Microsoft Applied Skills review
It's no secret that I enjoy certifications and written and/or practical exams as part of my career. So when Microsoft launched a new initiative, I naturally had to see what it was all about.
As I have described in previous articles about certifications:
most exams are simply multiple choice. Some of Microsoft's certification exams do have a lab though. But Microsoft's new initiative called "Microsoft Applied Skills", is 100% lab based. It isn't proctored, but just online, kind of like the certification renewal experience they launched some years ago.
You can read more about it here.
My experience
In these labs you will work from a remote controlled (browser based) PC and utilize the actual Azure Portal (but you are allowed to use other tools available on the PC) to deliver the work described in the emails (seen within the lab, on the remote controlled PC). The labs I checked allowed for up to 2 hours of work prior to submitting the result. In my experience, that's more than enough, based on the 2 scenarios I took and passed.
The tasks/requirements for passing is fairly good described. If you know the topic, it is by no means a complex setup you are asked to build. Some requirements can raise questions on exactly how they want something done. But keep "least administrative effort" (also known from Microsoft exams) in mind. That was stated in the overall objective for my labs. So, if a requirement can be fulfilled in more than one way, choose the easiest/quickest.
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A little quirk
I only had one bad experience going through lab labs. After pushing submit, the environment will calculate the result by checking the requirements in the environment. It will take up to about a minute. The message states that if you don't see the result by 30 seconds, refresh the page.
The first time I just waited, and then got an error message after 1-2 minutes. I was frustrated and thought I would have to go through the lab again. But you can only do each lab once every 72 hours. Turns out, I could go back (in the browser history) to the result page, then it was correctly calculated and added to my profile as passed. So, I can only encourage you to actually do the refresh a couple of times before the 30 seconds have passed, to save yourself from that frustration.
Conclusion
All in all, a good experience. They was I see it, is is meant to compliment the certifications to ensure the candidate have some practical experience with to topic. A nice addon to the "Microsoft Learn" experience. And best off all - it's free!
I started out with 2 labs that fits my profile, but I'm looking forward to seeing more in the future. I believe I saw a a hint about Microsoft Ignite in this context - that is not far away.
Are you going to dig in and show your skills?