The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 3

Other articles in this series:

• The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 1
• The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 2

2Certs, 1 Stone

Well, this week I am finally able to wrap up this three-part miniseries on my journey to the MCSE: Communication. Consequently, in the process of pursuing my MCSE: Communication, I also achieved the MCSA: Office 365 simultaneously upon finishing my last exam on Wednesday, the 70-347 exam.

While I have covered the exam path options pretty thoroughly in the previous posts of this series, I will do a brief recap. On Microsoft's site, they show that the first two exams in this path are 70-346 and 70-347, which are both Office 365 exams (and as such, cover Lync Online). Upon completing both of these exams, you would have achieved your MCSA: Office 365 before achieving the MCSE: Communication, which would have been a product of the final two exams: 70-336 and 70-337. However, I went backwards, obtaining the Lync-specific exams first. Once I had these, I didn't posses any particular cert, and had to pursue the Office 365 ones next. This is how I ended up getting both certs upon completing that one last exam. As mentioned in the previous articles, MCITP holders should also be able to pursue the 70-417 in addition to the Lync exams, in leui of the MCSA: Office 365 exams. My personal recommendation, especially if you are interested in UC and the growing presence of Office 365, is to go the route that I ended up opting for.

70-347 Exam Prep Tips

So, up to this point, I have given exam tips and preparation suggestions for the other 3 exams. The last one, 70-347, won't differ too much from my suggestion for 70-346 here. As with 70-346, make sure you hit up the pertinent Technet and Office 365 Support sites thoroughly, and continue to reference them throughout testing and use of other materials, like books.

Once again, THE MOST helpful thing I can recommend to prepare for this exam is to purchase an Office 365 Business Essentials license at a minimum ($6/month for a single-user license), and get as intimately familiar with the Office 365 Admin Center as you can. In the case of 70-347, don't only get familiar with the Office 365 Admin Center, but also get very familiar with each admin center for each product, like the admin centers for Lync Online and Exchange Online. Really spend a lot of time exploring all your options within SharePoint Online as well. All of this is critical to achieving familiarity with the product, and understanding what is being asked of you on exam questions.

Also, I am going to strongly recommend the 70-347 CBTNugget series: https://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training/microsoft-office-365-70-347. This series is only 4 hours total, and each nugget is very short (usually only a few minutes). It is a great way to focus in on certain aspects, and really get to know them and the procedures.

Finally the Microsoft Press Store Exam Ref for this exam is not due out until September of 2015, so if you are testing before them, sorry. If you are discovering this blog after that, though, please consider looking into this book as another good tool for exam preparation: http://www.amazon.com/Exam-70-347-Enabling-Office-Services/dp/1509300678/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1429890800&sr=8-4&keywords=70-347.

That's all folks!

I am glad to have all that studying and testing behind me, and thrilled to now be a member of the MCSE: Communication community (as well as the MCSA: Office 365 community). I hope this series has been helpful to those of you wishing to pursue the same certifications, and I wish you the best of luck on your testing. The weekend is upon us, and I am ready to celebrate!

Stay techy, my frieds!

The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 2

Other articles in this series:

• The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 1
• The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 3

Exam 70-346: CHECK

So, I passed the 70-346 exam yesterday, and heavy studying/preparation is already under way for 70-347 (hoping to follow up with that success very soon).

Alright, calm down there R2D2; let's wait until we actually get the MCSE: Communications certification upon successful completion of the next exam! For those of you that are unfamiliar with the exam requirements for the MCSE: Communications, please review the first blog post in this three-part series. In that post, I mentioned that I have already completed the Lync Server exams: 70-336 and 70-337. Now, with 70-346 under my belt, that leaves only 70-347.

The full title of 70-346 is "Managing Office 365 Identities and Requirements". For the full list of objectives and topics covered by this exam, check out Microsoft's official page for this exam: https://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-us/exam-70-346.aspx.

