Power Platform Certification Guide

so you want to get a power platform certification huh certifications are a great way to prove your skills and boost your career in this video i'm going to walk you through all of the power platform certifications that are available to take today give you some guidance around what order you might want to take them in and some recommendations and tips and tricks on how to study all that coming up right after this [Music] so first things first where do we go to find out what certifications are available to explore all the microsoft certifications that are out there you're going to want to go to the docs.microsoft.com site and click on the learn tab from here you'll see an option for certifications click on that and click the browse certifications option as you can see there are actually over 269 different certifications to find the power platform specific ones we can use the filter here on the left hand side and select the power platform option this will narrow it down a bit now the first thing i want to point out here is there's a difference between certifications and exams you have to take an exam to get a certification so while there might be many different exams there might be fewer certifications so that's why we want to scroll down to the bottom here and select the certifications option under type this way it'll filter it just by certifications which will give us the certificate or badge showing that we've completed one or more exams to prove our skills in a particular area for power platform right now you see we have nine different certifications that we can achieve new certifications and exams are added all the time so by the time you watch this there might be more fortunately this site is going to have just about everything you need to know about these particular certifications and exams so let's take a look at this power platform fundamentals exam first thing that you'll notice for all of these is it's going to give us an idea of the particular solution area this exam applies to so this one here is power platform but this next one the dynamics 365 power platform solution architect expert is a dynamics 365 forward type certification next it's going to show us the target or typical audience for someone that might take this certification for the fundamentals it's geared towards our business users this dynamics one though is geared more towards solution architects and finally it's going to show us the level of difficulty for the exam so the fundamentals being very foundational is going to be beginner but something like an app maker associate would require some intermediate skills and something like this dynamic start would be more advanced now to get more details you want to click on the certification you're thinking about taking and down below if we scroll down under the certification details this will tell you what exams are required to achieve the certification so for those power platform fundamentals you only have to take one exam the microsoft power platform fundamentals exam and that will give you this certification next thing you'll want to look at is the skills measured section this is going to tell you the general areas that this particular exam or certification will cover and up above in the description of this certification or exam it's also going to tell you if there are any prerequisites required to complete this so if it requires you to take another exam before you take this one that'll be listed here and it's going to show what job roles would typically be well suited for this particular certification or exam next thing i want to do is give you a general flow of how these certifications could go in order now regardless of which area you focus on on the power platform i recommend everyone starts with the power platform fundamental certification the fundamentals exam will test your foundational knowledge of the power platform as a whole it's not going to go too technically deep into any of the power platform products instead it's going to give you different scenarios and ask which power platform product would fit for this scenario so if you know the basics about the power platform that power bi is used for reporting in dashboards power automate for workflows power apps for application development and power virtual agents for chat bots and intelligent agents and you know which scenarios and business cases you would use each product then you should be set for this certification now the next certification that i'm going to recommend after you get the fundamentals one out of the way is the power platform app maker associate this one is an intermediate level exam that will build on top of that fundamental certification this is just one exam required to get certification and it's going to go more deeper into actually creating applications in the power platform and again this will touch on all of the different products so you'll need to know a little bit about building chat bots and power virtual agents about building apps and power apps visualizations and power bi and workflows and power automate it will go into the specifics of what type of workflow in power automate do you need to use to run something on a schedule or what function would you use in powerapps to store a variable things like that the next certification that i would suggest you take after you take the fundamentals of the app maker is the power platform functional consultant certification so we'll cover everything from analyzing your business process and figuring out what tool to use to the particular functions and actions you need to take within the application to build your solution again this only requires one exam to be taken and this is another intermediate level certification where this one differs from the fundamentals and the app maker certifications is instead of on the app maker experience this is more heavy on the administration and configuration side of things like the other exams it's going to cover all the different power platform products but this is going to get more into the dataverse and some of the security model and solutions and a lot of the integration between the different products so the first three ones that i just covered the fundamentals the app maker and the functional consultant to me are pretty broad a lot of different audiences could take those exams the next couple are going to vary on your experience so if you are a code first developer and you're doing a lot with say building pcf controls with the powerapps component framework or custom connectors then you might want to consider taking this power platform developer associate certification this one will take everything that you would have done in the previous certifications and add more of the developer story to that so it's going to really focus on a lot in the integration scenarios from a code first development perspective you'll get into integrating azure functions within your power platform solutions into custom connectors heavily pcf controls solutions deploying your solutions alm all of that very developery type stuff that you would expect so if that's something