Within the last year I passed the XM Cloud exam. When it was announced that XM Cloud would become SitecoreAI I was wondering if I would need to take the exam again. The answer was yes. Now I will say it was close to the XM Cloud exam, but somewhat different. I believe there were more questions. Here is my quick summary to help you pass. On a side note I did one for the Content Hub exam a few years back. You can find that here.

Use a Sandbox if available.

If you have access to a sandbox go through the steps of creating a SitecoreAI site and setting up a development environment. This will help make things more clear to see the actual process of what is involved. Get a site up and running is key.

Use the exam study guides online documentation.

Sitecore learning has study guides and documentation available that will go over much of what you need to learn for SitecoreAI. Here is a link to check it out. https://doc.sitecore.com/sai/en/developers/sitecoreai/sitecoreai.html

Create your own study guide.

Take notes and make a study guide. Even create your own quiz. If you don’t pass the exam the first time quickly write down what you struggled with and put that in your study guide. Using the link above for SitecoreAI you should be able to come up with a great study guide.

Understand Sitecore basics.

• Templates how inheritance works and how they are defined.
• Understand how standard values work and why you should use them.
• Understand the presentation layer and the difference between SXA and non-SXA sites.

Understand how deployments and archtecture work.

You will need to understand how code goes from your local environment to the cloud. Understanding basic integration and Git hub is important. You are already probably using it, but brush up on CI/CD deployment. The deployment setup for SitecoreAI is different than traditional MVC. Make sure you know environmental variables needed and how new sites are provisioned.

Go through the process of creating a component.

Creating a component is pretty straightforward. Following https://doc.sitecore.com/sai/en/developers/sitecoreai/build-your-first-component.html#create-the-rendering-definition should get you started. This will give you a better idea how SitecoreAI differs from Sitecore MVC.

Serialization

Learn how Sitecore serialization works. Make sure you get to know the parameters needed and why such as path. Look at the starter kit and how that is setup.

Use multiple choice strategies.

This is always better said than done. However you have four answers to choose from. I found at least two answers didn’t make sense. So I tried to eliminate those. The last two you really need to figure out which one the answer should be. Look into the question for help, but also look at other questions that may also give you clues. At the end of the day if you can’t decide, choose the one that makes the most logical sense.

Breathe and Relax.

I am getting better at this. I tend to be nervous going into any test I take. I soon relax as the test goes on. I tend to get a little anxious when I don’t have a clear answer to questions. Just breathing and relaxing really does help. Just don’t breathe too loud because the microphone may pick it up and the exam could get paused.  The answer is there, just reread the question and again make the logical choice.

Conclusion

No matter what happens don’t give up trying. If you fail, learn from it and don’t be worried about taking the exam again. I always recommend taking the training and exam prep offered by Sitecore.