From our in house training coordinator:
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The short answer is: that old AV certificate showing a person as a Unity Engineer will be valid until July 1, 2002 as a part of someone's qualifying as a Field Engineer 2 for the IP Telephony specialization (a partner program where a business has to have a whole bunch of people fulfilling different roles in order to sell our AVVID solutions). As long as they use the certificate before July 1 it will be valid. The thing about the IPT specialization is that it is a snapshot deal - what we're saying is "at the time of application, everyone on staff met the qualifications outlined on the web site." So, a partner could apply in June 2002 and have an FE 2 using an AV certificate and no one would look at their certification again until June 2003.
After July 1, there are only going to be two acceptable tests; the one we had out on Certification.net from May 2001 through today (April 15, 2002) and the proctored exam (9E0-805) available at either Drake Prometric or VUE Testing Centers. At some date in the not too distant future, we will only accept the proctored exam results. So, a person with an AV certificate would be best off taking the proctored exam if their company is going to be applying for IPT specialization after July 1, 2002.
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Jeff Lindborg
Unity Technical Lead/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)
