My MS-100 Study Guide is designed to help you prepare for the MS-100 Exam by answering difficult questions you would not know the answers to without already taking the exam and helping you create a solid study plan. From someone who has successfully passed the exam… twice!
By the end of the guide, you will be well on your way to booking the MS-100 exam and passing, with a shiny new badge to your name. To add a little context to this post, I took the exam first in 2021, then in early 2022 and have ensured all the information contained in the MS-100 Study Guide is relevant for the current date.
This study guide has been updated for the May 3rd 2022 exam update.
About the MS-100 Exam
The MS-100 exam is aimed at individuals to manage many services within their Microsoft 365 tenant at an enterprise level. Here is a snippet of the description from the ‘Schedule exam’ page:
“Candidates for this exam are Microsoft 365 enterprise administrators who take part in evaluating, planning, migrating, deploying, and managing Microsoft 365 services. They perform Microsoft 365 tenant management tasks for an enterprise, including its identities, security, compliance, Power Platform, and supporting technologies.
Candidates have a working knowledge of Microsoft 365 workloads and should have been an administrator for at least one Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, or Windows 10 deployment. Candidates also have a working knowledge of networking, server administration, and IT fundamentals such as DNS, Active Directory, and PowerShell.”
The MS-100 exam is part of the requirement to earn the Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator Expert certification, which is a well sought after certification for both engineers and employers.
How is the MS-100 Exam weighted?
- Design and implement Microsoft 365 services (25-30%)
- Manage user identity and roles (25%-30%)
- Manage access and authentication (15-20%)
- Plan Office 365 workloads and applications (25-30%)
How can I prepare for the MS-100 Exam?
How to prepare:
- Review the MS-100 exam skills outline document. The skills outline should be your first task when preparing for the MS-100 exam. The official Microsoft document lists all the skills you will be questioned on during the exam. Use this to identify any weak areas where you can focus your study.
- Work through the MS-100 Microsoft Learn collection. The Microsoft learn collection contains all the learning paths and modules to best prepare you for the MS-100 exam. Offered directly from Microsoft, for free. You will be giving informational text, case studies, exams and labs all from the Microsoft learn website.
- Use a trial tenant to practice and gain hands-on experience! Gaining hands-on experience is often the most superior way for you to retain the knowledge you have read about. Better yet, a great tip is to use this experience on your CV once you have passed the exam!
- Ask your peers or colleagues! Sometimes to best motivate yourself and receive encouragement is to speak to the people you work closely with every day. Ask them if they have taken the exam and if not, maybe start a study group.
- Get familiar with how the exams are formatted with the Microsoft Exam Sandbox. This short demo exam will help you become familiar with how the exams are formatted and the different styles of questions that will be used.
- Join our community on Reddit! r/azureexam. Join our community on Reddit and post any question you like. It is the perfect place to ask recent exam takers for their advice and understand their exam experience.
- Book the exam and set yourself a realistic deadline. Book the exam! make sure you give yourself a target to work toward and ensure it is hard to set in your diary. Fit it around your home life, book it in your work calendar and give yourself at least 30 days to study.
How long should I study for the MS-100 exam?
You should aim to study for at least 1 hour a day for a minimum of 30 days. Of course, you can study more than this, or less. But this is will provide you with a solid foundation going into the exam.
The exam material is broken down into 4 sections, try to dedicate 1 section per week.
Is the MS-100 a hard exam?
The MS-100 exam is part 1 of 2 exams required to earn the Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator Expert certification. This being an expert-level certification, it is normal to find the exam quite hard.
It is important to ensure you have a solid study plan and feel confident going into this exam. The criteria for passing are standard for Microsoft exams however the content covers a wide array of Microsoft 365 services that you need to know about.
How many questions are in the MS-100 exam?
The MS-100 exam will consist of between 40 and 60 questions. Usually, around 30-40 are multiple-choice, drag and drop or fill in the blank style questions. around 5 are yes/no style questions and the remaining questions are case studies.
How long is the MS-100 exam?
The MS-100 exam will have a total duration of 180 minutes. You will be able to check-in 30 minutes before your exam also to complete the check-in process.
