Microsoft Learning retires the Microsoft 365 Teamwork Administrator Associate certification
This is a sad blog post for me to write, but unfortunately Microsoft Learning has announced today that they are retiring the Microsoft 365 Certified: Teamwork Administrator Associate certification on August 31st, 2020.
As a reminder, the Microsoft 365 Teamwork Administrator certification was testing on the following topics, in two different exams, the MS-300 and MS-301:
- Configure and manage SharePoint Online
- Configure and manage OneDrive for Business
- Configure and manage Teams
- Configure and manage workload integrations
- Configure and manage SharePoint On-Premises
- Configure and manage hybrid scenarios
- Migrate to SharePoint Online
What happens if you passed this certification, or if you were studying for it? Even if a certification that you’ve earned has been retired, it remains on your transcript and can be shared as usual. A retired certification remains in the active section of your transcript for at least two years after its retirement. Therefore, if you find that those topics are important and you want to showcase your skills in those topics, you have until August 31st, 2020 to pass the MS-300 and MS-301 to achieve the certification! You can view the official announcement here!
Microsoft Learning’s answer to this retirement is that everyone should take the MS-700 exam to become a Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate. (You can find a study guide here)
My take on this retirement
I am personally disappointed in this announcement for multiple reasons, but mainly because I know that there are still a lot of admins out there who manage SharePoint / OneDrive / Stream/ Yammer / etc and would love to get certified. The MS-300 covered the “collaboration” part of Microsoft Teams , and nothing about calling, managing voice , and auto attendants in Teams. While the MS-700 is great for Skype for Business admins transitioning to Teams, I do believe the “Microsoft 365 Teamwork” admin was a real role out there. Now, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the MS-301 get retired, as Microsoft, and therefore Microsoft Learning not investing a lot in on-premises anymore. We don’t have any Windows Server 2019 or SQL Server 2019 exams anymore, so I wouldn’t have been surprised to see SharePoint 2019 go, but to see SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Stream, Yammer, etc , certification content was completely a shock.
What should you do?
Well, there are really two options that I see. First one, you can still go get your Teamwork Administrator Associate certification until August 21st and it will be valid for two years! By the rate Microsoft changes certifications, we don’t know what will happen in two years anyway, so we might, or might not see a new certification for SharePoint Online out there! There is some great content out there, including over 19 hours of content on Pluralsight for the MS-300 , as well as a ton of content on the MS-301. Furthermore, as announced by Microsoft only yesterday, if you are a consulting company that wants to achieve the Advanced specialization – Teamwork Deployment , you need to have 4 individuals in the company who have passed both MS-300 and MS-301 , so those certifications will still be valuable for your organization!
The other option is to go get Microsoft Teams certified, which I know a lot of the takers of the MS-300/301 were interested in anyways. To get the Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate certification, you only need to pass the MS-700 and you are good to go. You can find study resources over here!
What do you think of this retirement? Let me know in the comments!
