Journey to Pipelines Certification Part 2: Useful Study Tips
Welcome back to my journey to Pipelines Certification blog! In the last post, you learned about my game plan to get certified before the end of the year. Now to tackle one of my biggest fears – test anxiety! Most of my test anxiety can be managed by fully understanding what to expect. To get a better picture of what I’m up against, I reached out to Kiko, Manny, and Matthew on the Customer Success team at Quickbase and recorded a 9-minute interview on their exam experience. They recently became Pipelines Certified and were happy to offer guidance on my path journey towards Pipelines certification. If you have time, I highly recommend watching the video below.
If you don’t have time, don’t worry, I got you! Here are six tips I learned from the interview that’s going help with passing the Pipelines exam:
- Know what topics will be covered in the exam. The best way to prep for the exam is to review the Pipelines exam material in the Quickbase University and spot your areas of weakness. Kiko noted that the exam is broken into multiple sections with 15-20% of the exam focused on each topic. Once you’ve identified the areas that require more studying, take time to dive into the Pipelines resource materials in the University. Because you need a 73% or higher to pass, it’s best to get a good working knowledge of every topic.
Here's a sneak peak of what’s covered in the exam. You can find more information about each section here.
- Get hands-on with the Pipelines interface. Manny’s main mode of studying was through building different Pipelines for various use cases and troubleshooting real-world use cases. The Path to Pipelines Certification in Quickbase University includes many opportunities to follow along and build Pipelines. I know it’s tempting to skip some of these and move onto the next lesson. Stop right there! Go back and give the exercises a try and be sure to read the use cases for each exercise (more on that later). For additional hands-on exercises, Matthew recommends to use the Builder account to practice building Pipelines. This way you’re learning in a controlled environment and not cluttering your company realm with training applications. If you don’t have one, sign up for your free builder account today. Next, we recommend to download from the list of apps from the App Exchange built by our Solutions Architect team:
- QSP Summit Demo 2021 - Replace TTI – Bree Mackey
- Facilities Sanitation Management – Bree Mackey
- Pipelines Demo – Bree Mackey
- Pipelines: Brady Oil Safety Compliance – Nathan Underwood
- Empower 2020 – Pipelines Copy Templates – Leanne Snoeck
- Pipelines – Create Unique Parents – Bree Mackey
- Pipelines – Jinja JSON Object Import – Bree Mackey
- Pipelines – SharePoint Lists – Bree Mackey
- Pipelines – Capture Box URLs – Bree Mackey
- Pipelines – Create X Children – Bree Mackey
Most of these apps include step-by-step instructions on how to build the Pipeline, as well as the YAML and instructions on how to import the YAML if you’re the type to dive right in.
- Gather your study materials and create a folder of bookmarked links for easy access. The list of resources that helped Kiko, Manny, and Matthew the most during the test were:
- Quickbase University Path to Pipelines
- App Exchange Pipeline Apps for hands on exercises
- Pipelines content in the Help Guide
- “So you want to learn Pipelines” blog with 12 articles and 14 video presentations to watch in case you want additional explanation on certain topics.
- Be prepared for a lot of word problems! Unlike the Builder Certification, everyone mentioned there are lots of word problems to answer in a row. Take your time and read them as carefully as possible. The best way to prepare is to read all the use cases mentioned in the university and practice how to build them out. It’s one thing to memorize a bunch of terms; this exam will test if you know how to apply it in the real-world. You will get 75 minutes to answer 60 questions. Take your time and flag questions you may want to reread prior to submitting your exam.
- Make time to study. The time commitment required depends on your current Pipelines knowledge. If you are a complete novice like me and haven’t taken the Path to Pipelines Certification courses, expect to spend 5-7 hours taking the course and another additional hour to ramp up your working knowledge on areas that were confusing. If you’ve been using Pipelines in your own apps, like Manny and Matthew, expect to spend 1-2 hours to review the advanced topics you may not be using in your own Pipelines.
- Sign up for Virtual Empower 2022 for Pipelines Certification review. Although we didn’t talk about it in the interview, an additional resource worth taking advantage of is to join us for our annual conference May 10th-11th, 2022. Our amazing customer education team will be running a Pipelines certification review session. Better believe I will be there! If you sign up for Empower 2022, you will get a discount code to apply to the cost of the exam. RSVP for Empower 2022 today.
After interviewing the team, I feel a sense of relief knowing what to expect. As a novice, I will continue to prioritize taking the online courses and work through the exercises. Next, I plan to download Pipeline apps from the App Exchange in my builder account and start working through advanced use cases. If you are interested in getting Pipelines Certified, click on the links above to organize your study plan. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions regarding the resources for the exam. To end this, I want to say thank you to Kiko, Manny, and Matthew for letting me interview and share their wisdom with all of you.