Hey ya’ll – welcome back! Today I want to drop a few thoughts about the MS-720 exam. This just released out of beta towards the end of last year (2021) and after seeing so many of my friends take and pass it (most of them in beta) I finally took the plunge today. #fomo #guilty
The MS-720 is the expert-level Microsoft Teams Voice Engineer exam. You can read more of the details and requirements and Skills measured here: Exam MS-720: Microsoft Teams Voice Engineer – Learn | Microsoft Docs
I want to point out the two learning paths that you’ll find
- Plan & Configure Teams Phone: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/plan-configure-teams-voice/
- Manage Teams Phone: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/manage-teams-voice/
These learning paths are reasonable but not complete to help you get through the exam requirements. Here are some non-annotated, and non-NDA-busting things I think you should consider:
- Know licensing – what is included and what needs to be add-on
- Know Calling Plans (CP) vs. Direct Routing (DR) vs. Operator Connect (OC) – not just what the technologies are, but, how to implement them including what you can do via Teams Admin Center vs. what is PowerShell. Especially powershell. Many things are “settings” and others are “policies” – know the difference.
- Know media – local media optimization, media bypass – how they are used, how they are implemented.
- Know your fundamentals of networking (https://aka.ms/pnc) and the fundamentals of how Teams Phone relates to networking/security (https://aka.ms/O365IP)
- Know devices – what devices do what (features), how to deploy, how to manage
- Know the Voice Features related to boss/admin (delegation, SLA) and Auto Attendant/Call Queue (call center “light”)
- Know Voice routing – not just terminology, but translation policies, dial plans, routing policies, and how those relate to CP, OC and DR.
- As usual, powershell is a thing you need to know. Not just the get-, set- and grant- commands syntax, but which one is important as you deploy Teams Phone
- Know the order of operations – when you do this (deploy, enable, create, change, set, etc.) – what do you do first? what’s next? Can you place multiple steps in order?
- Be familiar with call quality – definitions, how do you identify and classify clients, locations, etc. How do you access logs and data to be able to troubleshoot potential issues? Be familiar with process.
- Understand Skype -> Teams transition. Can you interop an on-premises Skype for Business Server solution to Teams? Can you migrate? If you’ve done this – it’ll be familiar. If you haven’t, it would be helpful to read more about the moving parts like directory sync and “hybrid” terminologies.
That’s about as vague as I need to keep it to ensure NDA and exam integrity. Those learning paths above are a great start. I’m thankful that the last 10+ years of my career have been very focused on Microsoft voice/comms and I have this experience. For those of you just starting out, please let me know how I can help. I’d love to send you to a few of my favorite resources or help connect you with some industry experts!