Back in March I blogged about why I took the Alfresco Certified Administrator exam (post). Today I passed the Alfresco Certified Engineer exam. I took it for the same reasons I took the ACA exam, as outlined in that post, so in this post, I thought I’d share how I studied for the test.

Let me start off with a complaint: There is nowhere I could find that describes which specific version of Alfresco the test covers. This wasn’t that big of a deal for the ACA exam, but for the ACE exam, I felt a little apprehensive not knowing.

I know Alfresco probably doesn’t want to lock the exam version to an Alfresco version. But the blueprint really needs to give people some idea. Ultimately, I decided 4.1 was a safe bet.

I can’t tell you what was on the test, but I can tell you how I studied.

First, review the blueprint

The exam blueprint is the only place that gives you hints as to what’s on the test. If you look at the blueprint, you’ll see that the test is divided into five areas: Architectural Core, Repository Customization, Web Scripting, UI Customization, and Alfresco API.

The blueprint breaks down each of those five areas into topics, but they are still pretty broad. Some of them helped me figure out what to review and some of them didn’t. For example, under Architectural Core, topics like “Repository”, “Subsystems”, and “Database” were too vague to be that helpful in guiding my study plans.

Next, identify your focus areas

Looking at the blueprint, most of those topics have been in the product since the early days and haven’t changed much. I figured I could take the test cold and pass those. But Share Configuration and Customization has changed here and there between releases. With a lot of different ways to do things, and ample opportunity for testing around minutiae, I figured this would be where I’d need to spend most of my study time. I also wanted to spend time reviewing the various API’s listed under Architectural Core because I typically just look those up rather than commit the details to memory.

To validate where I thought my focus areas should be I took the sample test on the blueprint page, which was helpful.

Now, study

For Architectural Core, I spent most of my time reviewing the list of public services in the Foundation API found in Appendix A of the Alfresco Developer Guide, the JavaScript API (also in Appendix A as well as the official documentation), and the Freemarker Templating API documentation.

For the Repository Customization I figured I had most of that down cold and just spent a little time reviewing Activiti BPM XML and associated workflow content models. The workflow tutorial on this site is one place with sample workflows to review and obviously the out-of-the-box workflows are also good examples.

According to the blueprint, the UI Customization section is now focused entirely on Alfresco Share, so I didn’t spend any time reviewing Alfresco Explorer customization. Instead, I read through the Share Configuration and Share Customization sections of the documentation. There are now tutorials on Share Customization in the Alfresco docs so I went through those again just to make sure everything was fresh. The Share configuration examples in my custom content types tutorial are another resource.

The Alfresco API section consists of questions about the Alfresco REST API and CMIS. This is only 5% of the test so I spent no time reviewing this. I also ignored Web Scripts, figuring my existing knowledge was good enough.

After studying the resources in my focus areas I took the sample test once more. It’s always the same set of questions, so taking it repeatedly isn’t a great way to prove your readiness, but at least you know you won’t miss those questions if they show up on the real test.

Feel ready? Go for it

If you get paid to work with Alfresco, you really ought to take this exam (and the ACA exam). Obviously, what I’ve reviewed here is a study plan for someone who has significant experience with the platform doing real world projects. If you are new to Alfresco you’ll have to adjust your plan and preparation time accordingly. Better yet, get a few projects under your belt first. I think it would be tough for someone with no practical experience to pass the test with any amount of study time, which is the whole point.

So there you go, that’s how I studied. Your mileage will vary based on what your focus areas need to be. Now go hit the books!