that you're doing in your day-to-day this would be a good certification for you so so far we have fundamentals first app maker second functional consultant third and if you do some of the code first development power platform the developer associate the next one i would have you consider is the power platform solution architect expert cert now this one actually isn't out yet at the time of this video this should be released around march of 2021. now since this one isn't released yet i don't have a lot of information to go off of here for this as far as exactly what it's going to cover but given that it's a solution architect expert level exam i would suspect this would get really in depth in the ins and outs of architecting out a solution everything from envisioning the solution and getting the business requirements to recommending the correct products to making sure you have your application life cycle management story planned out adding in the necessary integrations all of that at a much deeper level than say the functional consultant the app maker and the fundamentals exams go over once this is released and i get some more details on and take it myself i'm happy to do a follow up video to this and kind of go over some of the things that this exam will cover now for this one we mentioned all the ones we showed so far didn't have any prerequisites the power platform solution architect expert search does have prerequisites so to get this certification you actually have to have either the functional consultant certification already or the power platform developer associate certification so before you can even get this architect expert one you have to have passed and achieved one of those certifications and you have to take the new power platform solution architect exam that's yet to be released so this would kind of be the cream of the crop in the power platform certifications i guess now i haven't mentioned the dynamics or the power bi certs and there's a reason for that let's take a look at the power bi one first so this one actually is retired so it's still there on the certification website but it's retired meaning that you can't take this certification or exam anymore so i would be keeping an eye out on this certification site to see if maybe they add another replacement power bi related certification later on and that's the same thing with this dynamics 365 power platform solution architect this one you can still take but it's going to be retired in june of 2021 probably replaced with that exam we just looked at the power platform solution architect one now that you have a good high level overview of all the power platform certifications available today and some recommendations on what order you should take them in let's talk about how we can study and prepare for these exams the first place i would suggest you go is actually here on the learn site click on the certification that you're thinking about taking scroll down to the bottom and you'll see a section on ways to prepare for the fundamentals for example we have a learning path on the microsoft learn site to walk you through everything you need to know about power platform fundamentals for the exam so if i open this up you see that this will actually walk me through all the details of what power platform is what data versus give me introductions to power apps and building canvas apps model driven apps portals we'll do a power automate intro talk about how to build automated solutions we'll cover power bi in this learning path and power virtual agents so really walking through this learn learning path will give you a lot of what you need to pass this certification now of course a big element of this is having the hands-on experience but for the fundamentals this is really about all you need for the app maker associate same thing if you click on that certification and scroll down we have several different learning paths on the learn site that are applicable to this certification this is where you can tell that this one goes into much more depth you'll cover a little more advanced topics in this one like how to integrate ai builder into your apps some advanced powerapps techniques and governance things like that everything that you would kind of need to know again in these learning paths but for this exam especially that hands-on experience is a must-have i really recommend that you click on the certification and go through all of the learning paths in the microsoft learn material that it recommends the combination of that and just getting hands-on experience running through some of the labs that are in there because some of these learning paths have labs that you can walk through in different scenarios which is really good to reinforce what you learned in your skills also youtube you're watching this on youtube right now there's so many videos from other great people in the community on how to do certain things so as you go through the learn material here and highlight some specific topic like maybe the ai builder piece and you want to dive deeper into that piece of the power platform just do a search on youtube for power platform ai builder and watch some videos of how other people are using ai builder in their power platform solutions and get some ideas and experience and information there and just a couple more study resources if you do prefer the instructor-led training just click this instructor-led option here and you can search for a learning partner that can take you through some certification exam material and have a more guided learning type experience there are some other great training sites out there with power platform topics and even certification resources so one is udacity there's a power platform course out there built by microsoft that's really good to give you some more information on the fundamentals of power platform linkedin learning has a lot of great stuff and pluralsight as well if you happen to already have a subscription i know they have a power platform fundamental search learning path on there to walk you through some of that that's all that i have for you today i hope that i've given you a good overview of the power platform certifications and gave you a plan to get started i want to hear if this helped you pass one of these certifications so if it did please tweet me on twitter at april dunham and i want to hear and celebrate your wins with power platform certifications if you found this helpful please like hit that subscribe button and i'll catch you in the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: April Dunnam

Views: 16,986

Keywords: Power Platform Certification Guide, Power Platform Fundamentals, power platform app maker, power platform solution architect, power platform developer, power platform exam, April Dunnam, microsoft certification, pl-900 exam preparation, pl-900 power platform fundamentals certification, pl-900 exam prep, pl-900 study guide, pl-100 microsoft power platform app maker, pl-200 exam, pl-400 exam

Id: 0XgdqvT92Jc

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SisyphusSmokes]

Isn’t the DA-100 the replacement for the MCSA?