Archer Community

Hi everyone! All exams (both practice and official) are found within our new Archer Academy learning portal. Depending on if you are a customer or partner or an internal Archer employee, your path to the portal is a little different. Customers and partners: Log in to your Archer Cloud portal (https://id.archerirm.cloud) and click the Archer Academy button. This portal is the same one used to log in to the Archer Community as well. Archer employees: Log in to your OneLogin page and click the Archer Academy button. Once inside, follow this click-path to find the exams: 1. Locate the buttons in the top header area and select Store: 2. Use the Categories filter on the main Store page to filter for Certification Exams:   3. The exam options should appear. Three are practice exams, marked with "(Practice Exam)" in the name. These are free to take. Three are official exams and can be purchased via credit card or training credits, if available. To use training credits, please contact us. Archer On-Demand Subscription holders are also able to take all exams at no cost. Please contact us for assistance with these registrations. We hope this helps! Best of luck as you prepare! p.s. Once you have passed an exam, please allow up to a week for your Credly badge to be issued. This is a manual process that is completed weekly by our team. We love that you're excited about these, and we are, too!

Hi Archer pros! We are DELIGHTED to announce that the new Archer Certification Exams are live at last!! And since it's been months since we had any exams at all, here's a whole bunch of information that we hope will help as you peer down the ol' certification road. First, let's revisit the new exam structure. There are now three levels: Archer Certified Associate Archer Certified Administrator - Specialist Archer Certified Administrator - Expert Which exam is right for you? If you've never been an administrator, but have been using Archer for a good amount of time as a business user, Level 1 (Associate) is made for you. This is also a great exam for people who focus on making Archer recommendations, such as Solution Owners, Sales and Account Managers, etc.  I'll share preparation tips for each exam in a bit. If you're an Archer admin, and feel confident with the content covered in Archer Administration I, can build applications, confidently work through access control scenarios, and set up notifications, reports, and dashboards, give Level 2 (Administrator - Specialist) a try. If you're a longtime Archer admin and know your way around everything listed above, and can work through Archer Admin II and Infrastructure Admin topics with ease and can answer questions related to API functionality, then Level 3 (Administrator - Expert) is where I'd go. Preparation Tips: Exams absolutely reference our course material, so be sure to review the courses shown below for the exam of your choice. While taking our training isn't required, if you're looking for study material, we're going to point you to these courses. (Reminder - all Archer courses can be found here: https://community.rsa.com/t5/archer-training/tkb-p/archer-training) Level 1: Associate Level 2: Administrator - Specialist Level 3: Administrator - Expert Review these classes (all free): Getting Started series: Beginning Your Learning Journey Introduction to Archer Foundational Skills Deployment Options Introduction to Archer APIs*   Suggested, but not required:** Archer New User Experience Developing Archer Power Users & Business Analysts Archer Self-Guided Exploration Lab Everything listed for Level 1 (Associate), plus: Archer Administration I Archer Application Design Best Practices Everything listed for Levels 1 and 2, plus: Archer Administration II Archer Advanced Workflow - Beyond the Basics Archer Infrastructure Administration * Why is the Intro to Archer APIs class included at the first level? It's a free class and helps even new users to understand the basics of what API functionality brings to the Archer table. ** I thought you said Level 1 is based on the free classes. It is. We're listing these additional classes for those who have taken these classes and are wondering if the classes would additionally prepare them for a given exam. Also, sometimes it's nice to have some hands-on practice with Archer before you take an exam, just to ensure you really feel ready. These all offer hands-on labs and would be good to use as additional practice. Take the Practice Exam associated with the exam level of your choice. All Practice Exams are located right inside of our new learning portal, along with the exams themselves. There's no limit to how many times you may take and retake a Practice Exam. My recommendation is to start with the Practice Exam for the Associate level, and if you fly through that one, proceed to the Specialist level, and then to the Expert level. Get a sense of where you might really fall, knowledge-wise, by gauging your comfort level with each exam. Once you're ready, purchase the exam of your choice. If you have been making Archer configuration your career for a decade or more, there's no need for you to start at Level 1 just because. Each exam can be purchased for 100 training credits, or for $100 via credit card.*** *** If you currently hold an Archer On-Demand/Self-Paced Subscription, you should have plenty of wiggle room inside that subscription to take any/all of the exams you'd like. No exam vouchers required! :) Super Important Details: Once you have paid for (or have been registered for) an exam, you'll have the opportunity to take it twice within the next 60 days. This second chance is our way of acknowledging that sometimes exams are scary, and everyone deserves one do-over. Note that you won't be given the opportunity to go back and review the questions between the attempts - we've seen people try to write down all of the answers so they can pass the answers along to their friends, and that's so against the unwritten honor code of a true Archer admin. But you will have plenty of time to go back and review topics that you felt a little shaky with as you tested, and we'll be rooting for you during that second attempt. That said - these exams ARE open book! In real life, sometimes you know the answers to questions right away, and other times, you know where the answer is, but want to look it up really quick just to make sure. We'll let you do that!  You'll need to get through 70 questions in just 90 minutes, though, so there won't be time to look up every single answer. That's why we offer the practice exams and the single do-over. Passing criteria is 70%. You can do this. Once you've passed your exam(s), what comes next? Right away, you'll be able to print out your official certificate from our learning portal. Also, each week, we'll be uploading the names and email addresses of the people who've passed their exams into the database of our badging partner, Credly. Once your info is added, Credly will send you an invitation to create an account with them (it's free and they don't spam you, not to worry), and once you're in there, you'll be able to download a fancy badge that you can proudly display in your email signature, upload to LinkedIn and other social media, and more. There will also be another version of your official certificate hosted within Credly, so check that one out and then keep whichever design you like best. Note that there isn't an automatic feed that adds you to the Credly system. It's a manual upload from us that will be done on a weekly basis, so there will likely be up to a one-week delay, depending on when you take your exam. What about expiration dates and recertification? All certifications expire after 2 years. As your expiration date nears, be ready to retake an exam - whichever exam you're best suited for. We don't ask you to track CPE credits or do any continuous learning. You simply take the exam available at the time you're ready to take it. Archer changes since your last certification exam will be included in the new exam, so taking the latest exam is all that's needed to renew. What other questions do you have? Contact us here and help us add to this page! Best of luck (not that you need it - you're amazing and are going to do great!), Megan

