Forum Discussion

AlexBennett's avatar
AlexBennett
Qrew Member
5 years ago

Quick Base Certifications

Hey everyone,

This is my first post on the community. I just wanted to get other users opinions on the exams. I've been struggling to get my certifications due to failing. I failed previous attempts at a practice exam for the builder certification, and just finished attempting my combined exam for the builder and expert certifications. I got 60% (failed). I've gone through all the modules in University over the past month as well as watched and studied Webinars and Empower videos provided. I'm feeling a bit stuck here as I've noticed being asked questions that are for things that were never taught in the University Training. Ex: Snapshots. I'm pretty discouraged on the quickbase training and unfortunately I need to get the certifications for my current position.

Just wanted to see if anyone else has had the same experiences or has any tips for finally being able to pass the exams. 
What's odd to me is that I have a programming background, and this stuff seems easy, but the questions are formatted in a way to try to trick the test taker. So I might fail a question because I don't answer in the way it's formatted, when if it was asked in a non-confusing way, I'd get the question right. Maybe why the "qbcares" code is there?

Sorry for the rant... Again, I just attempted the exam and failed. So a bit discouraged on the University training and where to go from here, because I've gone over the training provided and still can't seem to pass. If it wasn't required for my position, I wouldn't bother wasting anymore of my time.

Thanks,

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Alex Bennett
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Certification
Quickbase University
  • SamiraShubash's avatar
    SamiraShubash
    Qrew Member
    3 years ago
    I too am having an incredibly hard time passing the builder exam as well. Same issues you are having. Were you able to pass? Any suggestions?

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    Samira Shubash
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  • EvanMartinez's avatar
    EvanMartinez
    Quickbase Staff
    5 years ago
    Hi Alex,

    I am sorry to hear you had trouble with your first attempt at the certification exam. If you are looking for some materials to help we do have a blog that tackles some of the most common content for the test you can find here. The test is set up so that there is a roster of questions it can pull from so it isn't quite the same test from one attempt to the other, which does mean sometimes there are topics that come up and another time it might be a new topic that takes its place. I would also encourage you to take a peek at the events calendar here in Community, there are regular training events we do as well where the training team focuses in on specific topics and Fundamentals training where we go over a broad range of core concepts with time for Q&A so that can be helpful for preparing for a certification exam attempt. I hope you aren't feeling too discouraged and that you have good luck on your next time taking the exam. Certainly let me know if there are any topics you might want help finding content on or any questions you might have.

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    Evan Martinez
    Community Marketing Manager
    Quick Base
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    • AlexBennett's avatar
      AlexBennett
      Qrew Member
      5 years ago
      Hey Evan

      I appreciate you reaching out and trying to help, but the link posted to the blog post "Cheat Sheet" just really recommends using the University, and watching the Empower videos, which I have already done before attempting the exam, without success. The links on this blog post that are supposed to direct me to useful topics (Managing an Application's File Attachments, About List-User Fields, Set Record Display Fields) send me to a page in the "Quick Base Help" that just says "Sorry, but the Quick Base help page you're looking for cannot be found." Thanks again for trying to help. Still Fairly frustrated on the whole process. Unfortunately, I'm forced to get certified for my company and feel a bit like I've reached a dead end.

      Thanks,


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      Alex Bennett
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      • EvanMartinez's avatar
        EvanMartinez
        Quickbase Staff
        5 years ago
        Hi Alex,

        The test is absolutely meant to be challenging so it is understandable that you are finding it daunting. I would certainly suggest if you can breaking it apart and doing the individual tests instead of the combined test as that will allow you to focus down on specific chunks and not have quite so much content coming at you at once. A lot of the core content from the test is going to appear in the University classes and it is something that we go over at some of our previous Empower sessions. If they aren't helpful I would again suggest looking into the fundamentals training (the next one is November 10th-13th, 2:00pm - 4:00pm (ET)) and specific live training sessions, you might find live training to be more engaging and a bit less frustrating if you have specific topics you stumbled on before and need help with. You can ask questions and get insight from the trainers. If you had some topics you found especially frustrating I'm happy to chat with you about them and even recommend some specific help topics or how to articles/previous training recordings that might be helpful. (You can find me on our public slack if you want to chat there at some point as well and you can also chat with some other builders if you wanted to get some other perspectives). 

        Sorry that the links are broken, we have been doing some work on help and it must have broken the original links. I will pass that on to the team to get fixed up. In the meantime here are the direct topic links for that content as they can be helpful for some of those niche pieces:

        https://help.quickbase.com/user-assistance/managing_file_attachments.html?Highlight=file%20attachments'
        https://help.quickbase.com/user-assistance/specify_record_picker_fields.html?Highlight=set%20record%20picker%20display%20fields
        https://help.quickbase.com/user-assistance/list_user_fields.html?Highlight=list%20user%20fields

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        Evan Martinez
        Community Marketing Manager
        Quick Base
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