Monday 8 August 2016

Failed Microsoft MCSA 70-347.........PowerShell not up to scratch

Last Friday (5th August 2016) I narrowly missed the pass mark and failed the MCSA exam 70-347 “Enabling Office 365 Services”. This is the second exam required to become MCSA certified in Office 365.

Firstly, it’s been over a year since my last Microsoft exam, secondary I was surprised at how difficult this exam was. I was arrogantly thinking with almost 3 years deploying Office 365 (+ 5 with Exchange/Lync/SharePoint) that this would be fairly easy. How wrong I was, the exam focuses on the deeper configurations around Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Skype for Business Online.  Which means only one thing in a Microsoft exam, loads and loads of PowerShell.

Microsoft have introduced this new question type in the form of a case study in which they give you x amount of questions with a PowerShell command in it, and they simply ask you for a “Yes/No” response to whether it will achieve a stated task.

Reviewing my score report my weakest areas were;

·        Manage anti malware and ant-spam policies
·        Plan a collaboration solution
·        Plan for Exchange Online

As I review the exam blue print it appears I need to work on the following areas;

·        Exchange Online Archiving
·        Legal and Litigation Holds
·        eDiscovery across Exchange & SharePoint
·        ActiveSync Policies
·        Mailbox migration strategies
·        Span and anti-virus policies and ATP
·        SIP domains, addresses and routing
·        Mailbox permissions
·        SFB presence, external communications
·        SFB push notifications
·        SFB non-archival and eDiscovery integration
·        SharePoint site collection permissions, quota’s, provisioning

All in all it’s quite an exhaustive list, I do not feel particularly weak in these areas as I consult with customers on a daily basis around most of them.  

That being said, do I type and troubleshoot PowerShell commands around these topics on a daily basis……………. NO. Do I have a strong grounding in PS, YES.

Moral of the story, if you are doing ANY Microsoft exam, make sure you go PowerShell’ed to the teeth or you will undoubtedly fail.

The plan is to reload for this coming Friday and hopefully clear the exam.