Once you've passed an Archer certification exam, it's time to proudly display your accomplishment to the world! Here's a helpful tutorial on how to do just that: First, allow up to a week for us to upload the previous week's successful exam data into the Credly platform. We typically do these uploads each Friday, but during holidays there may be a slight delay. Once your information is added to Credly, you'll receive an email directly from Credly, inviting you to accept the new badge. Click the link in the email and either log in to your existing Credly account, or create a new account.  Within your account, click into the badge just earned and look for the Share button in the upper right corner. It should look something like this: Once on the Sharing page, you'll find several options you might want to leverage. One makes sharing your badge on LinkedIn and other sites easy. Other options allow you to download your badge image (perhaps to add it to your email signature), download a certificate for printing, and more: If we can help with articles around other exam options, please let us know!  

Hi Archer fans! Our Archer Certification Program is now live. Below is a summary of how we got to where we are, how the new exams differ from the old, and much more. As many of you are aware, RSA has undergone an exciting time of change and, in many ways, rebirth. This time of transition has given us the opportunity to reinvent things, and among those things was the entire approach to Archer Certification. Step back with me into history for a moment....Once upon a time, Archer training was comprised of a single Archer Administration class that lasted 4 days, and on the morning of the 5th day, all attendees sat for a 160-question exam that was a combination of general knowledge and practical lab-style questions. Students had 4 hours to complete the exam and had the benefit of using any resources they had at hand, other than their neighbor or the instructor(s). It was grueling, especially after 4 full days of nonstop learning, but effective. When Archer became part of RSA, things changed to accommodate rapid growth and a far more global audience. The number of training classes grew (we now offer 17 courses and counting), the number of exams grew, and the method of taking exams shifted to the formal, no-resources-permitted approach offered by Pearson Vue. For many years, you had to set aside time to travel to a testing center, lock away your personal items, and complete the exam without any resources at all. Eventually, at-home proctored exams also became available, but they still required a pre-set appointment time and careful monitoring to ensure all questions were answered solely from the candidate's own knowledge. It certainly worked, but we thought....if given the opportunity to change, would we? The answer, I am certain you are guessing, is YES. As RSA and Archer IRM transitioned away from the Dell systems, so has our learning management system, our relationship with Pearson Vue, and so many other things. Our last exams offered via Pearson Vue took place on August 31, 2021. After that date, we were in a period of transition and testing for a few months. When we went live with our new learning management system, the certification exams were then included in our new (and very own) system! This means that you're now able to purchase and take exams whenever you wish - up at 3am and feel like leveling up? Take your exam! AND - even more exciting - no more proctoring. Use whatever resources you have at hand - training materials, your company's instance of Archer, anything. We'd still prefer that you not phone a friend during the exam, and you'll have just 90 minutes to complete 70 questions, so you won't have time to look up EVERY answer, but just as in real life, if you need to look up an answer to confirm you were right all along, go ahead and do so.  So, Megan,   you might be saying...What other changes are coming?   I am so glad you asked! Under the old exam structure, we had two levels that very loosely mapped to Admin I and Admin II. We received plenty of feedback from Archer users who wanted some way to validate that they were skilled at simply using Archer, that they could run reports, that they understood reasons for using Archer, and so on - but they were not ever going to be admins. So - we've built a new entry-level exam, just for those who fall into that category. These Archer users might be general business consultants, involved in sales or account management, project managers, or business owners. The key is that they really haven't a need to learn the details of Archer Administration, but still want a certification of their own. Introducing the new Archer Certification structure: Level 1: Archer Certified Associate Level 2: Archer Certified Administrator - Specialist Level 3: Archer Certified Administrator - Expert The new Level 1 is brand new, as described above. The new Level 2 (Specialist) is a rough equivalent of the previous structure's Associate exam (duplicate names, I know it's confusing), and the new Level 3 (Expert) is a rough equivalent of the previous structure's Professional exam. Make sense? What about cost?   Pearson Vue exams ran $150 each, and each candidate had to pay Pearson Vue directly. Exams in our own system will run just $100 each, and you'll be able to pay via credit card OR via training units/credits, should your organization have some available for you to use. Oh, but Megan!   you might be thinking.   What if I just took an exam prior to August 31, 2021? Not to worry, friends. We've taken care of you. All who held still-valid certifications have been sent an invitation from Credly (our badging system partner) to accept an equivalent badge for the previous certifications already held.  Another change is - we have removed any pre-requisite for exams once within our own system. This means that if you believe you are ready for Level 3, even if you have never taken a previous exam, we'll let you take it. Chaos, I know. But I've been around this Archer family for a decade and a half now, and I believe this is the right thing to do. We're a family, we trust each other, and we take care of each other. I'm positive there will be some hiccups along the way, and when you run into one of those, please reach out to us and we'll sort it out.  Quick link to your next steps: Archer Certification Exam Preparation Tips! Until next time, keep learning, keep challenging, and keep your Archer skills fresh! All the best, Megan Olvera Manager, Archer Academy