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confusion about developer courses

johnv
johnv
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Here: https://episerver.litmos.com/self-signup/index

Is a long list of online courses. 

This one: https://episerver.litmos.com/self-signup/register/88550?type=2 states

  "Please note that Developer Subscriptions require the student to have Episerver Certified Developer status at the time of purchase. You will not be given access to the eLearning courses until Episerver has confirmed your ECD status."

This means all the "developer subsriptions" require the developer to already be certified, thence not acually need courses as much as non certified devs which seems backward.

There are many courses for CMS, and the cost adds up very quickly. I have not been able to find any "learning path" or information on what coursese should be done, and in which order, which are optional, which overlap etc.  There is no comparison, flow or matrix, which seems like a fundamental omision.  Developers also need to understand how the editing and site admin works, so I assume these courses are also pretty mandetory.  In our org there are episerver sites which are a very poor editing experience

My guess is this:

0) Getting started with DXC platform (875)

1) Developing for DXC $875

2) Advanced development $1890

3) Episerver CMS Basic editing $700

4) Episerver CMS Advanced editing $700 (what is the "ILT" version for $1000?)

5) CMS administrator $700 . (what is the "ILT" vertsion for $1000?)

6) CMS developer bootcamp ILT ($4500) . (or should this be the first one?  what is the overlap)?

7) CMS Developer Masterclass ILT ($2495)

8) Personalization develoment fundamentals $875

So the cost could easily be 10,000 to do a full training.  This is beyond the reach of most organisations to have per developer, and certainly out of the reach of developers to pay themselves.

Then there are a bunch of "subscriptions" which make no sense- you do a course, its done. Why subscribe?  Also, as stated in the above article, developer subscriptions require the developer "to have Episerver Certified Developer status at the time of purchase.", so the developer will have had to alrady done some of all of the courses anyway.

This page: https://education.episerver.com/collections/developer-subscriptions Implies that you dont have to have certification status at the time of purchase, which is contradicting the link above.  It has "plus" and non plus courses, but it doesnt say what the difference is, there is no comparison or matrix. 

It says "includes relevant courses", but looking at the "agenda" (Is this the same as included courses?) there are many relevant courses missing (e.g. "developer masterclass" and "getting started with dxc platform"), so this is misleading at best and false advertising at worst.

Some of the course names and "aganda" courses dont match up, e.g. one has "EPiSerer CMS - Development Fundamentals".  Is this the same as "Getting started with DXC platform" or the same as "Developing for DXC " or both, or something else?

I would love to make a busienss case for our org to pay for training, but need help to figure out what the actutal cost is.

Has anyone out there done these individual courses, and can recomend which ones are worth purchassing, and in which order?

#217103
Edited, Feb 17, 2020 4:50
Henrik Fransas
Henrik Fransas
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Yes, there is a lot of money for a full training.

What do choose is depending on what you want to get out of it, do you want to learn the basic and get a foundation to start on then this is the best one "EPiSerer CMS - Development Fundamentals" since teach you all the basic and after that you can mostly get by using the documentation and work on projects.

If you want to know the basic and also be able to take the exam then I would say that "developer masterclass" is the best since it will teach you all the thing the fundamentals cource but it is faster and 5 days and ends with taking the exam.

Regarding the DXC platform and Developing for DXC (Both should be named DXP now) they are more focused on using DXP (https://world.episerver.com/digital-experience-cloud-service/) and stuff that is in those also exist in the other two I mentioned. So I would say that both they are good but not the one you should start with.

So, my tip as an old Episerver Technical Trainer is to take the "EPiSerer CMS - Development Fundamentals" and then see how you get on and if you need any more specific training.

#217104
Feb 17, 2020 6:24
Mark Price
Mark Price
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Hi johnv,

First, if you have questions about Education, please email education@episerver.com. We are happy to answer any questions. 

Second, I would be interested to know where you got the first few links from (that include /self-signup/) because I didn't know they exist. I've asked colleagues internally what they are. I feel they shouldn't be used as an entry point for learning about training options since they are missing important information like learning paths that confused you and led to you making many many false assumptions. If you hadn't used those links you would have better understood our recommendations for learning.

The place to find out general information about Education offerings is https://www.episerver.com/education/ and you can find out details of course contents and purchase educational products here https://education.episerver.com/

We do not recommend purchasing individual courses. The best option for almost every developer is a Developer Subscription for either CMS, Commerce, or DX Platform (i.e. both). Developer Subscriptions can be either just a bundle of e-learning courses, or the Plus ones include an exam attempt, a well-designed study program, and online support from a personal mentor. The difference is clearly explained on the landing page link that you included in your post, so I am surprised you didn't read it: https://education.episerver.com/collections/developer-subscriptions 

I do like your idea of a matrix so I will see if we can get something like that added.

I suggest you watch the embedded Making the Most of a Developer Subscription video on the product page to learn how they work: https://education.episerver.com/collections/developer-subscriptions/products/episerver-cms-developer-program

Also on the product page, you will see that the restriction for Developer Subscriptions of being an ECD only applies when getting a 75% discount. For convenience, I will copy the Note below:

"Please note that if you are a certified Episerver CMS Developer you are entitled to a 75% discount on the CMS Developer subscription. Please contact education@episerver.com for more information."

The idea is that if you are new to CMS or Commerce, then you pay full price for a Developer Subscription and you have access to all included courses for 12 months. You suggest that a subscription is unnecessary because you only take it once, but we are starting to have students who have had access for 12 months and now want to extend it. Students often want to repeat topics months later. To complete all the content in a Developer Subscription properly can literally take hundreds of hours. You're going to want to spread that learning over many months.

