Action required - Your Microsoft Certification will expire in 180 days! Link to heading
That email subject, from May 21, asked for action, to get one of my certifications renewed, or “If your certification expires, you must earn the certification again by passing the required certification exam(s)”
This renewal process is new in many ways, main differences are
- The topics covered are not necessarily the same as for the original exam/certification
- The exam itself is simpler than the proctored exam, no proctor, no dedicated exam app
I renewed 3 certifications with this process,
I passed all on the first try, however the renewal exams can be repeated as many times as needed
To prepare, I went through all the linked materials on each of the certification pages, all of which go to the Microsoft Learn site, and include theory, labs and exam. I highly recommend this approach because
- The liked materials are directly related to the questions in the renewal exam
- The Microsoft Learn materials and labs are very well made, up to date and relevant
During the renewal exam, without a proctor or dedicated app, nothing prevents you from navigating back to the learning materials or searching for the answers online. While this approach might work to renew the certification, I think that misses the point. I think going through the materials preparing for the exam, and then consciously answering the exam questions fulfills the “brush up on your skills” objective in the invitation email.
About the individual exams, what I found is that all the topics are covered in the learning materials and a lot of the topics from the original exams are not part of the renewal. The questions are less “tricky” than in the proctored exams and all the questions are multiple selections, no labs, no “order the commands” or any other of the question types available in the proctored exams.
See More Link to heading
Something that happened to me while preparing for the DevOps exam, opening the links to the learning materials, is that I missed some of the materials. While doing the exam I got some questions for which I wasn’t prepared, then after the exam I went back to the page and noticed the “See More” link at the bottom of the list of training materials, same link is present in the Architect Expert exam, and I learned my lesson.
Celebrate Link to heading
