Microsoft announced in December 2018 that they were retiring many of the Dynamics 365 exams that previously were part of the MCSA and MCSE Business Applications certifications.
Shortly after that, there was a brand new set of certifications and their associated exams announced. The exams are:
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Core (MB-200)
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales (MB-210)
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service (MB-230)
By passing the exams you can claim the following certifications:
- Dynamics 365 for Sales Functional Consultant Associate (MB-200 + MB-210)
- Dynamics 365 for Customer Service Functional Consultant Associate (MB-200 + MB-230)
Just today I took the new MB-200 Core exam as beta and I have to say the content has evolved nicely into a much more rich format than what the previous “pick 1/2 out of 4” questions types were. There’s a lot to cover in one exam, as this new MB-200 essentially combines the earlier Online Deployment and Customization & Configuration exams into one. Still, these are all essential skills for anyone who’s working on this ever evolving business application platform from Microsoft.
So, where does one go to learn these skills for passing the brand new exams? While Microsoft did release the list of new courses that link to these exams, there wasn’t an online learning option made available initially. Traditionally the content would have been published via the Dynamics Learning Portal (DLP) that has been limited only to Microsoft partners (and notoriously difficult for gaining access to). However, going forward the DLP course catalog will not be updated, based on the notification shown on the portal:
Great, lets head to Microsoft Learn then! Except that this isn’t where the course material for the Dynamics 365 certification exams seems to be landing. You see, Microsoft has also been publishing newer online learning materials on an open platform called edX, like this Power BI course.
Oh, but that’s actually a different edX than the one we’re talking about here. While edX.org is a platform common to many training content providers, there’s a dedicated Microsoft site at openedx.microsoft.com which served as the hosting platform for the first non-DLP Dynamics 365 course one year ago:
At the moment there isn’t a visible catalog of the new Dynamics 365 and Power Platform courses on that site yet, but it is fully possible to sign up for the courses via direct links. Here’s what my dashboard at openedx.microsoft.com looks like after picking all the new courses:
Here are links that should work for accessing the online courses:
- MB-200T01: Dynamics 365: Power Platform applications
- MB-200T02: Dynamics 365: Power Platform automation
- MB-200T03: Dynamics 365: Power Platform integrations
- MB-200T04: Dynamics 365: Power Platform test and deploy
- MB-210T01: Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement for Sales
- MB-230T01: Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement for Customer Service
What’s interesting is that due to the open nature of Open edX, there appears to be a whole network of training service providers that have partnered with Microsoft and distribute these same courses on their portals. As an example, the Finnish IT training company Sovelto has these courses available for free on their SoveltoX portal:
We may get more clarity on the roles of each channel in the future, but since so many Dynamics 365 professionals are eagerly looking to start preparing for the latest exams, here’s at least a way for everyone to quickly get started on their learning journey. Refer to this post by Mark Smith for a more comprehensive list of links regarding the Dynamics 365 & Power Platform training and exams in 2019.
awesome, thanks for this overview!
Hi Jukka – thanks for the excellent post. Great reading. I’ve a look at the OpenEdx site before but could not search for courses nor find any Dynamics 365 courses on there. Your links work great, butt how did you come across them? The site is perhaps not very intuitive or am I missing something obvious?
To my knowledge Microsoft hasn’t yet published any useful course directory on openedx.microsoft.com. This Dynamics Detective has his ways of tracking down the hidden links 😉
Thanks for sharing, very useful courses.
Thanks for providing the Open edX links! They also provide an interesting view of the branding. Dynamics 365 Power Platform? Not what I was expecting…
Awesome thanks for sharing this – wish I had found these before taking the exam too…
Good note to add is that the links won’t work in chrome but they do work in Internet Explorer or Edge – just to make the process of learning a little more painful!
Amey, they did work on my Chrome. What you might be running into is the issue with Microsoft’s cookies that tend to make many of their portals unusable on Chrome. I regularly need to flush the cookie cache for many *.microsoft.com sites to make the pages work in Chrome (other domains, too). Yes, identity management with MSFT sites is very painful indeed.
I’ve found several sites linking to the Microsoft EdX courses today, but they’ve all expired as of 12/31/2019 (two days ago!). I can’t find any links to 2020 courses. Any thoughts on how to find them or whether they’re even available yet?
Diane, I think most of the content is nowadays available on Microsoft Learn. For example, if you check the Exam MB-210 information page, then you’ll see that there are three learning paths linked as the online learning materials to study for exam preparation: Working With Dynamics 365 Sales, Create and use analytics reports with Power BI, Apply Goal Management to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement.