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.