Exam Preparation Tips

I would love to point you in the direction of one of the lovely Microsoft Press Store "Exam Ref" books for 70346, but unfortunately, there is not currently one out. HOWEVER, it is in the works, and is available for pre-order on Amazon, if you are planning on taking the exam any time after July 10, 2015 (as currently displayed on the product page on Amazon). Here is the link for the book in case you want to pre-order: http://www.amazon.com/70-346-Managing-Office-Identities-Requirements/dp/150930066X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1429281084&sr=8-5&keywords=70-346.

Now, despite a good exam reference book not being available quite yet, there are still some very effective tools for getting well prepared for this exam. First, the exam details page that I linked to above lists out all the primary objective areas to clue you into the topics that would be good to get very familiar with. From that point, Technet and the https://support.office.microsoft.com/ offer extremely thorough details on everything you could possibly need to know for the exam. Granted, it is very difficult to go through and intimately learn all pertinent data directly from Technet documentation, but that is truly the ultimate source of knowledge for this material.

In addition to pouring over documentation as mentioned above, the thing that I found EXTREMELY helpful at exam time was real experience, both within the Office 365 Admin Center, and with spinning up virtual test servers and testing various Directory Synchronization scenarios and Powershell cmdlets. To accomplish this, I signed up for an Office 365 Business Essentials account a few months back at the month-to-month rate for a single license ($6/month). This is very affordable, and will let you test most scenarios that the exam might throw your way. I became as familiar as I could with all the different areas within the Office 365 Admin Center, especially in regards to provisioning users, since the title of the exam suggests that that is the focus.

Now, as far as testing remote management of the Office 365 environment, and synchronizing an on-prem environment with the Azure-based environment, this obviously requires a lab of some sort. I STRONGLY recommend doing this for preparation. However, I understand that costs can add up for such a lab. In my case, I did my testing on one or two virtual machines that I spun up in the Rackspace Managed Cloud. This can be fairly affordable for exam preparation if you simply spin up the servers for the timeframe you need, and then delete them once done. Billing is hourly, so you are only billed from the moment the servers are spun up to the moment they are deleted and no longer using up space on the host servers. While I prefer Rackspace (Disclaimer: my employment with this company may or may not make me biased), you could set up a similar lab environment with your Cloud provider of choice. Check out my earlier blog to read about what my small lab environment looked like in the Cloud: http://blog.msucguy.com/2015/04/office-365-directory-synchronization.html.

Now, I will NOT go into detail about specifics of what you might find on the exam, obviously, but there are a couple helpful points that I can offer. First, just like with Exchange, Lync/Skype for Business, and various other Microsoft platforms, Microsoft offers a number of very helpful tools for anything from diagnostics to preparing your environment. Some of the tools that can be used for your on-prem Lync or Exchange environments can even be used to test out your Office 365 environment. Take the time to get to learn all the available diagnostic/connectivity/preparation tools available for Office 365, and try to test some out if possible for a more solidified understanding of their usefulness.

The second, and final, point that I will make in getting ready for this exam is one that you may have heard echoed for many of Microsoft's exams over the last couple years. Powershell has become hugely integrated with a large number of Microsoft Server applications and operating systems, and Office 365 is no exception. Take the time to learn how to manage your Office 365 environment, resources, and users in both the available Office 365 Administrative Center, and in remote Powershell cmdlets. If nothing else, this will be extremely useful in your day-to-day management of your own Office 365 environment.

Well, that's all I've got for 70-346. If you plan on taking this exam, the best of luck to you! You will hear from me soon on my experiences with 70-347, hopefully within the context of two new certifications!

Stay techy, my friends!

The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 1

Other posts in this series:

• The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 2
• The "MCSE: Communication" Certification Journey: Part 3

