The Study of this exam content is causing me no end of difficulty. Because of this, I have adopted my usual policy of forcing the issue and have booked my exam for Wednesday 30th July at 1130 AM in Seattle. I will be attending the internal TechReady conference and will be sitting in on as many Office 365 sessions as I can.

But why am I having such difficulty with the study when I have used the component parts of the product suite for many years?

• The Office suite of Products, both online and locally installed (known as on premises)
• Sharepoint
• Exchange
• Lync

So why then does the conglomeration of these products cause me such a headache?

Well with the constant upgrading of the Microsoft Learning certification exams, the types of questions one is likely to be asked are no longer limited to multiple choice and drag and drop type solutions. Checkout the Active-Screen ,Hot-Area and Build Lists mini videos to see what you will face. The Microsoft learning Experiences page here is a great place to start if you are unfamiliar with taking Microsoft certification exams. (Note here that from September 4th this year, there will be two choices for booking and taking your exam. You can sit your exam either at a Prometric centre or coming back after a seven year break at a Pearson Vue centre. Old hands definitely have a favourite interface and experience. It is equally important to note that the actual exam experience is exactly the same wherever and however you take it.)

This change in the method of asking questions can mean that you are presented with a screen taken from several layers down into the administration of a product that you are not familiar with. Such as the screen below.

 

any idea which product and where that comes from?

Anyone familiar with these exams can tell you that guessing, really is a last resort. So to be proficient in all the above products takes time, effort and no little patience. The benefit of a cloud solution such as Office 365 is that  there is very little on-premises configuration and installation to do.

I have been madly using my free trial of Office 365 to navigate the products and set up SharePoint Online sites and all the other great features that Office 365 provides.

To do this I have been using a OneNote notebook where I can drag and drop all the cool TechNet links and articles and also run through the MVA course too.

If you haven’t already signed up tot he Microsoft Virtual Academy, you really should its quite simply awesome!

The Office 365 syllabus is not limited to the course linked above, a search for Office 365 brings  up four pages of course content. So pick the correct ones read the synopsis and section headers to make sure you are not wasting valuable study time.

No matter how many courses you take and jump starts you watch, there is absolutely no substitute for using the product – hands on time and testing / breaking / fixing the software.

As a trainer I had many certifications but if I hadn’t used the product in a live environment I was always very reluctant to stand up and teach it, after all IT is not really a hands-off job.

So to end this short study update here is a list of a few key resources I have found and am using for my 70-347 study.

Office 365 Identity and Authentication Poster

MOC 20346A (B version Released July 2014)

MOC 10968B

TechNet Office 365 for IT pro page (great jump off point)

Office 365 Fast Track site (exam covers planning and deployment)

PowerShell Cmdlets for Licensing users (It would be a Blogg( Ed) post without PowerShell now would it)

Also go to the Windows Store and download

Posterpedia and the Microsoft Training and Certification Guide

Several excellent and relevant resources in there as well as a roadmap for your certification needs.

Must dash – studying to do!