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Acquia Certified Personalization Developer Pro

This is the study guide for the Acquia Certified Personalization Developer Pro Examination.

This guide explains the exam blueprint, breaks down knowledge domains, and helps you get familiar with the nature of questions asked in the exam. It also provides helpful steps to prepare for the exam and links to further resources for study and preparation.

About the exam

The following is the key information about the exam:

  • Exam name: Acquia Certified Personalization Developer Pro
  • Exam duration: 60 minutes
  • Exam length: 40 questions
  • Pass/Fail mark: 65%

The purpose of this exam is to validate skills and knowledge of developers that design, implement, and maintain the Acquia Personalization application. These individuals are directly responsible for supporting leadership in understanding the benefits of personalizing and the marketers that design and launch campaigns.

This exam validates a candidate’s ability to:

  • Configure Acquia Personalization for building personalization campaigns
  • Understand and implement the best practices of Acquia Personalization
  • Support marketing and leadership teams that personalize

Steps to certification

Newcomer: You are absolutely new to Drupal and Acquia products.

Intermediate: You are an Acquia Certified Drupal Developer or Acquia Certified Backend Specialist but are new to Acquia Personalization.

Advanced: You are an Acquia Certified Drupal Developer or Acquia Certified Backend Specialist, have Acquia Personalization development experience, and wish to get certified.

Take Acquia Academy product introduction courses

All skill levels are encouraged to leverage the courses within the Acquia Personalization learning plan. Learning plans are the best guide to move learners in a curated and chronological order toward certification.

Customers can access these and many other courses for free by self-registering on Acquia Academy at https://customers.acquiaacademy.com. All other audiences can see Acquia Academy documentation for registration instructions. Once they have an account, they can log in to Acquia Academy and review the courses as many times as they like.

Gain practical experience

Completing the courses alone will not prepare you to pass the certification exam. You need to have some real-life, practical experience to attempt the exam. For this purpose, we recommend that you gain practical experience by working on at least 2-3 projects utilizing Acquia Personalization.

Perform self-assessment

Once you decide to take the exam, we recommend that you study the domains and topics covered by the exam and their relative weights. You should also perform a self-assessment of your own areas of strength and weakness against the domains and topics detailed in the exam blueprint. This is a recommended starting point for experienced Personalization users.

Use labs and study guide

Based on your self-assessment, you may need to gain knowledge and experience in some domains or topics. The best way to learn is by working or experimenting with the tools. Follow the suggestions given for preparation in the Preparation section and refer to the external resources given in the Study Guide section.

Appear for the exam

At this stage, you should be ready to take the exam. For instructions about registering for the exam, see Exam Registration. You may choose from an online proctored or an onsite proctored exam delivery option.

Exam domains

Note

This exam blueprint includes topics/domains and test objectives to help guide the test taker. They should not be construed as a comprehensive listing of all of the content on this examination.

Domain % of Questions
1.0 Fundamental Personalization Concepts 10%
2.0 Installation and Initial Configuration 20%
3.0 Building Campaigns and Segments 35%
4.0 Testing and Training (Technical Handoff) 35%
TOTAL 100%

Content

Domain 1.0: Fundamental Personalization Concepts

1.1. Demonstrate understanding of fundamental concepts of website personalization

1.2. Demonstrate understanding of benefits and limitations of personalization

1.3. Demonstrate ability to build organizational understanding for personalization

Domain 2.0: Installation and Initial Configuration

2.1. Demonstrate ability to install the Personalization module, enforce configuration, and ensure site readiness

2.2. Demonstrate ability to configure, test, and set up data collection

Domain 3.0: Building Campaigns and Segments

3.1. Demonstrate ability to collect data

3.2. Demonstrate ability to understand and use Profile data

3.3. Demonstrate ability to define and use Segments

3.4. Demonstrate understanding of Analytics provided by Personalization

3.5. Demonstrate ability to configure Personalization in Management & Permissions

Domain 4.0: Testing and Training (Technical Handoff)

4.1. Demonstrate ability to test and validate that personalization is running

4.2. Demonstrate ability to display content, leveraging the browser’s inspect tool for verification

4.3. Determine accuracy of the data reported

4.4. Ensure data is moving to strengthen Profile Manager into information

4.5. Troubleshooting suspicious functionality completed by team members

Self-assessment

Experienced developers will likely know their weaknesses more than they know their strengths. You might have judged your own skill levels while reading through the exam domains. It is quite natural for you to be more experienced and proficient in one domain than another. Also, within a domain, it is likely that you have hands-on experience with some topics but have never touched other areas within the same domain.

How to use self-assessment

We suggest you perform a skills and expertise self-analysis with respect to the domains and topics listed in the blueprint. The blueprint lists test objectives (topics) for each domain. Rank your skills on a scale of 0 to 10 against each test objective (0 for absolutely zero knowledge or exposure and 10 for complete mastery).

  • Topics with a score of 8+ are your strengths.
  • Topics with a score of 5 to 7 will need some preparation.
  • Topics with a score below 5 may require a lot of preparation, or guided instruction.