Hello fellow Microsoft UC enthusiasts! This post is my first official blog post on my new O365-based blog for all things Microsoft UC (though it will be primarily focused on Lync and Skype for Business). While trying to decide on the topic that I should write about for my maiden voyage post, I came to the conclusion that the most fitting topic for a first post would be a discussion on the certification process for the Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE): Communications certification. As I am in the process of obtaining this cert (half-way there), I will discuss my personal experiences thus far, what has helped me prepare for exams, and what the road ahead looks like.
For those that are not aware, the MCSE: Communications cert ​is the professional-level certification that Microsoft offers to distinguish an individual that is ​proven in their knowledge and abilities in regards to Lync Server 2013. Many organizations that are looking to hire for Lync Engineers or senior Lync positions often would like to see this certification on your resume. The official page for this certification ​​​is here, and it very simply outlines the exams that are required to earn the certification, as well as courses and other optional training that will help prepare you..
The first two exams that are listed, 70-346 and 70-347, are more specific to ​setting up and managing various services within Office 365. The last two exams, however, are actually specific to Lync Server 2013: 70-336 and 70-337. As my role is currently a Lync Engineer, I started with 70-336 and 70-337, and will be following up with 70-346 and 70-347.
Before I get into my experiences thus far, however, I wanted to point out that you can achieve this exam by only taking three exams if you are already possess one of the following certifications, as listed on the link above:

• MCSA: Windows Server 2008
• MCITP: Virtualization Administrator on Windows Server 2008 R2
• MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010
• MCITP: Lync Server Administrator 2010
• MCITP: SharePoint Administrator 2010
• MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator on Windows 7​

While the website does not make mention of it, the MCITP: Enterprise Administrator is also qualified, and I know this because that is what I currently possess, and had to look deeper into it. Essentially, if you have one of the above certifications already, you can take 70-417, "Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2012​" in place of the O365 exams. While this may be a tempting route to go because it is one exam versus two, Microsoft does not really treat 70-417 like one exam in terms of the exam structure or the material needed to study. The exam actually is being taken in place of 70-410, 70-411, and 70-412, and the study recommendations and guides pretty much mirror all three of those tests, except that they get combined onto one test. If you do the math, that is a LOT of preparation and studying for the one exam, whereas taking 70-346 and 70-347 individually will be a much a much lighter load for each test. 

Personally, I was going to go down the 70-417 road at first, but after doing the above analysis, I decided it would be not only easier to go the O365 exam route, but learning all the ins-and-outs about O365 would actually be HUGELY beneficial as a Lync Engineer. Let's face it, more and more customers are moving into the cloud, or opting for hybrid environments, and being able to intelligently discuss those options with a customer, in addition to the usual On-Prem options, will be incredibly valueable in the future.

Now, as I mentioned, I have already completed 70-336 and 70-337. Ok, I take that back, I did not mention that; I merely stated that I started with them, so to clarify, I did indeed pass them. Ok, I'll  be honest, I passed 70-336 on the second try! At any rate, these exams are particularly difficult to prepare for, because as you will find, there are far fewer study guides in existence for them, and there are precisely ZERO practice exams in existence. Nope, not even from Transcender or MeasureUp. Super helpful, right?

No need to despair, though. While the preparation options are fewer for these exams, there are still some good options. Of course, there is always the Microsoft Official Courses for each exam, though it is not always easy to convince the boss to send you to training for a couple grand a pop, and who wants to shell out that money on their own? Not this guy! There are two main resources that I used, and they were immensely helpful and educational in relation to these exams.

The first one was Chris Ward's CBT Nugget series on Lync. He has two series, one for each exam. With a "Nugget" being an individual video on a single topic within the exam, you can pace yourself nicely, and take in some good material, without getting overloaded and bored to death. You can watch all the Nuggets you want on a 7-day trial, and then you can go month-to-month after that for only $99. I paid for a month, and it was well worth it. Check it out: https://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training/microsoft-lync-server-2013-70-336

The second tool I used a handy book called "Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Unleashed" by Alex Lewis, Tom Pacyk, David Ross, and Randy Wintle. Some tech books can be very dry and difficult to read, and despite that fact that the book is still a very technical book, I found it to be an easy read. It explained things very well, while still digging pretty deep into various topics. I would venture to say that there probably wasn't much on the exams at all, if anything, that was not covered in this book. For roughly $35 new on Amazon, it was totally worth the money: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Lync-Server-2013-Unleashed/dp/0672336154/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428096680&sr=8-1&keywords=microsoft+lync+server+2013+unleashed.

Well, I realize this has been kind of a long post, but I am thrilled to be launching this blog, and I can't wait to start digging into some more technical topics very soon! I will also be following up on this post as I make progress through 70-346 and 70-347.

Stay techy, my friends!