Tag: instructions

Exam AB-731: AI Transformation Leader

What better way to start 2026 then to talk about a Microsoft certification, especially one for a totally NEW type of user!

Following on the steps of the other AB exams I’ve been writing about my experience with (see Exam AB-730: AI Business Professional, Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect and Exam AB-900: Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals ), this article will cover the AB-731 exam.

This exam is focusing on the Microsoft AI capabilities from a Business Leader perspective, and to the best of my knowledge is the first time that Microsoft has ever created an exam from a ‘Business Leader’ perspective. Taking this exam was a complete mindset shift to me, especially when seeing the questions – it’s not about understanding the in depth technical capabilities, but more around the breadth of technology options (spanning Azure, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio & other tools), and what they bring/enable from a BUSINESS perspective.

The official description of the proposed exam candidate is:

As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you should understand how to recognize opportunities for AI transformation, identify the right AI tools and resources, plan for AI adoption, optimize business processes, and drive innovation by using Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure AI services.

This Certification is designed for business decision-makers at all levels who are responsible for guiding transformation and innovation within their teams or organizations. In this role, you’re expected to demonstrate AI fluency, strategic vision, and the ability to lead AI adoption across teams and functions but are not expected to write any code.

As a candidate for this Certification, you should be able to evaluate AI opportunities, champion responsible AI practices, and align AI investments with business goals. You need experience leading adoption or change management in a business context. You must also be familiar with Microsoft 365 services, Azure AI services, and general AI capabilities.

The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft Certified: AI Transformation Leader, 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.

Overall, the exam approach was quite different to me – though I do talk with organisations frequently around general AI matters, I’ve never taken an example written in this way beforehand. However, I do feel that it’s very helpful to have this in place, to ensure that business leaders can demonstrate that they actually do know what they’re talking about 😉

I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

  • Azure Components & Capabilities
    • AI Vision – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Language – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Document Intelligence – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • Machine Learning – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Foundry – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
    • AI Search – what it can be used for, benefits of using it, capabilities that it has
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
    • What license is needed
    • What data does it have access to
    • What security controls are in place
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot
    • What is it, what can it be used for
    • What can it do
    • How does it connect to data
    • What are the connectors for it (standard & custom)
    • Benefits of using it (vs 3rd party AI tooling)
    • Different agents (eg Analyst & Researcher) within it – what they do, how to access and use them
  • Microsoft Copilot Studio
    • What is it, what can be used for
    • What can it do
    • What license is needed
    • What data can it access
  • Microsoft Security Copilot
    • What is it, what can be used for
    • What can it do
    • Benefits that it provides
  • Security & Governance
    • Content filtering controls within Copilot
    • Policies
    • Handling requirements to prevent inappropriate language & responses
    • Responsible AI principles
    • Governance ownership, responsibility & requirements
  • Generative AI
    • AI model hallucinations
    • Grounding in data
    • Improving response quality
    • Prompt engineering
    • Pre trained models vs fine tuned models
    • Reasoning models vs non-reasoning models
    • Understanding usage costs (including different pricing models)
    • What is RAG, and how can it be used for business scenarios
    • Adoption throughout organisations – personas to involve in adoption team

    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!

    Exam AB-900: Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals

    Following on the steps of the other AB exams I’ve been writing about my experience with (see Exam AB-730: AI Business Professional & Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect), this article will cover the AB-900 exam.

    This exam is focusing on the Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities from a user & administration perspective, and doesn’t cover/include anything from Copilot Studio.

    Now, though it’s a Fundamentals exam, to be honest it’s the HARDEST fundamentals exam that I’ve ever taken!

    The approach is around being able to demonstrate understanding of how to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot, as well as a lot of focus on how to control & administer it.

    The official description of the proposed exam candidate is:

    As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you should be familiar with Microsoft 365, including core services, security, identity and access, data protection, and governance, along with Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents.

    Additionally, you should be familiar with the admin centers used to access Microsoft 365 workloads, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. You need to have experience with AI-driven productivity tools and modern IT management practices.

    You must be able to identify the roles of the core features and objects available in Microsoft 365, such as users, groups, teams, sites, and libraries. Plus, you should understand the core security features of Microsoft 365, such as authentication methods, conditional access policies, and single sign-on (SSO).

    The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft 365 Certified: Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals, 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.

