Today, I wanted to outline the process of renewing your Cisco certifications using Cisco’s Continuing Education credits. When I was trying to renew mine a couple months ago, I wasn’t too sure where to begin. The websites kept sending me in circles and ended going nowhere for a bit. I finally figured it out right before my certification expired and wanted to make sure you all knew the process. I needed to make this for myself too. I might forget for next time.
Here’s the outline:
- Make sure you have a Cisco account
- Verify your certification is listed and how many days left until expiration
- Determine how many credits you need to renew
- Go to Cisco’s Digital Learning portal
- Take courses and pass exams
- Upload certificate and Submit on Cisco CE’s portal
- Verify courses show up on Cert Metrics
- Certification renewed!
Alright, now here is the breakdown of each step.
- Log in to Cisco.com
- Here, I am assuming that since you already have a Cisco ID and cert, you know how and where to do this. Just make sure you can log in and all your current information is updated.
- Go to https://ce.cisco.com/ and log in using your Cisco ID.
- Under My Dashboard, scroll down and find your certificate under Certification.
- Take note of the “Days to Expire”. I believe you must be within 90 from expiration in order to be able to renew. Don’t quote me, but read more about it here -> Recertification Policy – Cisco
- Determine how man credits you’ll need.
- Associate – 30 CE credits needed.
- Specialist – 40 CE credits needed.
- Professional – 80 CE Credits needed or pass Professional concentration exam + 40 CE credits.
- CCIE – 120 CE credits needed or see webpage above for additional options.
- CCDE – 120 CE credits needed or see webpage above for additional options.
- Go to Cisco’s Digital Learning portal, Cisco Digital Learning.
- Log in using your Cisco ID and start browsing for courses to take.
- There are a handful of FREE courses you can take, but majority are paid courses.
- See end of this post where I will list all of the free courses I was able to find.
- Launch courses and pass exams.
- In the course Overview, make sure you see a CE Credits section. For example, it will say “By completing this course, students will receive 6 credits toward recertification.“
- Watch the video presentations and Demos for each course.
- To pass and exam, you need to correctly answer 7/10 questions in under 30 min.
- Upload and Submit certificates on Continuing Education Program (cisco.com)
- Once you take and pass an exam for a course, you need to upload the Certificate you receive.
- Under Submit items, fill out the form and upload the certificate you downloaded.
- You will get an email confirmation of your submission.
- Go to Cert Metrics and verify course completions, Cisco – Home – CertMetrics.
- Log in using your Cisco ID.
- Go to Testing History > CE Activities
- After a day or 2, your completed courses should show up here with the credits awarded for completion.
- Certification renewed!
- Once you reach the # of credits needed to renew your level of certification, it will automatically update the expiration date of an additional 3 years.
- Check expiration dates on both Cert Metrics under Certifications and Cisco’s Continuing Education Program portal under My Dashboard.
That’s it! Pretty simple, but their website was a little weird when clicking some links. Took me a while to find out it was redirecting me to the wrong page!
List of FREE courses you can find on Cisco Digital Learning:
- The SD-WAN Mastery Collection
- A-SDW-START – 6 credits
- A-SDW-DATPLN – 6 credits
- A-SDW-OVRLAY – 5 credits
- A-SDW-APPEXP – 6 credits
- A-SDW-CTRPLN – 2 credits
- More SD-WAN
- A-SDW-BRSEC – 11 credits
- CUST-SDA-FUND – 12 credits
- A-SDA-FASTSTART – 5 credits
- ISE
- CUST-SDA-ISE – 4 credits
- DNAC
- A-DNAC-ASSUR – 4 credits
These free courses bring you to a total of 61 credits! Enough to renew a Associate or Specialist certification. You’re not too far off for a Professional, so it’s still a win for me!
Hope this helps! 🙂