinforced the why for me. Going through the university courses and exercises is quite daunting for those without a software coding background. Emphasizing the “why” has me motivated to keep pressing on with my practice schedule. Getting Pipelines certified is a great way to prove your integration and automations skills despite not having a coding background while becoming a subject matter expert within your organization. With the earned digital certificate, you can showcase it on your LinkedIn profile and resume to excel your career aspirations. Jamie and Karyn highlighted both formal and informal ways to prepare for the Pipelines exam and recommended to use a mix of both.


Formal study strategy

 Quickbase University Path to Pipelines Certification courses is the most formal strategy to study for the exam. Here’s great tip I learned during the session:

“The first three courses on the path accounts
for 60% of the entire exam.”

Say what now? I was super excited to hear this. What a great place to start or to review what you already know. Even though I took these courses already, I plan to go back and brush up my knowledge again.

Informal study strategy

Logging into the Quickbase Community, you will have access to blog posts of exercises, my journey to Pipelines certification series, and real-world tips provided by experts in our Reddit-style forums.

 

Day 1 May 10th 2:30 PM EST/11:30 AM PST Create Records from Templates using Pipelines

 Next, I joined Chelsea Carpenter’s session where she broke down a real-world use case of how to create records using the magic of Pipelines – no Jinja or other fancy codes needed. I really appreciated this session because it highlighted Pipeline’s ability to build simple yet powerful solutions that can be used in the real world. She used her previous job at a power company to showcase how Pipelines made it easy to audit many power stations with ease. If you are looking for an easy way to review the basics of Pipelines along with a simple use case, I recommend watching this session.

 

Day 2 May 11th  1:00pm EST/10:00 AM PT: The Product Keynote

After morning yoga and a few non-Pipelines sessions, I happily waited to hear of the new features rolling out for customers in 2022 in the Product Keynote session. For Pipelines specifically, John Karas showcased a brand-new Pipelines wizard where you can structure out the pipeline before going into the details of the platform.  He also highlighted three main areas where Pipelines will include feature enhancements:

  • Connecting to systems you (the builder) cares about – Cloud data warehouses
  • Powerful Governance, control, and insights – Making it easier handle security and access
  • Intuitive unified experience – bringing Apps and Pipelines closer together

Although these new features are coming down the pipeline (yes, pun intended), they will not be on the exam. The exam itself is focused on use cases and core knowledge which you can build upon with these new features.

 

 Day 2 May 11th 4:00 PM EST/1:00 PM PST: Popular Pipelines Blueprints

Lastly, I joined David Drockton and Eric Mohlman’s Pipelines Blueprint session. Here, they showed us how to download the Blueprints App in the App Exchange and went over four popular Pipelines use case exercises that anyone can follow along and build in their very own account. The app includes thorough instructions to follow along. One of the areas I am currently struggling through are the Pipelines use cases, so I was happy to learn of additional resources available to download with the Blueprints App. I plan to rewatch this session as I work through the exercises.

 

Final thoughts about Empower 2022 and next steps

For my first Empower, I met my goal of being as Pipelines-centric as possible. The sessions I attended not only gave me useful tips that I’ll apply to my Pipelines study strategy, but it also gave me a deeper appreciation for how invested Quickbase is in enhancing its Pipelines features and capabilities. Every team from Product, Education, Technical Consulting, and others had a hand in ensuring Pipelines will meet and exceed customers’ automation and integration requirements. Cheesy as this sounds, I can feel the excitement among the attendees, and I consider myself lucky to be part of the crowd. Cheers to a successful Empower 2022!

Empower 2022 On-Demand is now live. Click here to start watching the sessions.

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