Also, every week the product teams potentially release new features and bug fixes to products. During your 12 month subscription, you will get any updates to the included courses, and completely new courses are planned* to be added to subscriptions throughout this year.

For example:

  • Developing Websites Based on Episerver Foundation
  • Implementing a Headless CMS Using Episerver Content Delivery API
  • Monitoring and Troubleshooting Episerver DXP Using Microsoft Application Insights
  • Improving Performance and Scalability of Episerver DXP Websites
  • Deploying to Episerver DXP Service Cloud Hosting
  • Developing for Episerver DXP Service Cloud Hosting
  • Individualizing Content Using Episerver Visitor Intelligence
  • Analyzing Content Using Episerver Content Intelligence

*Plans can change.

Developer Subscription for Episerver CMS includes two types of course:

  1. Courses to learn core skills and prepare for the certification exam:
    1. Episerver CMS - Development Fundamentals (equivalent to 3 days in classroom): as well as learning how to define content types and templates, build navigation and search, scheduled jobs and deployment, and much more, this course includes enough editor and admin features for a developer to understand their needs so a developer does NOT need to purchase any business user courses as you mistakenly thought. The cost of this e-learning course is $1890. But the cost of the Developer Subscription for Episerver CMS is $2000 which is only $110 more for LOTS more content--excellent value for money! But even better value for money is the Developer Subscription Plus for Episerver CMS that is $2300 and includes one exam attempt, a study program, and support from an expert personal mentor so you don't have to rely on the forums to get questions answered.
    2. Episerver CMS - Reviewing Development Fundamentals (1 day)
    3. Episerver CMS - Advanced Development (3 days)
    4. Episerver CMS - Certificiation Exam Preparation (1 day)
  2. Courses to expand skills:
    1. Developing for DXC Service (1 day)
    2. Episerver Personalization - Development Fundamentals (1 day)
    3. Episerver Site Security Checklist
    4. OAuth Authentication for Episerver CMS
    5. Cloud (DXC) Common Troubleshooting Tools for Episerver
    6. On-Premise (VM) Common Troubleshooting Tools for Episerver

The Getting Started Developing for Episerver DX Platform is not needed if you purchase a Developer Subscription since its content overlaps in the included courses. The Getting Started Developing for Episerver DX Platform course is designed as a quick tour of the entire Episerver platform. It is often used for one-day workshops for partner developers. 

We now discourage instructor-led training deliveries. The Boot Camps and Masterclasses are both ILT so do not need to be taken with the other courses you listed. For example:

  • Episerver CMS Developer Boot Camp = a five day intense accelerated combination of Episerver CMS - Development Fundamentals and Episerver CMS - Advanced Development delivered in classroom. The afternoon of the last day is the certification exam. Five years ago, it was possible to cram in 4.5 days and pass the exam. Now that the product has grown so much, it is almost impossible. Hence we now recommend Developer Subscriptions so you can learn at a more reasonable pace over a six-week study program without taking a whole week off work.
  • Episerver CMS Developer Masterclass = two day workshop in classroom for existing expert CMS developers to prepare for the CMS certification exam. 1.5 days of group discusssion with an expert and other developers, then an exam attempt.

I agree that historically Episerver's product naming is confusing, especially now we are in the process of renaming most products too. The difference between DXC, DXC Service, DX Platform, DXP and so on confuses everyone!

You call out three specific courses, so let me explain why they are three different courses:

I hope this helped you and others. If you have questions, please email education@episerver.com. 

#217112
Edited, Feb 17, 2020 8:40
johnv
johnv
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Thanks for you comprehensive reply.  With regards to those links, they are the third thing which come up when you google "episerver training"  This is where it states that the subscirptions cannot be purchased unless you are already certified.

I did read  https://www.episerver.com/education/, but this did not answer specific questions as its mainly generic marketing blub and is lite on detail.

Is "Developer Subscription Plus for Episerver CMS" a subset of "Developer Subscription Plus for Episerver DX Platform"?

Assuming we only need CMS/find/DXC is it better to do the developer subscription then individual courses for DXC (such as developing for DXC services), or the more expensive subscription for DX platform which also includes Commerce which is not needed?

Thanks.

#217122
Feb 17, 2020 12:47
Mark Price
Mark Price
Vote:
 

Hi johnv,

Thank you for letting us know about those https://episerver.litmos.com/self-signup/ links. They should not be appearing in Google results so I have informed others inside Episerver so that they can be removed. 

To answer your questions:

  1. Yes, Developer Subscription Plus for Episerver CMS is a subset of Developer Subscription Plus for Episerver DX Platform. The easiest way to think of it is: the CMS subscription does not include the Commerce developer courses. The Commerce subscription does not include the CMS developer courses except for reviewing CMS fundamentals because a prerequisite for being a Commerce developer is that you already know the fundamentals of CMS development. The DX Platform subscription includes everything. I'm going to create some diagrams to make it clearer, like this one: Developer Subscriptions course matrix
  2. If you don't need Commerce then buy Developer Subscription Plus for Episerver CMS.

/Mark

#217125
Edited, Feb 17, 2020 14:58
Mark Price
Mark Price
Vote:
 

The Education Sales Portal now has a matrix to show what content is included for the various Developer Subscriptions:

https://education.episerver.com/collections/developer-subscriptions

#217608
Feb 26, 2020 10:58
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