Change of plans; I am going to get the consulting certifications first. I will still get the developer certification, just not right away. I have a new job and they put more emphasis on the consulting certifications. The company is a Salesforce partner and I have access to the training materials, so I hope to get them in short order. Then I will circle back to the developer certifications. I think/hope this will give me more time to actually learn how to code vs. just passing the exam.
Eventually I'll need the PD1 certification to be an architect (certification wise), but I am not a hurry to get it. Certifications are often used to get a new job and in my case, that job is an internal position. My future posts will be about getting the NPSP Consulting and my continuing journey from Consultant to Architect.
As part of working for a partner I had to link my Webassessor and Trailhead accounts to their partner account. The actual process was simple but I learned two things:
1) Not all badges are created equal. I had assumed that I had three more badges than I really did. There are 'Event/Community' badges that you earn as part of doing things that may not be directly related to modules. TBH, I have no idea how I earned them but apparently they don't show up on public profiles. So when I linked my Trailhead to my Partner account I was three badges short. Below is a screenshot of the badges that the support folks told me did not count.
2) A new maintenance module was just released. When I linked my Webassessor account it said I was behind by one release on three of my four certifications. (The Administrator certification covers three of my certifications) I had been checking the verification steps every few months and it always said I was caught up. This news was alarming since my employment is contingent upon maintaining my certifications. At the time the latest maintenance module was not released publicly. I submitted a case to Trailhead and they indicated that there was a high volume of cases due to issues with the maintenance modules. I checked the maintenance schedule and there were not any new ones released. I clicked through to the module and it was marked as completed. I did this a few times over the past week and eventually it said I was not current, i.e., there was a new module. I completed the module and the next day everything was synced up.
I took the job to learn more about Salesforce. I did not think this would what I would learn. I also spent some time creating engagement templates for NPSP, which I will discuss in a later post. I created enough of them that I think I can answer any question they throw at me. But to be double sure I will post something about it.
I think moving forward I will post concepts that I learn. I found in the past that training others for the certification helped me learn the material. At the new place everyone knows the stuff, so training them is probably not in the cards, so this will be the next best thing...lol
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