We seem to be on a roll here over the last month or so with new exams being released (& its not over yet!). With all of the emphasis on AI & agents, I decided to go take the new Copilot Studio exam to see what it would be like.
Given that I have a decently passing familiarity with Copilot Studio (as I use it for projects, and actually do get hands on with it quite a bit of the time), I felt that I’d be in a good place to handle it without any revision. Obviously this could have been a bold move, and it’s up to everyone to make their own decisions about how much to revise (or not revise)!.
Copilot Studio has moved on from when it first came onto the scene (and for those who remember, it used to be called Power Virtual Agent, or PVA). Nowadays it supports coding within it, but it also can serve as the front end for other Microsoft AI capabilities, such as Microsoft Foundry models.
This is also the first time that it’s been featured for its own exam – previously it got rolled into other exams (such as the PL-100, PL-200, etc), where it was just one of the components being covered (and covered in a lightweight manner, at that). With the focus from Microsoft now heavily on it though, it’s now taken a step forward into the spotlight by itself.
The official description of the proposed exam candidate is:
As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you’re a professional developer or advanced builder who builds, extends, and integrates custom agents for enterprise-grade solutions. You typically work as an IT application developer, consultant, or independent software vendor (ISV) partner focused on creating scalable AI solutions for organizations or customers.
For this exam, you should be familiar with Power Fx, Microsoft Dataverse, Microsoft Power Platform environments and components, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, and adaptive cards.
You need intermediate knowledge of generative AI concepts, including models, orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, and more. You should also have experience with prompt engineering and with REST APIs and integration patterns. Additionally, you need experience configuring agents with basic knowledge sources, instructions, tools, and topics in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
As a developer who works in Copilot Studio, you:
- Integrate agents with Microsoft Foundry.
- Integrate agents with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.
- Integrate agents with custom connectors.
- Integrate agents with APIs.
- Integrate agents with Microsoft Fabric.
- Automate tasks with computer use.
- Integrate agents with connectors.
You create:
- Multi-agent solutions.
- Agents with enterprise knowledge sources (such as ServiceNow, SAP, and others).
- Advanced agent topics and tools.
- Computer-using agents.
- Agents that perform advanced actions via APIs.
You collaborate with Microsoft 365 administrators, Microsoft Power Platform administrators, Microsoft Copilot administrators, Copilot Studio agent builders, Copilot Studio administrators, Foundry administrators, agentic AI business solutions architects, and Copilot Studio architects.
The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft Certified: AI Agent Builder Associate, and there is an official Learning Path available for it.
As I’ve posted before around my exam experiences, 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!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change for when it comes out of beta.
I’ll freely admit that there was a LOT more focus on MCP capabilities than I had expected there to be, but I guess that again this is natural, given how Microsoft is moving at the moment.
I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.
- Copilot Studio
- Component/node types. What they are, how/when to use them
- Using topic variables
- Timeouts
- Concurrency
- Sensitive data & Using type ‘secret’ – what this does and why to use
- Generative answers – how they work, limitations, what to know, how to configure & ground them
- Computer Use
- Connecting with Microsoft Graph
- Connecting to other agents – how to do this, how to configure, what to use
- Connector types
- Standard connectors (ie connectors provided by Copilot Studio). When to use them, limitations
- Custom connectors – what these are, why you’d use them
- Security
- Authentication types (API, OAuth 2)
- Query delegation
- DLP policies
- MCP servers
- What they are
- Connecting to them
- Security with MCP servers
- Authentication types
- Usage of AI with MCP servers
- Azure AI Search
- Connecting to knowledge index
- Configurations
- Security
- Solution Types
- Default vs Unmanaged vs Managed
- Environment variables
- Creating solution
- Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
- What this is, and why it’s needed
- What approaches can be used, why to use them
- What’s needed to set up ALM
- Monitoring & Troubleshooting
- Reporting on deployed agents
- Evaluating usage of deployed agents
- Identifying issues & errors
- Stopping runs
I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it! I’d also be interested in your thoughts/opinions around the direction that Microsoft has taken for this!
