How do I prepare for the Office 365 – Managing Office 365 Identities and Requirements 70 – 346 Exam
I had the same question when I wanted to start the preparation for the exam. There are some useful blogs out there but most of these are not answering the questions/concerns directly. Hence, my attempt to add some useful tips for preparation. I recently passed my exam for Office 365 and thought that my preparation efforts might help others.
Office 365 is a moving target so how do I prepare for it?
Yes, this is true that Microsoft will change the objective of the exam, but there are also set objectives. Microsoft will publish the changes and the exam will only test you according to those set objectives Be assured that exam will not ask you anything, not listed in the objectives. For example, there were some changes made in the exam objectives which were applicable when taking the exam after 30 June 2016.
How much time do I have to complete the exam?
120 mins are given to complete the exam (in total you get 150 mins, 30min for reading instruction and to complete a survey) and I believe it is more than enough. Therefore, you can safely take ‘time’ out of your list of worries.
How many questions are there and how the marks are distributed?
The important thing to note is that you will need 700 marks to pass the exam. We don’t know how marks are awarded, but you will see some questions with multiple choice options saying ‘one point each for every correct answer’. The number of questions also varies, I had 47 questions (2-3 case studies and 37 questions).
How much time I should spend on the preparing:
This depends on the experience you have with Office 365 administration. I have at least 2 years of experience managing/administrating Office 365 and I allocated 70 hours for preparation. More details on ‘how’, below.
How do I go about preparing for the exam?
Book the exam. When you book the exam you will have a target to meet so I would strongly recommend that you book the exam. At least you should book the tentative exam date and change it if you feel that you are not fully prepared. I changed the exam date once since work related deadlines didn’t allow to me allocate enough time.
Register a trial Office 365 E3 subscription. It will help you enormously to test and implement.
Experience is the key. I won’t say that you can’t pass this exam without 1-2 years of experience, but it will certainly make your life much easier if you have some.
Books:
- Exam Ref Book – The Microsoft Exam Reference for 70 -346 is not useful. I bought this book and read this once. Only this book won’t help you to pass the exam.
- Microsoft Office 365 Administration Inside out – by far a comprehensive guide/books available in the market for Office 365 administration. I would strongly recommend at least the relevant chapters for 70 – 346 exam.
Videos Tutorial:
- Pluralsight: Jeff Adkin courses for 70 – 346 certification path is old, but I found it still extremely useful. The course PowerShell for Office 365 by Vlad Catrinescu is also extremely important as there are many questions on how to achieve ‘A’ using PowerShell.
- MVA: I would say if you don’t have experience of managing Office 365 this course on Managing Office 365 Identities and Services would be an excellent starting point.
- Lynda: The course on Manage Identities using Azure AD Connect by Brain Clup and Implement Identities for SSO were a life saver for me. You can get a one-week free trial.
What are the top three topics/areas that would help in passing the exam?
There are exam objectives and I would strong recommend that you go through these objectives carefully and ensure you are fully prepared on each topic before taking the exam. However, If I must pick three key topics/areas it would be:
- Make PowerShell your friend. In the real environment, you will be required to automate many tedious processes and PowerShell would be a key in achieving
- Understand implementation and configuration for Active Directory Federation Services.
- Implement Active Directory Connect and understand how to sync single and multiple forest(s), filtering, monitoring.
Happy to answer any question that you may have. Good luck with your preparation!
3 Comments
Soji · February 14, 2018 at 20:57
Thanks for the piece. I am looking to write this exam soon but I do not have much experience with Office 365 other than basic stuff like creating distribution lists and adding users to groups. I was looking for a kind of one stop shop material (hard to get I know). I was wondering also if any Office 365 course on Lynda is sufficient to pass the exam.
You have answered some of my questions in your post but I am open to learning some more if you have any more pieces of advice.
Thank you,
Soji
Allan · February 16, 2018 at 14:57
I have just taken this exam in the last 10 days failing by 30 points the first and 11 points the second, performance from one to the other has varied in different sections. I have not taken any Microsoft exams since MCSE 2003. I think my issues are on the two case studies if I could get hold of a couple to read and learn how to breakdown the information this is what would help me, comprehension was never my strong point in English its black and white to me. any pointers
SharePointer · February 18, 2018 at 18:36
Please let me know if I can be of any help. As I said in the blog experience is the key!