Just over a year ago I sat the Office 365 beta exams 70-323 & 70-321 and blogged about my thoughts.
The problem with these two exams is that they were heavily focussed on the Enterprise realm of Office 365 – with a lot of content being around ADFS, PowerShell, Exchange 2010 hybrids, and advanced SharePoint functionality.
In September 2012 Microsoft responded to partner feedback that these exams were impractical for many SMB partners by introducing by introducing 74-324: Administering Office 365 for Small Business.
On behalf of Microsoft Australia I recently (a year and 4 days after doing the other two exams) took this exam and found it to be much less Enterprise-focussed, but not really SMB. There were almost no questions at all about the Small Business licence (aka P SKU), and some of the questions were still from Enterprise areas.
What disappointed me about the exam was the quality. Out of 35 questions:
– two were identical (over 5% of your mark comes from this!)
– one question only allowed you to choose 3 options but there were actually 4 that were correct
– one question had out of date answers (so therefore no correct answer if you used current information)
– several questions provided no correct options
I believe that out of 35 question approximately 7-10 are wrong, meaning you have limited chances to have a correct answer. Out of the remaining 25+ questions you will really need to know your content.
If you are looking at taking this exam my colleague and fellow MVP Mark O’Shea has done a great write-up on his blog of what you need to study as well as a preparation guide for the Australian partner blog.
Discover more from Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP
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This is the same list of issues I have had with the test in the USA. I have sat this test 3 times and each time missed by 1, 2 or 3 questions. There is definitly legacy information that causes you to second guess questions. I also had duplicate questions during two sittings. I would guess at least 35% of the questions on the Test felt rushed and poorly writen.
This test needs a lot of work and I have been waiting for several months before I give it another run.