The New Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate. My thoughts two months after the announcement.

A not so funny thing happened to me recently while working on updating a course to prepare students for the Microsoft 365 Certified: Modern Desktop Administrator Associate certification exams. The certification consists of two exams, the MD-100 and the MD-101. However, in early February 2023, Microsoft announced that starting in May 2023, the Microsoft 365 Certified: Modern Desktop Administrator Associate certification will be renamed to Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate and the MD-100 and MD-101 exams will be replaced with one single new exam, the MD-102. This was announced in the middle of our development process. But it’s not all bad. We managed to pivot, update, and include all the new objectives that were included in the MD-102 exam into the course.

Here are some more details about the changes. As I mentioned, the upcoming MD-102 exam is set to replace both the MD-100 and MD-101 exams and will be available in May 2023. Passing this one exam will earn you the new Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate. The number of skills listed in total, is about half of what the two exams previously had although it is important to note that just because something isn't listed in the exam description doesn't mean it won't be knowledge that you might need for the exam. I have found the skills listed to be at a high level and can sometimes cover pages and pages of documentation. My job is to design a course that narrows this down to the key topics.

While comparing the objectives between the three exams, MD-102 is mostly based on the previous exam, MD-101, but there are still some MD-100 objectives included, as well as some new items reflective of changes in Intune over the last few years. It's also a good time to point out that Microsoft likes to change the names of tools often.

There are MD-101 objectives that are not part of MD-102, such as items related to Azure AD, including user and group management, and some topics on Conditional Access policies. Having spent several weeks working with the new exam, I also noticed that the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit domain objective has been scaled down, with only about half of the items in the new exam description that were in the old MD-101. However, those that are missing are still mostly covered by the ones that did move over.

Some of the new additions, and there are not too many, include Remote Help in Intune, Role-Based Access Control for Intune, Intune Connector for Active Directory, Local Administrative Passwords (LAPS) Solution for Azure AD, Conditional Access policies with compliance status and app protection policies, Microsoft Tunnel for Intune, Endpoint Analytics and Adoption Score, and several Android related skills. I also noticed some skills are reworded for clarity in the MD-102 exam.

Probably the biggest takeaway from all this, and in my opinion a huge mistake by Microsoft, is that there will no longer be a legacy Windows desktop exam once these changes take effect. MD-100 mostly focused on non-cloud technologies of Windows 10/11, which was not aligned with most other Microsoft exams that are focused on the cloud. This does create a gap for those looking for a Microsoft exam focused on legacy Windows functionality and troubleshooting. Those looking for that can look to the CompTIA A+ exams and certification to fill that void.