About the Microsoft 365 Teams Application Developer Associate Certification

Hello and welcome back. In this lesson, let's talk about the certification. And once you pass the MS-600, you achieve the Microsoft 365 Teams application developer associate certification. Now, here's how Microsoft describes it. Microsoft Teams application developers design, build, test, and maintain modern enterprise-grade applications and solutions with Microsoft Teams that are optimized for the productivity and collaboration needs of organizations using the Microsoft 365 platform. Candidates for this certification are proficient in designing collaboration solutions using the Microsoft identity platform, Microsoft Graph, SharePoint Framework, and Microsoft Power Platform to build custom apps that extend Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Viva Connections. Now, originally when you pass the MS-600 exam, you achieved the Microsoft 365 developer associate certification. It was not a Microsoft Teams specific certification. But in August 2022, Microsoft rolled out significant changes to the exam and renamed the certification to be much more focused about Microsoft Teams. If you want to learn more about what changed, check out the video that I published on my YouTube channel that I'll reference here. Now, I'm not going to cover the changes in this course from the exam prior to August 2022. Rather, this course has been updated to reflect the current state of the MS-600 exam. And that's the only version available today. Now, before we go any further, I find the best way to really learn something is by answering the five W's: the what, the why, the when, the where, and the who. Now, some of these don't really apply in this context, like the when and the where. So, let's tackle the what, the why, and the how, and then also the who question. All right, so let's first answer what is the purpose of this certification? The purpose of this certification is to measure developer proficiency in creating Microsoft 365 apps, specifically for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Viva Connections. Now, this includes utilizing Microsoft 365 technologies and services such as Microsoft identity, Microsoft Graph, and the SharePoint framework. Now, why did Microsoft even create this certification? Well, originally, customers kept asking Microsoft for a standardized way to measure candidates as Microsoft 365 developers. And these customers kept asking things like, "What is a Microsoft 365 developer? Does a SharePoint developer also need to know Teams? Does a Microsoft Graph developer need to know Microsoft identity? And how much Microsoft identity do you really need to know to be a SharePoint developer? What about a Teams developer?" All these questions that customers were asking Microsoft, Microsoft didn't really have a good answer or a way to tell people what developers needed to know uh to be considered a Microsoft 365 developer. And then after the MS-600 and the assert were released, over time Microsoft Teams app development became a much more central tenant to being a Microsoft 365 developer. So, Microsoft modified the cert and the associated exam to be more about developing apps for Microsoft Teams. And these are the changes that were implemented in August of 2022 that I referred to before. So, how do I become a certified developer associate? That's an easy one to answer. You've just got to pass the MS-600 exam. It's the only prerequisite required by the certification. So, who's a good candidate for the certification? A good candidate is a developer with an associate level experience and knowledge in covering the core Microsoft 365 workloads that are listed in this course. But, what do I mean when I say associate level? Microsoft Learning measures people on one of three different levels: foundational, associate, and expert. What are the different levels and how do they measure up to each other? Well, I'm going to cover that in the next lesson, but for now, let's just stick with this definition. I want to talk a little bit more about the who when it comes to the exam the associated certification, you need to understand who the certification is not for because I think that's almost as important and informative as knowing who the certification is for. This is not for new Microsoft 365 developers or people with experience in just one workload. For instance, if you've only been building SharePoint web parts, this isn't exactly designed for you. Make sure that you understand me though. I'm not saying that you can't get certified. That's totally up to you. You can always study and apply yourself to get skilled up to pass the exam. So, now let's tackle who the certification is for. Well, Microsoft says that candidates for this exam are Microsoft 365 developers who build, test, and maintain applications and solutions that are optimized for the productivity and the collaboration needs of organizations using the Microsoft 365 platform. Today, that leans heavily on apps created for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Viva Connections. Candidates for this exam are proficient in core technologies such as Microsoft identity and graph, and they also know how to leverage different services in Microsoft 365 such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and to build apps to solve business problems. Now, the certification is for someone who can walk into a customer meeting, hear their business problem, and be able to design, propose, and implement a solution using Microsoft 365 all on their own. Now, I talked a little bit about this at the beginning of the lesson, and a candidate for this exam has usu- usually has experience with Microsoft Teams, the SharePoint framework, and Viva Connections. But, they also have a solid foundational understanding of things like REST APIs and JSON, the OAuth 2 protocols, OData, OpenID Connect, Microsoft identities including Azure AD and Microsoft accounts, Azure AD business-to-consumer or B2C, and the permission and consent concepts as well inside Microsoft identity. So, what are the prerequisites for taking the exam and becoming certified? You should have the equivalent of 4 years of hands-on experience building apps for Microsoft 365 with the core workloads. Now, I'll go over that in another lesson, but what does that mean? Well, as a client-side developer, you need to know HTML, JavaScript, and TypeScript at a bare minimum. As a server-side developer, you should at least have some core web development technology experience like asp.net core and or node js, working with console apps, building simple websites, and calling APIs. The different server-side technologies that you should know really well too are going to depend on the different options of the different paths that you go down for creating your applications and what the server-side components are. You do need to know a little bit of asp.net and a little bit of .NET Core when it comes to answering some of the questions on the exam as well as a little bit of node js. Now, what do you need in order to be able to prepare and study for the exam? You really need a Microsoft 365 developer tenant. Now, you can get that for free through the Microsoft 365 developer program. It's got a bunch of user licenses including included in it that you can use for building out and testing your apps. And I recommend that every Microsoft developer Microsoft 365 developer have their own developer tenant. Don't share one with a colleague. They're free and there's no reason to really share one. You should also have a copy of a good text editor. I would recommend Visual Studio Code. It's a free download from Microsoft and it's the text editor that I prefer and what we use in all the Microsoft learning modules that I'm going to reference throughout this course. I also recommend that you have a subscription to Microsoft Azure. Now, it can be useful for hosting different web apps, bots, and other processes. Now, I'm going to show you throughout this course on how you can use Azure to uh, for your development and your testing. But, the best part is that you don't There's not a single thing in Azure that you're really going to have to pay for to get ready for this exam. You will have to use a credit card to get a subscription, but that's just something that Azure requires. But, when you're working with bots or when you're working with web apps, there's no charge because you can usually achieve everything in your testing with the included free tiers that Azure provides. Now, in the next lesson, I'm going to talk through more of this about the certifications and how Microsoft creates them. I think it's an important to understand this process because it's going to make things a little bit easier in preparing for the exam. So, I'll see you in the next lesson.