Last month, I was sorting through all my old blogs and realized that I had not reviewed the new CRM 2011 Applications certification exam (MB2-868). A quick check of my credentials revealed that I hadn’t taken it yet. I like to take all the exams to make sure that when I teach the classes, I stay focused. I find the best way to prep for an exam is to schedule the test first, so I called up Prometric and scheduled the exam appointment.
I started prepping for the exam first checking out the Microsoft learning site for the exam prep guide here, by reviewing the CRM 2011 courseware for 80290, 80291, 80292 and 80293 and checking for blog entries. There were a couple of good blogs out there, including this one by Jukka Niiranen, but you never know which ones are good until after you take the test.
Without divulging specifics, the bottom line for prepping for this exam, is to focus on general information about the CRM applications, have a good hands-on knowledge of all four application areas, and to pay specific attention to any new features that were added with CRM 2011.
It’s important to remember that the exams are written just as the product is released. This means that when Microsoft adds additional features later, there may be questions that do not take into account the features released after the exam was written. Remember that!
New features released with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 that you need to focus on in addition to everything you knew for CRM 4.0 include:
- Dynamic marketing lists and how they differ from traditional marketing lists
- The new charts and dashboard functions as initially released
- goal management specifics
- teams and data management
- enhanced queue management functionality
I have to agree with Jukka Niiranen in his blog referenced above. It is definitely not enough to read about the new functionality. You need to experiment with all new functions and make sure you understand the specifics of how they are used. This exam expects you to truly understand the application, so while there is a focus on new features there are still lots of questions to determine your depth of knowledge of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
This is the third CRM applications exam that I’ve taken, starting with CRM 3.0. I have been critical of some of the detailed knowledge required to get a good grade on this exam in previous iterations. I think that the Microsoft team has done a good job on this exam to fairly evaluate the depth of knowledge that you have the CRM 2011 Application. This examination does a good job of testing your hands-on knowledge of the out-of-the-box functions of CRM 2011. You can pass this exam as long as you spent some time getting to know how how things work in addition to reading the books.
Good luck and tell me what you think of the exam when you take it.
Steve Noe, CRM Architect and Trainer
