Tag: mb910

MB-910: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals Customer Engagement Apps

So here’s the thing. There used to be the MB-900 exam, which was the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals exam. This was aimed at people who had a small knowledge of Dynamics 365, and it was really the base/entry-level exam into the qualifications for it.

However, Dynamics 365 is actually comprised of two ‘parts’. There’s the ‘front office’ part that’s usually referred to as Customer Engagement (well, depending on how Microsoft wish to refer to it as, which can change from time to time!), and there’s the ‘back office’ part, which is the ERP side of things. This is the finance & operations sphere, where those functions take place.

The MB-900 was a slightly strange exam, in my opinion, because it covered both. There were questions around things like Sales, Customer Service, etc, but there were also Supply Chain Management questions as well, for example. Now I’m not saying that people shouldn’t know about both ‘sides’ of the equation, but people usually (for the most part) handle one or the other. It’s generally unusual to find someone knowledgeable about both.

Furthermore, if we take a look at the more in-depth exams in the MB range, we find that there’s a definitive split there. The MB-2xx series cover Customer Engagement, whereas the MB-3xx series covers the ERP side of things. So it’s definitely not the norm to have both sides included in a single exam.

Microsoft came to the realisation around this, and have therefore decided to update the Fundamentals space. In doing this, they’ve split things out. There’s the MB-910 exam (which is what this post is about), and the MB-920 exam, which focuses specifically on the ERP space. A good move, in my opinion..

The MB-910 launched this past weekend, and I took it around a day after it went live. Let’s go take a look at it, and recap my experience with it.

The official description of the exam is:

This exam covers the features and capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer engagement apps.

Candidates for this exam should have general knowledge of or relevant working experience in an Information Technology (IT) environment. They should also have a fundamental understanding of customer engagement principles and business operations.

Taking it leads to the qualification for ‘Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Fundamentals Customer Engagement Apps (CRM)’.

The description around the qualification is:

If you’re familiar with business operations, customer relationship management (CRM), and are IT savvy—either generally or through work experience—take advantage of this certification to highlight those skills. Validate your broad exposure to the customer engagement capabilities of Dynamics 365 to enhance your career journey.

People in different roles and at various stages in their careers can benefit from this fundamentals certification. Here are some examples:

IT professionals who want to show a general understanding of the applications they work with

Business stakeholders and others who know Dynamics 365 and who want to validate their skills and experience

Developers who want to highlight their understanding of business operations and CRM

Students, recent graduates, and people changing careers who want to leverage Dynamics 365 customer engagement capabilities to move to the next level

The official page for the exam is at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/mb-910 where it gives quite a good overview of things. Go take a look at it, and also take a look at the associated learning paths.

Once again, I sat the exam through the proctored option (ie from home). This is the way that I now usually take exams (even if I could go to an exam centre, I think that I’d be unlikely to, given the travel/time needed!). Checking in for the exam went without issues (the process definitely seems to be getting smoother each time), and I was ready to go within a few minutes.

As in my previous exam posts, I’m going to stress that 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! ). I’ve tried to group things together as best as possible for the different subject areas.

  • Project Operations
    • Scheduling resources
    • Entering project time/costs
    • Skills
    • Roles
    • Different types of project costings
  • Customer Service
    • SLA’s, what they are, which ones to use
    • Omnichannel, including capabilities and channel functions/availabilities
    • Power Virtual Agents
  • Sales
    • Lead processes, deactivating & reactivating
    • Opportunity processes
    • LinkedIn Sales Navigator. How it interacts, which capabilities it has within it, how it works
    • Quotes. How they work, what’s required to handle them, document generation
  • Marketing
    • Website forms
    • Automation around responses
    • A/B testing
    • Event management
  • Field Service
    • Work orders
    • Route optimization
    • Scheduling boards
  • Document options
    • Attachments that users can access within the system, as well as outside of Dynamics 365
    • File collaboration tools, and integration with them
  • Timelines & activities
  • System currencies, default options, additional currencies, and updating them
  • Understanding different types of tables, and when you’d use each one
  • Reporting capabilities
    • How data is able to be reported on
    • Report Builder Wizard
    • Reporting on data held in Dataverse
    • Reports in dashboards
    • Usage of Power BI, including data gateways

I was slightly surprised with the level of detail in some of the areas. I wasn’t, for example, expecting the emphasis on Project Operations and Field Service that came up for me. Some of the level of detail seemed more fitting for an MB-2xx exam than this Fundamentals exam.

In a similar vein, I also wasn’t expecting Power BI and Power Automate so much. Perhaps that’s just my own perspective, though obviously with the Power Platform it would be there. However there is a PL-900 exam, around Power Platform capabilities, that I’d expect those sorts of questions to be in, rather than here in this exam.

Otherwise I think that it was generally on point for what I’d expect to find at this level of exam. The questions have definitely evolved over time, and I found myself giving more consideration to answers than I would have on the previous version.

It’s a good place to start for people who are looking to get qualified around Dynamics 365! If you do decide to take it, please drop a comment below to let me know how it was for you – I’d love to hear about your experience!