Category: Exams/Certifications

MB-400 Power Apps & Dynamics 365 Developer Exam

I haven’t usually been putting up posts around the exams that I take. A few months back I did decide to write one on the MB-600 exam (MB-600 Solution Architect Exam), which just took off! It was quite amazing (& pleasing) how many people were looking at it, & asking me questions around the exam.

As a result, I’ve decided to continue this, and am therefore now writing this post on the MB-400 exam.

There are several different ‘ranges’ of exams within the Dynamics 365/Power Platform space. These are aimed at different types of roles, or specific specialisation/s within a role. A good example of this is the MB-2xx range. It covers functional technology, and is split across the different ‘main’ areas of Dynamics 365.

The MB-400 (the only one in the range at the moment) is aimed at developers. According to the official description for the exam:

Candidates for this exam are Developers who work with Microsoft Power Apps model-driven apps in Dynamics 365 to design, develop, secure, and extend a Dynamics 365 implementation. Candidates implement components of a solution that include application enhancements, custom user experience, system integrations, data conversions, custom process automation, and custom visualizations.

Candidates must have strong applied knowledge of Power Apps model-driven apps in Dynamics 365, including in-depth understanding of customization, configuration, integration, and extensibility, as well as boundaries and constraints. Candidates should have a basic understanding of DevOps practices for Power Apps model-driven apps in Dynamics 365. Candidates must expose, store, and report on data.

Candidates should have development experience that includes JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, HTML, .NET, Microsoft Azure, Office 365, RESTful Web Services, ASP.NET, and Power BI.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I am NOT a developer. However I decided (for several reasons) to give this one a go, and see what would happen! I knew I’d be pushing myself out of my comfort zone, there would be things I wouldn’t understand/know at ALL, but hey – I was curious to see what would happen! Even more challenging, I decided to book & take it within a 24 hour period!

Now as this has been out for a little while (& isn’t in Beta), there’s thankfully some good resources on Microsoft Learn about it. Take a look at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/mb-400, where there are several learning paths that can be followed.

A big shout out as well to Julian Sharp & Joe Griffin who recently ran a multi-week course around it. The official Microsoft learning paths are great of course, but seem to miss out quite a bit of what’s actually needed to be known for this. The course that they ran covered a lot more. Hopefully there will be more courses like this run in the future!

When passing it (& assuming that you’ve passed the MB-200 as well), you get a lovely shiny badge!

Microsoft Certified: Power Apps + Dynamics 365 Developer Associate
I’m SO proud of this!

Once again, I sat the exam through the proctored option (ie from home). The experience went somewhat better than previous times. Amusingly I got told off by the proctor during the exam for ‘looking down at the keyboard’, rather than looking at the screen! I explained that I was using a different computer, & kept clicking the wrong mouse button on it (leaving aside that I was exhausted when doing it!).

So, as before, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!).

  • Model driven apps:
    • User experience
    • Show/hide fields
    • Change field labels
  • Canvas apps – functionality, online/offline capabilities, field types (including searching/filtering data)
  • Plugin debugging
  • Configuring security for system connections (security types)
  • D365 Web API – how it’s used, types of calls made from/to it
  • Azure API – making calls to/from it
  • Code for importing data (debugging, variables)
  • Advanced Find
  • Types of calls (synchronous, asynchronous, )
  • Data modelling
  • Creating & deploying solutions through different methods
  • Publisher versioning
  • Identifying code variables, and saying what would happen in given scenarios
  • Power Apps Component Framework (PCF) – how to use, how to package components, how to deploy
  • PCF components & classes
  • JavaScript – code examples, what happens when a given scenario happens
  • JavaScript functions
  • Dynamics 365 Ribbon – what it is, what you can do with it, different types of functionality & ways to do things with it
  • Security & Permissions, including roles, teams, field level security, business units
  • Workflows, Power Automate Flows (how they’re set up, different functionality within them, how to do things with them given a specific scenario)
  • Business Rules (what they can/can’t do, different scopes, etc)
  • Field types (eg option-sets, calculated fields, roll-up fields, multi-select, etc)
  • Importing solutions – requirements for this, versioning, deployment between environments
  • Compatibility with Microsoft Teams

Now many of these (as I said above) are outside of my comfort zone. In fact, I’d say that even with absolutely cramming for a whole day for the exam, I still felt that I was guessing the answer for at least 30% of the questions. Admittedly though, as Julian Sharp says, a ‘gut feeling’ answer is usually right most of the time, coming from what the subconscious has absorbed during revision.

I was REALLY happy that I got a passing mark for this, & admittedly was VERY relieved as well. So now another lovely shiny badge in my collection, and I’m now going to go and update it on LinkedIn as well!

If you have any questions on this, feel free to drop them below, and I’ll try to help out as best as I can!