Are there labs in the MS-100 exam?
Currently there are no labs in the MS-100 exam.
MS-100 Study Guide: Microsoft Docs
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT M365 SERVICES (25-30%)
Plan Architecture
- plan integration of Microsoft 365 and on-premises environments
- plan an identity and authentication solution
- plan enterprise application modernization
Deploy a Microsoft 365 tenant
- manage domains
- configure organizational settings
- complete the organizational profile
- add a Microsoft partner or work with Microsoft FastTrack
- complete the subscription setup wizard
- plan and create a tenant
- edit an organizational profile
- plan and create subscription(s)
- configure tenant-wide workload settings
Manage Microsoft 365 subscription and tenant health
- manage service health alerts
- create and manage service requests
- create internal service health response plan
- monitor service health
- monitor license allocations
- configure and review reports, including Power BI, Azure Monitor logs, Log Analytics workspaces, and Microsoft 365 reporting
- schedule and review security and compliance reports
- schedule and review usage metrics
Plan migration of users and data
- identify data to be migrated and migration methods
- identify users and mailboxes to be migrated and migration methods
- plan migration of on-premises users and groups
- import PST files
MANAGE USER IDENTITIES AND ROLES (25-30%)
Design identity strategy
- evaluate requirements and solutions for synchronization
- evaluate requirements and solutions for identity management
- evaluate requirements and solutions for authentication
Plan identity synchronization
- design directory synchronization
- implement directory synchronization with directory services, federation services, and Azure endpoints by using Azure AD Connect sync
- plan for directory synchronization using Azure AD cloud sync
Manage identity synchronization with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
- configure and manage directory synchronization by using Azure AD cloud sync
- configure directory synchronization by using Azure AD Connect
- monitor Azure AD Connect Health
- manage Azure AD Connect synchronization
- configure object filters
- configure password hash synchronization
- implement multi-forest AD Connect scenarios
Manage Azure AD identities
- plan Azure AD identities
- implement and manage self-service password reset (SSPR)
- manage access reviews
- manage groups
- manage passwords
- manage product licenses
- manage users
- perform bulk user management
Manage roles
- plan user roles
- manage admin roles
- allocate roles for workloads
- manage role allocations by using Azure AD
MANAGE ACCESS AND AUTHENTICATION (15-20%)
Manage authentication
- design an authentication method
- configure authentication
- implement an authentication method
- manage authentication
- monitor authentication
Plan and implement secure access
- design a conditional access solution
- implement entitlement packages
- implement Azure AD Identity Protection
- manage identity protection
- implement conditional access
- manage conditional access
- implement and secure access for guest and external users
Configure application access
- configure application registration in Azure AD
- configure Azure AD Application Proxy
- publish enterprise apps in Azure AD
- get and manage Integrated apps from the Microsoft 365 admin center
PLAN MICROSOFT 365 WORKLOADS AND APPLICATIONS (25-30%)
Plan for Microsoft 365 Apps deployment
- plan for Microsoft connectivity
- manage Microsoft 365 Apps
- plan for Office online
- assess readiness using Microsoft analytics
- plan Microsoft 365 App compatibility
- manage Microsoft 365 apps deployment and software downloads
- plan for Microsoft 365 apps updates
- plan Microsoft telemetry and reporting
- plan for and manage policy settings using the Office cloud policy service
Plan for messaging deployments
- plan migration strategy
- plan messaging deployment
- identify hybrid requirements
- plan for connectivity
- plan for mail routing
- plan email domains
Plan for Microsoft SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business
- plan migration strategy
- plan external share settings
- identify hybrid requirements
- manage access configurations
- manage Microsoft groups
- manage SharePoint tenant and site settings
Plan for Microsoft Teams infrastructure
- plan for communication and call quality and capacity
- plan for Phone System
- plan Microsoft Teams deployment
- plan Microsoft Teams organizational settings
- plan for guest and external access
- plan for Microsoft Teams hybrid connectivity and co-existence
Plan Microsoft Power Platform integration
Summary
Thank you for taking the time to read my MS-100 study guide. If you have any questions about the exam please leave them below and I will respond.
Check out some more guides similar to the MS-100:
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