    One thing to keep in mind about this exam – though I do mention Microsoft Purview in the list of items below, I haven’t gone into it extensively. However, there were a LOT of questions that touched on Purview (& other governance stuff as well) – you REALLY need to be knowing & understanding these capabilities to be able to take & pass the exam. Just guessing the answers is not going to help at all!

    Overall, the exam seemed to me to be pretty decent, though with indeed a heavy focus on security & governance (as I’ve mentioned above). I don’t see this as a bad thing though, as it can help to show that administrators really do know what they’re talking about.

    I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

    • Agent types
      • Native Microsoft 365 Copilot agent
      • Native Microsoft 365 Copilot advanced agents (eg Researcher & Analyst). What they are, how to access, what to use them for
      • Custom Microsoft 365 Copilot agent
      • SharePoint agent
    • Creating/using Agents
      • Using natural language to create agents
      • How to handle/perform multi-step reasoning
      • Use of notebooks
      • Custom instructions
      • Scheduling prompts
      • Querying data types
        • Structured
        • Unstructured
    • Governance & security
      • Blocking access to different types of searches & collateral
      • Blocking access to specific agents
      • Tools to use for blocking
      • How to share agents with other users
      • Assigning licenses to users
      • Data retention policies
      • Data labelling policies
      • Use of Microsoft Purview, covering capabilities, tools, auditing, how to use, etc
      • Use of DLP
      • Data source permissions
      • Conditional access policies
      • Microsoft Defender – what it is, capabilities it has, how to use it, etc.
      • Types of authentication
    • Reporting
      • Licensing & usage
      • Adoption & interactions
    • Payment options & capabilities
      • Credit usage – internal vs external users
      • Pay As You Go Billing, and scenarios you can use it for

    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!

    Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 – Chat Transcripts

    We’ve all been there (well, at least I have). We’ve been having an online chat with a customer service person at a company, and we’re wanting to have a record of the actual chat that took place. Of course we could (hopefully) copy and paste the entire conversation into a document and save it, but that would be laborious, and also potentially not be legal proof of the actual conversation.

    In some cases, companies may actually encourage customers to save a record of their chat history on their account (as an example, Amazon offers this at the end of each chat). Customers can then return at a later date to download the conversation to their own computer at their leisure, which can be more convenient at times (say you’re travelling on holiday, and don’t have your own computer with you!). It could even be possible to get it automatically emailed to your own email address, which would also allow a company to add additional information to it (for example a feedback survey request on your chat experience, some marketing information, etc)

    Well, Omnichannel has the ability for this, in multiple ways! It can allow a user to:

    1. Download a full transcript at the end of the chat
    2. Email a full copy of the chat transcript

    Both of these features are available from the chat window using icons, allowing a quick and easy experience for the users. You can decide if you want to allow one or the other, or both, quite easily.

    Enabling this is quite simple, though there are some additional options to set for the auto-emailing feature (basically selecting the email template and user mailbox – you can set up a specific mailbox to use if you’re wanting it eg ‘customerservice@abc.xyz’).

    In the Omnichannel Administration Hub, open the Chat channel that you’re wanting to enable this for. Under the ‘Chat Transcripts’ section, select the option/s that you’re wanting to enable:

    Downloading the chat transcript

    At any time during the chat conversation, users can click the download icon at the bottom left of the chat window, and the conversation will be downloaded to their default Downloads folder on their computer.

    This saves as an HTML file, and when opened looks like this:

    At the end of the chat, the person will be prompted and asked if they’d like to save the conversation, with quick instructions as to how to do so. Obviously this option will ensure that the customer has the complete conversation, rather than just a part of it, so this reminder is really nice and helpful in my opinion

    Emailing the chat transcript

    Customers can also get the chat transcript auto-emailed to their email address. Clicking the email icon will prompt the customer to enter their own email address (or whichever email they’d like the chat transcript to be sent to).

    This option allows companies to be able to format the email template that’s used for this. Examples of things that a company might want to do could include:

    • Using company logo’s, images and fonts
    • Feedback survey information, to understand how the customer felt about the chat session
    • Marketing material for upcoming events

    Note: When setting up the ability for chat transcripts to be emailed, don’t forget to approve and test the mailbox being used in the Email Configuration settings! If you don’t do this (or it hasn’t already been done), they won’t be emailed out!