MB-600 Solution Architect Exam

I haven’t really touched very much on any exams that I’ve taken so far during the lifetime of this blog. I’ve mentioned them a few times (ie how important they can be), but haven’t really gone into detail.

However, having seen various comments online recently around the MB-600 exam, I thought I’d do a post on it with my thoughts and comments!

So, what is the MB-600 exam? Well, it’s sort of the ‘Holy Grail’ for Dynamics 365/Power Platform. This is due to the actual full name for it – ‘Exam MB-600: Microsoft Power Apps + Dynamics 365 Solution Architect’. Indeed – assuming you pass it (and you’ve already passed the MB200, and either the MB210. MB220, MB230, MB240), you can officially refer to yourself as being a Microsoft certified ‘Solution Architect Expert’.

Impressive!

The exam was being talked about at the beginning of 2020, and went live (in beta) on Jan 27th 2020. If you’re wanting to book it, do so at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/mb-600.

I sat it several days after it went live, and to be honest found it quite challenging. Why was that? Well, when I sat it, there were no learning paths on Microsoft Learn for it at all. Thankfully that’s now changed – there’s a massive amount of great material at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/power-apps-and-d365-solution-architect-expert. If you’re looking to go ahead and do the exam, I’d highly recommend you go through everything that’s there.

I’ve taken quite a few exams since early 2019, and have now taken the general approach to take exams in Beta. Although there can be some waiting until the results are announced, they’re cheaper, and give you an understanding of what’s going on.

I sat the exam through the Proctored option. I’m not going to say too much about that (you can look up online what this is about), other than to say that I feel that Microsoft really should be doing something about the proctored experience. Pearson Vue is in charge of this, but it can be really bad at times (having taken a dozen or so exams this way in the last year, I feel I’m quite qualified to be able to judge this!). I hope that things do get better for this.

So, to the exam itself. Well, I was lucky – there were no Labs in it (yet!). Several case studies, and lots of questions. Quite hard questions as well – make no mistake, they’re out to seriously test your knowledge.

The first thing that I ‘loved’ when starting the exam was the general briefing, which included something along the lines of this absolute gem (this isn’t word for word, as I’m not allowed to write it down during the exam, but it gives the gist of it):

Some question sets may have more than one solution, while others might not have a correct solution at all

Right. So tell me – if there’s no correct solution, what am I supposed to do? I’m still waiting for someone to enlighten me on this matter, as I haven’t found anyone who’s able to explain it….

Now, part of the exam rules state that it’s not allowed to share any of the exam questions. What I’ve therefore included below is an overview of the sorts of things that were covered for my exam (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!).

  • Data imports – what they are, how to go about them, troubleshooting them, etc. Also covering different types of sources
  • Security models, permissions, security types (field level, role, user, team etc)
  • Teams integration. How it’s set up, configured & used
  • Solution patch types. What they are, how they’re applied, how they’re used, benefits & drawbacks
  • BCP (Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery) processes. What option/s should you be considering to ensure your business is fully covered in a disaster situation, how are they configured
  • Portals. What they are, how they’re set up, security permissions
  • Business rules, Business Process Flows, Workflows. What each one does/doesn’t do, benefits & drawbacks, how they’re set up & configured
  • Systems – On Premise vs Cloud. The advantages and/or drawbacks of each type, and the different BCP methods (see above) for each one
  • Data integration. OData vs Custom Service for continuous data
  • SLA’s and KPI’s. What they are, when each is used, how to set up & configure them
  • System upgrade paths and compatibility. How you go about upgrading legacy systems, and the necessary path/s that you have to take for a given version number
  • Customer Service through multiple channels. Which option/s would you select for a given scenario, how would you set it up/configure it
  • CDM/CDM/PowerBI/Azure Service Bus/PowerApps. What is each one, what are the benefits/drawbacks of them, how is each one used, & set up/configuration
  • Licensing Types. What license/s would you need for a given scenario
  • D365 Sales Insights. What it is, what benefit/s it brings, how is it used
  • Data security. How is security used for Dynamics 365 & PowerBI data, how is it set up/configured
  • Field properties. For a given scenario, how would you change field properties and/or parameters?
  • Data Migration. Different options available for this, benefits/drawbacks, resolving issues
  • Form security. What is it, what are the different types of security that’s able to be used, how is it set up
  • Solution management. What are the different types of solutions, how is each one used, what are the associated risks, which option would you use for a given scenario

Wow. That’s a LOT of stuff. Like…an incredible amount. Some of it touches on parts of the system that I’ve never used before (like PowerBI). Other parts are extremely familiar.

I can’t tell you if I’ve passed it or not…YET!. Results aren’t yet out, as it’s still in beta (and from what I’m hearing, it’s likely to be remaining in beta for several months still.

So, if you’re aiming to take it – I wish you the very best of luck, and let me know your experience!