A Day in Paris Series: Let's Get Tested

[JennyHu]

Testing is a measure of your [x]. Insert knowledge, hormone, blood pressure, or the ability to do something. A diagnostic medical test, such as a viral COVID test, tests your current state of infection. Note, current state.  

I've been wandering in Paris since it was made available for Personal Developer Instances in July. While Paris is still fresh in my memory, I thought I'd give delta a try on the first day of availability. I'm in for the experience, and curious to find out if I'm thinking on the same wavelength as the person who designed the delta exams.

What could be the most critical features ServiceNow would like us to know in Paris? Or is this even the way the tests were designed? 

Open book, less than ten multiple-choice questions to complete in one hour, and three retries if you failed the first time. You certainly don't need a degree or extensive knowledge to pass the deltas. So what are these deltas testing you? What's the purpose of these deltas?

Ok, enough questions to ponder. If you don't want to overthink, and just want to keep your mainline certifications, let's get to business.

There are really no secrets to passing these delta exams. Many developers, including myself, don't remember APIs, the exact behavior of a module/function on top of their heads. What you need is good researching ability to comb through the release notes to answer questions on features that aren't marketed as top Paris features. The ability to fish and seek for the knowledge when you have a knowledge gap!

Here's my experience for successfully completing two Paris delta exams:

I logged in to NowLearning the morning of October 1st and paid for the maintenance fee. However, I was unable to find the Paris delta exams. I submitted a support ticket to NowLearning and went on my day. Eleven hours later, support responded and resolved the issue. So, I logged back into NowLearning and indeed found the delta exams. Not sure if it was a general system delay in releasing the deltas, or was it a time delay between paying my fee and the availability of the deltas. I am sure many others experiencing the same issue as support addressed me with another name. Looks like a copy-pasted canned response. 😛

The deltas are relatively easy to pass. The only difference from the last release's deltas is that you have to pay the Maintenance Fee before taking the delta exams. 

So here are simple 5 steps to taking your Paris deltas:

1. Login to NowLearning and pay $200 USD for Now Learning Certification Maintenance Fee. You will get an email confirmation once your payment went through.
2. On the landing page of NowLearning, you should see an announcement banner that your certification is at risk. Click on "Let's Fix This" will bring a pop up of your at-risk certifications.
3. Make sure to click on the "Enroll" link before you can take the delta exam.
4. You will have one hour to complete the delta exam, which is plenty of time. Similar to previous deltas, you have 4 attempts to pass the delta exam.
5. You will be presented with multiple-choice questions. From my experience,

• • the Certified Application Developer Delta had 6 questions, and
  • the Certified System Administrator Delta had 8 questions.

If you hold one or more mainline ServiceNow certifications and you'd like to maintain them, please remember to take the Paris delta exams between October 1st, 2020 to January 7th, 2021. Good luck, and I hope you get to discover some new hidden gems in Paris.

Reference

• Paris Release Notes