    There’s also one further piece of configuration that needs to be carried out for emailing chat transcripts. As all emails from that chat channel will be using the same email address to send out the emails, this means that the ‘Allow send on behalf of’ option must be selected on the mailbox user’s personal settings. You’ll therefore need to log into Dynamics as the mailbox user, open personal options, and set this manually

    In summary, this is really helpful to customers, and a great little feature for Omnichannel.

    Installing Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 – Part III

    So far I’ve covered the Omnichannel installation process over the last two posts (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-i/ and https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-ii/), which is all about getting the Omnichannel Application to appear in the Dynamics 365 Administration Centre under Applications.

    However, once we’ve gotten it to appear, we now need to carry out the initial basic configuration to get it to be active.

    This will then get us to a point where we can start configuring it to use with the different channels that we’d want to have it active for, such as online chat, Facebook, etc.

    So if you’ve been following the process so far, in the Dynamics 365 Administration Center you’ll see the following:

    The next step is to select the line for Omnichanel, and click ‘Manage’:

    You’re going to be prompted with another permissions request, and oh boy this is a LONG one! Select the ‘Consent’ box, and click Accept to continue (you’ll need to be a Global Tenant Admin to do this)

    For all of your hard work so far, you’re going to be presented with the following BEAUTIFUL screen!

    This is the Omnichannel Admin Centre, where you’ll be able to now set up Omnichannel for the environment/s that you want to have it present in. To proceed, click the ‘Add an org’ button, and you’ll be asked which environment (organisation) you want to set up Omnichannel for:

    Select the environment, accept the Privacy Terms, and then click the purple right-arrow to move on to the next step.

    For each of the options available (currently they are Chat, SMS and Facebook), you’ll be asked if you want to enable it for your organisation. Select the option/s you wish to be present, and click the purple right-arrow to continue (example shown below of the Chat enable screen):

    Continue until the end, where you’ll get the Summary screen (shown below). Click the purple check button to confirm and continue:

    You’ll now be shown a status screen, where it’ll tell you that your selected options are being set up:

    At this point it’s a good idea to take a break. Simply because the setup of these is going to take a whiiiiiiiiiiiile (it’s obviously doing a lot behind the scenes!). Go have a coffee, a walk, visit the gym, do some laundry, etc. Once it’s finally finished, it’ll show that setup is complete:

    And if you go back to the overall Omnichannel Administration summary page, you’ll see a nice little summary of the environment here as well (along with the option to set up another environment with Omnichannel)

    Once this has been completed, you’ll now be able to see Omnichannel present within the list of Dynamics apps within the Dynamics environment:

    The next stages will be to carry out the Omnichannel configuration within Dynamics 365 for the different channels, which I’ll be going into in the next series of posts.

    I hope that you’ve found this helpful so far – please reach out with any questions that you may have!

    Installing Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 (Trial) – Part II

    In the previous post in this series, where I talked about the first part of installation (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-i/), I covered how to get the first 3 prerequisites dealt with for installing Omnichannel (namely Customer Service Hub, PowerBI licenses, and Data Consent).

    In this post, I’m going to be covering the 4th item – actually getting the Omnichannel Hub installed. It’s not as straightforward as you may think, so I’ve included lots of screenshots, as well as a bonus YouTube video at the end showing the process for this as well (for people who prefer videos).

    If you look at the official Microsoft documentation on Omnichannel for Dynamics 365, it says that you need to install the solution from the Dynamics 365 Administration Center:

    Manage omnichannel

    That’s all very well and good, but doesn’t actually show the reality of things! If you go to the Dynamics 365 Administration Center for your environment, you’re likely to see something similar to the following (you may be fortunate enough to see the option for Omnichannel there, in which case skip to ):

    Hold on. There’s no ‘Omnichannel for Customer Service’ option there! Indeed so – and you’re not going to find it easily.

    So, in order to actually get the Omnichannel option there in the Applications section, you’re going to need to do the following:

    1. Go to https://trials.dynamics.com/
    2. Select the ‘Customer Service’ option

    Scroll down the page, and where it asks for your email, enter the email address that you used to sign up for the trial with! (this will be in the format of user@domain.onmicrosoft.com). Enter your phone number as well, and click ‘Get Started’

    It’ll tell you that you already have a Dynamics 365 account. Click ‘OK, got it’ to continue. What is happening in the background is that a new trial is being created in your tenant, but at the same time Omnichannel for Customer Service is being installed. You don’t need to use the trial environment (and it’ll expire after 30 days), but you WILL be using the Omnichannel application (which will stick around even after the new trial expires).

