1.1 ACP-120 Exam Structure, Blueprint & Testing Strategy

ACP-120 Exam Structure, Blueprint & Testing Strategy

The Atlassian Certified Professional – Jira Administration for Cloud (ACP-120) certification is Atlassian's role-based credential for people who configure and run Jira Cloud sites. Atlassian describes the target candidate as a Jira admin who can translate business requirements into Jira configuration: access and permissions, project setup, work types and fields, workflows and automation, notifications, advanced search, and system settings.

This section gives you the verified exam logistics, the official ACP-120 Exam Topics V2 blueprint (version dated April 2025), how the blueprint maps to this guide, and a practical study plan.

Terminology note: During 2025 Atlassian began renaming Jira Cloud concepts in the product UI and documentation. Issues are now work items, projects are spaces, and issue types are work types. The ACP-120 V2 blueprint still uses the older words (project, issue, issue type), so this guide uses the blueprint vocabulary. When you practice in a live site, expect menus such as Settings > Work items where older material says Settings > Issues.

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Official Exam Specifications

Atlassian publishes these exam specifics on the ACP-120 certification page (Atlassian Learning, checked 26 September 2026):

Two points trip up candidates who rely on older prep material:

• Kryterion Webassessor is no longer the scheduling path. Current Atlassian instructions point you to the Atlassian Certification portal hosted on CertMetrics.
• The passing standard is a raw count, not "75%". Atlassian states the passing score as 38 correct out of 60 questions.

Renewal: Atlassian certifications are valid for 24 months. Atlassian's renewal program (announced in 2024) lets ACP holders renew by earning continuing-education (CE) units from Atlassian learning activities, or by retaking the exam. Check the current CE requirement in the Atlassian certification FAQ well before your expiry date. The certification page does not publish a retake waiting period or retake discount, so confirm those details in the certification portal before you book a second attempt.

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The Seven Official Blueprint Domains (Exam Topics V2)

Atlassian's detailed exam-topics PDF (ACP-120 Exam Topics V2, April 2025) gives a precise weight for each domain. The certification web page shows the same seven domains as percentage bands. The two sources agree on six domains. For Workflows and Automation, the PDF gives 14% and the web page gives a 15–20% band. Use the PDF weights as planning figures, and treat each domain as roughly the size shown below.

Domain 1 is the largest by far. Access, permissions, and security make up more than a quarter of the exam, so expect many troubleshooting scenarios about why a user can or can't see or change something.

Blueprint Sub-Objectives

The V2 PDF breaks each domain into sub-objectives. Its numbering starts at 1.2 in Domain 1.

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How ACP-120 Questions Are Written

Atlassian's objectives are phrased as "determine", "configure", "understand", and "troubleshoot", so most questions are scenarios rather than menu-location trivia. Expect three recurring patterns:

1. Pick the Best-Practice Configuration

Several options may technically work, but only one is the scalable, recommended design. For example, if project leads need to control who can assign issues, you could:

• create a separate permission scheme for every project and hard-code groups (causes scheme sprawl);
• grant project leads the Administer Jira global permission (far too much access); or
• grant the permission to a project role in a shared permission scheme and let each project admin manage role membership (best practice).

2. Troubleshoot an Unexpected Behavior

• "A developer can't see a custom field on the Create dialog."
• "A QA analyst can view an issue but has no Close transition."
• "A user receives comment emails but not status-change emails."

You find the answer by walking through the layers that interact: product access, permission scheme, issue security, workflow conditions, field configuration, screens, and notification settings.

3. Predict the Outcome of a Change

• "What happens to existing issues when you change the project key?"
• "Which statuses count as done when you complete a sprint?"
• "Who receives the email when a group subscription uses currentUser()?"

If a question asks for more than one answer, the stem tells you how many to choose. Read it carefully.

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Six-Week Hands-On Study Plan

A free Jira Cloud site is the best study tool. Build every configuration you read about, then break it on purpose and fix it.

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Exam-Day Tactics

1. Read the final sentence of the stem first. Knowing whether you're asked for a root cause, the best configuration, or a predicted outcome keeps you focused.
2. Check which scheme or workflow the project actually uses. Many distractors describe a correct change made to the wrong scheme.
3. Remember that permissions are additive. Jira permission schemes have no "deny" entry. A user gets a permission if any grant (group, role, or user field) includes them.
4. Separate "hidden" from "not on the screen". A field hidden in the field configuration disappears everywhere for that issue type. A field left off a screen still exists and can hold values.
5. Separate company-managed from team-managed behavior. Many questions hinge on whether a feature such as permission schemes, notification schemes, or issue security schemes exists in the project type described.