by
John Price
So there I was, driving down the 425 doing about 110 in my 959, when I get a 911 page from my good friend Terry. Citrix has revamped their CCEA certification and he wanted the 411 on the new tests and requirements. I did a 180 and headed back to the office to check it out.
If you made it through all the numbers in that last paragraph, keep reading, as that was just a warm-up.
A few weeks ago, Citrix announced new certification requirements for their CCEA program. If you have used the certification wizard from the Citrix website, what you find may be a little confusing. Two exams that they recommend taking are not even available yet and the recertification deadline is quickly approaching. If you don't want to be decertified and you do want to meet the new certification requirements, you do not necessarily have to take the exams that they recommend.
If you have not passed both the 910/911 AND 920/921 exams, the 913 exam will be listed as a recommended exam to remain certified. You will then notice that the 913 exam is not officially released yet. Even worse yet, if you haven't passed the 991 exam, then they recommend you take the 992 exam, which is still in beta. I don't know about you, but I am not a big fan of beta exams. Aside from the quality (and quantity) of questions asked, you won't get your results back right away, and you may not even get them back before the decertification date of May 1.
They don't make it real clear, but there are alternates that you can take. The only exam that has been “officially” retired is 940/941. They haven't retired a lot of tests, just changed the certification requirements. The exams you have already passed my count toward your shiny new CCEA certification, oh…and that snazzy pin.
For example, if you've passed 220, 911, 921, 931, and 961 for your current CCEA, you only have to take 991 and one of the electives. You do get the following warning:
"Exams 930/931 and 950/951/961 have been discontinued, and their retirement is imminent. It is strongly recommended that you pass exam 962 to avoid the likelihood of decertification."
This is just a "warning" though, as those exams have not officially been retired.
The following list is the current “required” exams and the “alternate” exams that can be taken to satisfy the same requirement. All of the alternate exams are current except for the 930/931 and the 950/951/961 exams.
| Current Exam |
Alternate Exam |
| 222 |
218, 220, 221 |
| 913 |
910 or 911 AND 920 or 921 |
| 962 |
930 or 931 AND 950, 951 or 961 |
| 992 |
991 |
For the 913 and the 962, you must meet two of the alternate exams to satisfy the requirement. If you have passed 911 and 921, then you do not have to take the 913. If you have passed either the 910/911 or the 920/921 but not both, you can take the other exam and satisfy the requirement for 913 if you do not want to wait for the exam to go live. You can also take 991 in place of 992.
Of course you still have to take an elective exam, either 721 or 972, which are both pretty new and will be valid for some time to come.
Now, keeping all of that in mind, Presentation Server 3.0 is due out in May… Hmmm… The same May deadline that we are talking about above. Do you think we'll have to update these requirements again very soon to stay current on 3.0??
Maybe I should 86 that train of thought and save it for another column.
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