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New Certification: MCSA Office 365

14 Comments

Microsoft is silently working and has made public a new certification about the cloud: Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate: Office 365. As Microsoft is increasingly trying to push companies to the cloud, IT pros will have to learn the migration process as well as learn how to help business get the most out of Office 365. The MCSA Office 365 will probably be the highest O365 certification level (no MCSE) and will provide IT professionals a certification that they are experts in the migration and administration of Office 365 business productivity services.

Even though as you see, the MCSA Office 365 is not on the official MCSA List yet, I will try to share as much information as I can with you. All this information is public, but hidden in the Microsoft Learning Website.

Exams

This MCSA Certification will only require two exams as opposed to the others who most require three exams:

1.   Exam 70-346: Managing Office 365 Identities and Requirements

Summary of Skills Being Measured:

  • Provision Office 365
  • Plan and Implement Networking and Security in Office 365
  • Manage Cloud Identities
  • Implement and Manage Identities by Using DirSync
  • Implement and Manage Federated Identities [single sign-on (SSO)]
  • Monitor and Troubleshoot Office 365 Availability and Usage

Furthermore, there seems to already be a MOC (Microsoft Official Course) for this exam :
20346B: Managing Office 365 Identities and Services (5 Days) , however there is no info on it on the internet yet, and it’s the “B” version but there is no “A” version either!

2. Exam 70-347: Enabling Office 365 Services

Summary of Skills Being Measured:

  • Manage Clients and End-User Devices
  • Provision SharePoint Online Site Collections
  • Configure Exchange Online and Lync Online for End Users
  • Plan for Exchange Online and Lync Online

This Exam also has not one… but two MOCs listed on the website. One of them is the 20346A and the second one is 20346B. In my opinion this is either a typo from MS Learning, or in 5 days you could learn for both exams, which would actually be a good deal!

Both Exams are currently in Development and should come out on February 17th 2014!

Audience

Candidates for this exam are IT professionals who take part in evaluating, planning, deploying, and operating the Office 365 services, including its dependencies, requirements, and supporting technologies. Candidates should have experience with the Office 365 Admin Center and an understanding of Microsoft Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online, Office 365 ProPlus, and Windows Azure Active Directory. This includes experience with service descriptions, configuration options, and integrating services with existing identity management and on-premises infrastructure to support the business requirements of an organization.

Public Beta

Not sure if this is the right term, however if you want to try the exams and maybe be one of the first O365 MCSA, you can now already book them at Prometric, however you will still have to pay the 150$ . Note: The Beta Exams start with 071- while the “RTM” ones start with 070-

MCSA Office 365

If you pass the exam, it will count as passed and you won’t have to re-do it again, and if you fail… well you fail. However you’re in luck! Microsoft Learning currently has the Second Shot Promotion at the moment! This is how the Second Shot works for Beta Exams: (Thanks to Dan Usher for finding the info!)

If you fail a beta (prefix 071) exam using your Second Shot voucher, Prometric will email your retake voucher code for the live (070) version within a week of receiving your beta results. This only applies to regular-priced individual technical exams, not certification pack exams.

Source- MS Learning

So, if you ever fail the beta and you used the Second Shot, you can still take the Real Exam for free when it comes out! I think it’s a pretty sweet deal from the part of Microsoft!

Personal Remarks

I think finally having a solid and planned O365 Certification is a good thing for the Microsoft Partner Ecosystem. Talking about MPN, I do believe that maybe in the future, this certification might become a requirement for certain competencies, or even replace the Office 365 Technical Assessment required in january for Collaboration & Portals. Furthermore I think that having 2 IT-PRO exams focused on O365 proves that O365 isn’t the “end of the IT-Pro”. In fact, the IT-Pro will be needed just as much, but we(I am an IT-Pro as well J ) will have to learn new skills and scenarios.

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14 Comments

  • December 3, 2013 at 2:02 pm
    The

    It is open for public ?

    Reply
  • December 5, 2013 at 9:54 am
    Jason Rollison

    I wonder if they will have an upgrade track from Pros who already achieved MCITP: Office 365 (like me!) Here’s hoping.

    Reply
    • December 5, 2013 at 3:01 pm

      Hey,

      I got no clue actually, but it’s a very good question! I will ask and get back to you!

      Reply
    • December 13, 2013 at 9:57 am

      Hey, look at the comment by J.Seymour on the same article! Unfortunately, no upgrade :(.

      Reply
  • December 12, 2013 at 6:44 pm
    J. Seymour

    Hi Vlad, I’m in charge of the Office Portfolio here at Microsoft Learning, my folks create the actual learning content, and I wanted to clear up a few things mentioned above. First, thanks for the interest in the new exams, and course, we’re really excited about them.

    Course 20346 is the course that maps to the two exams (70-346/70-347). The letter after the course name (i.e. 20346A or 20346B) are just versions. We do a test teach with real students after the A version and quickly come out with the B version with updates, suggestions, etc. After that, any major revision of the course would get a letter, though we’re always looking at the content to make tweaks to it, especially for a course covering a service like O365 which can change frequently so a course can change even though the letter doesn’t if those changes don’t reach a certain level (typically touching the VMs if there are any).

    Also, we do not have an upgrade from the old O365 MCITP. The methodology for the creation of those older exams is quite different from the MCSA so we’re not really comparing apples to apples. One of the complaints we got from 321/323 was that it went too deep into the specific workloads whereas the O365 MCSA focuses on the service itself and just barely touches on the various workloads. The thought was that the student would be an IT Generalist or person on an O365 deployment that was focused on the service/tenant and that an Exchange/Lync/SharePoint specialist would pick up where the MCSA leaves off.

    That said, we are considering the next step for an O365 certification path but we haven’t made any decisions about what exactly that would look like. Should we go deeper into the workloads? Should we focus on more esoteric issues with directory synchronization or cover scenarios that aren’t as mainstream as we did for the MCSA? We’re investigating that in the next few months and hope to make an informed decision around the time these exams officially go live (mid-Feb.). I’d love to hear what you guys think we should do for an “MCSE”-type next step.

    Cheers.

    Reply
  • January 17, 2014 at 9:24 am

    Hello Vlad
    I found the promotion code for the two exams, and now everyone can pass the certification absolutely for free, code are available on my blog : http://nizar.grindi.net/certification-gratuite-mcsa-office-365/

    Reply
  • April 29, 2014 at 2:08 am

    Hi are the book study guides available for these exams yet?

    Reply
  • January 11, 2015 at 5:11 am
    andy

    Is the mcsa office 365 certification can expired?

    Reply
    • January 14, 2015 at 1:13 pm

      Hello,

      MCSA Certificatiosn do not expire, only MCSE!

      Reply
  • April 5, 2016 at 4:45 am
    Nilofar

    Is there a second shot for 70-346 and 70-347 exams now

    Reply

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