    You’ll then get a beautiful whirly GIF, showing that setup is happening

    Once setup has completed, go back to the Dynamics 365 Administration Center (go to http://admin.powerplatform.com/, select ‘Environments’ from the left navigation bar, select an environment, and click the ‘Manage Solutions’ button on the menu bar. Select the ‘Applications’ option from the menu ribbon and Hey Voila! You should see ‘Omnichannel for Customer Service’ present! (you may need to click to the next page on the Applications screen)

    Note that it’s showing as being ‘NotConfigured’ – we’ll go through the configuration of this in the next blog post.

    Also note that there are two other options underneath this. Once is for Facebook, and one is for SMS. These are the direct integration points for this products that are provided by Microsoft (rather than an ISV or 3rd party solution), and more will appear over time as Microsoft releases further functionality.

    Now for the YouTube video, in which I walk through all of the above in a live replay!

    In the next part of the series at (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-part-iii/), I go through the actual initial configuration of the Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 configuration

    Installing Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 (Trial) – Part I

    In order to be able to access Omnichannel for Dynamics 365, it’s necessary to install the Omnichannel Hub solution. There are several prerequisite items that are necessary in order to do this, with several steps.

    The requirements for Omnichannel Hub are as follows:

    1. The Customer Service Hub needs to be installed on the environment within the tenant
    2. There needs to be a PowerBI License assigned to the user/s
    3. Data Access Consent needs to be accepted
    4. The Omnichannel Hub needs to be installed

    Let’s go through the above steps. Due to the length of this, I’m going to be splitting this into two parts. This guide will cover getting Omnichannel up and running in a Trial environment – I’ll be doing a separate entry on getting it in a Paid For environment.

    Customer Service Hub

    This is actually quite simple. When setting up your trial at https://trials.dynamics.com/ (using the link to set up the trial for development purposes, of course)

    You need to select the option below on the scenario screen (you can of course select the ‘All of these’ option as well!)

    If creating the environment from admin.powerplatform.com, ensure that you select the option to create a database for the environment, ensure that you select the option to deploy Dynamics 365 apps, and then select the ‘Customer Service’ option (you can select others as well – it won’t affect Omnichannel)

    Once it’s installed, you can check that it’s there by going to your Apps within the Dynamics 365 environment, and you should see the Customer Service Hub option there, both on the app menu on the left, as well as on the main screen

    PowerBI License

    Omnichannel for Dynamics 365 requires a PowerBI license assigned to users. They may have this already as part of their assigned license/s. Sometimes the system doesn’t always pick this up – if this happens, it’s possible to get and assign PowerBI Free licenses for users through the Office Admin portal (under Billing/Purchase Services):

    When going through the check-out process, you’ll be prompted for a credit card. Thankfully it’s possible to bypass this by selecting the option to invoice, rather then use a credit card (it’s a free license anyhow, so just go through the process and finish). Once the licenses are in the admin centre, assign them to the users who’ll be using Omnichannel.

    Data Access Consent

    In order to allow Omnichannel for Customer Service to read and write data on behalf of users, Data Access Consent needs to be granted. This has to be performed by a Global Tenant Admin, who needs to use the following link – https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2070932.

    Once they access the link, they’ll need to sign in, and they’ll be presented with the following acceptance screen (note how many things are being accessed!):

    They should select the ‘Consent’ box, and then click Accept

    In the second part of this series (https://thecrm.ninja/installing-omnichannel-for-dynamics-365-trial-part-ii/ ), I go into the details of how to actually install the Omnichannel Hub!

    Introduction to Omnichannel for Dynamics 365

    With all of the functionality that has recently been released for Dynamics 365, I’ve been taking a look into the Omnichannel capabilities, and what it brings to enable clients and their customers from a technology standpoint.

    I feel that this is really going to be a major benefit to many different sectors, and will allow users to benefit majorly in being able to retain and grow their customer base, through the general customer experience and behaviour.

    The video below is the start of a new series in which I’m going to go deep into what Omnichannel actually is, how it works, and the capabilities that it brings.