Last week in my penultimate week of training I set aside some time to complete Alteryx Advanced. I am happy to report that I passed and I thought it would be useful to add some reflections/recommendations for future test-takers.
Challenges
Challenges are without doubt the best way to prepare for the practical questions on the exam. I would recommend getting in practice with all the different types of macros and not just solving the challenges but thinking more broadly about their use cases to prepare you for a question using them that you might not have directly prepared for.
Spatial challenges are also going to be preparation time well spent and particularly a focus on using the spatial palette beyond simple points/lines polygons and distances. Knowing how to buffer spatial objects, combine objects, understand centroids and when they are used will help.
Finally a more general observation, I noticed when I did challenges I often consutled the desired outcome to help me visualize what I wanted to achieve. Yet, for the purposes of the test and general practice I would advice against that. In the test part of the skill is understanding what the question wants so I would recommend completing as many challenges without looking at the sample output initially to train your comprehension of data questions. Second, in a consulting scenario, comprehension and explaination of the problem back to the stakeholder is a valuable skill. Thus, understanding the problem and if necessary drawing it back out for a stakeholder is a skill that might be underdeveloped when over-relying on sample outputs.
Regex
The test has some regex questions that are not necessarily simple, but not horrendously complicated either. I think the best advice here is to be disciplined in the time granted to the questions because ultimately they are unlikley to determine a pass or fail. On the other hand, these questions if you have time to spare are some of the easiest to verify and double check that you are correct so bear that in mind.
Spatial
I mentioned spatial in the challenges section but generally you will need a strong understanding of the spatial palette as a whole, but importantly make sure you are aware and comfortable with the spatial capabilities within Alteryx that exist outside the spatial pallete (e.g. formula and summarize tools). It is a feature of the exam prep guide so will likely have a multiple choice question on it and it can be powerful knowledge if/when a spatial practical question is asked.
Report Tools
Overall, report tools was my weakest section, I have the least practice with them and only covered the basic information on the online documentation for them. Even so I found that documentation to be confusing with regard to the questions asked so perhaps the best advice here is to seek out more expert knowledge on the area and glean some information from people who are more familiar with the reporting tools. At a fundamental level, you should know the output types of a render tool and the capabilities of each report tool as outlined by online documentation.
Macros
I think the understudied area for macros in preperation for the Advanced Certification is the configuration options. Knowing where certain configurations are and whether they are optional or not will be valuable knowledge for the test.