You may use the following table to carry out your evaluation.

Acquia Certified Personalization Developer Pro self-assessment table

Domain Topic Your Score (1-10)
1 Fundamental Personalization Concepts

1.1 Demonstrate understanding of fundamental concepts of website personalization

1.2 Demonstrate understanding of benefits and limitations of personalization

1.3 Demonstrate ability to build organizational understanding for personalization

2 Installation and Initial Configuration

2.1 Demonstrate ability to install the Personalization module, enforce configuration, and ensure site readiness

2.2 Demonstrate ability to configure, test, and set up data collection

3 Building Campaigns and Segments

3.1 Demonstrate ability to collect data

3.2 Demonstrate ability to understand and use Profile data

3.3 Demonstrate ability to define and use Segments

3.4 Demonstrate understanding of Analytics provided by Personalization

3.5 Demonstrate ability to configure Acquia Personalization in Management & Permissions

4 Testing and Training (Technical Handoff)

4.1 Demonstrate ability to test and validate that personalization is running

4.2 Demonstrate ability to display content, leveraging the browser’s inspect tool for verification

4.3 Determine accuracy of the data reported

4.4 Ensure data is moving to strengthen Profile Manager into information

4.5 Troubleshooting suspicious functionality completed by team members

Preparation

Once you have a list of topics you need to review, you will possibly face two challenges:

  1. Find and study documentation and knowledge resources for the topics.
  2. Find enough practical case studies covering the topics.

Knowledge resources

Customers and Partners can self-register on the appropriate branch of Acquia Academy and take courses in the relevant domain to refresh their knowledge.

Available courses include:

A list of online resources and documentation for each learning domain appears in the Study Guide section.

Study guide

Domain 1.0: Fundamental Personalization Concepts

1.1 Demonstrate understanding of fundamental concepts of website personalization

Topic Link
Using campaigns in Acquia Personalization Using campaigns in Personalization
Creating and managing segments Creating and managing segments
Creating and managing events Creating and managing events (see also Goals)
Creating and managing goals Creating and managing goals
Creating personalized slots Creating personalized slots
Acquia Personalization Glossary Personalization glossary

1.2 Demonstrate understanding of benefits and limitations of personalization

Topic Link
Personalize Drupal with Acquia Personalization How to Deliver Personalized Brand Experiences
Acquia’s approach to Personalization Acquia’s Approach to Personalization

Domain 2.0: Installation and Initial Configuration

2.1 Demonstrate ability to install the Personalization module, enforce configuration, and ensure site readiness

Title Link
Installing Acquia Personalization Installing Personalization
Mapping taxonomy terms to Personalization Mapping taxonomy terms to Personalization
Building personalized experiences Building personalized experiences

2.2 Demonstrate ability to configure, test, and set up data collection

Title Link
Creating personalized slots Creating personalized slots
Installing Personalization Installing the Acquia Personalization module
Leveraging taxonomies to track user behavior Utilizing Taxonomies to Track User Behavior

Domain 3.0: Profile Manager / Campaign Builder

3.1 Demonstrate ability to collect data

Title Link
Creating and managing goals Creating and managing goals
Using the Personalization APIs Using the Personalization APIs

3.2 Demonstrate ability to understand and use Profile data

Title Link
Examining visitor information Examining visitor information
Profile Manager Profile Manager

3.3 Demonstrate ability to define and use Segments

Title Link
Creating and managing segments Creating and managing segments
Segment examples Segment examples

3.4 Demonstrate understanding of Analytics provided by Personalization

Title Link
Using reports and dashboards in Profile Manager Using reports and dashboards in Personalization
Viewing reports in Personalization Viewing reports in Personalization

3.5 Demonstrate ability to configure Acquia Personalization in Management & Permissions

Title Link
Configuring personalization settings Configuring personalization settings
Data warehouse Data warehouse
Using the Personalization APIs Using the Personalization APIs

Domain 4.0: Testing and Training (Technical Handoff)

4.1 Demonstrate ability to test and validate that personalization is running

Title Link
Demonstrate ability to test and validate that personalization is running We are reassembling best practice documentation into a single link. The new URL is currently TBD.
Creating personalized slots Creating personalized slots

4.2 Demonstrate ability to display content, leveraging the browser’s inspect tool for verification

Title Link
Cookies used by Personalization Cookies used by Personalization

4.3 Determine Accuracy of the Data Reported

Title Link
Examining visitor information Examining visitor information
Displaying Personalization diagnostic messages Displaying Personalization diagnostic messages
Using Google Tag Manager with Personalization Using Google Tag Manager with Personalization
Default segment criteria Default segment criteria

4.4 Ensure data is moving to strengthen Profile Manager into information

Title Link
captureIdentity - Personalization JavaScript API captureIdentity - Personalization JavaScript API
Configuring personalization settings Configuring personalization settings
Data warehouse Person field types person_identifier table
Capture visitor identity with Google Tag Manager Capture visitor identity with Google Tag Manager

4.5 Ensure data is moving to strengthen Profile Manager into information

Title Link
Using campaigns in Personalization Using campaigns in Personalization