Microsoft very recently released a new option for obtaining new skills based credentials. These credentials similar to the Microsoft certifications are verifiable, so once you pass the assessment you can prove that you have the new credential and share a link to this on your social platforms if you are so inclined.
These “applied skills” assessments are fully lab based exercises performed through your web browser. Unlike the hands-on labs that were (or possibly still are) part of the Microsoft certifications, these assessments are much more focussed on one particular service such as Microsoft Sentinel or Azure networking therefore not requiring a broad knowledge of several other core Azure services that may be less applicable to an individual. Before taking the assessment you are presented with the relevant Microsoft Learn modules to prepare for the assessment but you don’t have to complete these in order to take the assessment.
I decided to test my existing knowledge and jumped straight in and took a couple of these assessments one evening recently to get an idea of how these work and below is a short writeup on how I found the overall experience and what I concluded.
My experience
My initial impression was that the overall experience is very much like the hands-on labs in the certification exams. You are given a series of tasks to complete and just enough information for you to decide what needs to be done and how everything should be configured.
With this experience however, it is presented in quite a fun way with the scenario being that you are brought in as a consultant and through a series of virtual emails provided through the lab environment, you are presented with a series of tasks to complete as part of your role.
Each assessment (or at least the ones that I tried) has a two hour time limit and whether it’s intended or not, it is open book. Therefore you can use your browser to perform research and look up the product documentation on Microsoft Learn if necessary.
I had no technical issues with the assessments in terms of connectivity or functionality, everything worked quite well and without any noticeable delays however there were a few quirky anomalies. With one scenario there were resources pre-deployed and I was told in the tasks list that the existing resources were in the West Europe region when in fact they were deployed to the Australia East region. It didn’t affect anything overall but I can see how something like this could confuse someone.
I personally found the two hours way to generous a time limit and in both assessments I completed my labs in under 30 minutes. However, this does take the pressure off and make it feel more like a fun learning experience than an actual exam or assessment.
The two assessments I completed are marked as intermediate level and while there were some slightly trickier tasks, it was largely pretty basic stuff for the most part but I would expect there will be more complex expert level assessments released in due course if Microsoft decide to continue with this program.
Conclusion
At the time of writing, there are currently no less than eight applied skills assessments currently available, all of which are marked at intermediate level. It is expected that more will be announced at Microsoft Ignite in a few weeks time.
- Secure storage for Azure Files and Azure Blob Storage
- Configure secure access to your workloads using Azure networking
- Deploy and configure Azure Monitor
- Deploy containers by using Azure Kubernetes Service
- Develop an ASP.NET Core web app that consumes an API
- Secure Azure services and workloads with Microsoft Defender for Cloud regulatory compliance controls
- Configure SIEM security operations using Microsoft Sentinel
- Create and manage automated processes by using Power Automate
You can take these assessments here.
Overall, I like the concept. It is a fun way to test your skills and it compliments the certificate exams nicely. It is very much aimed at the beginner to intermediate level however and the fact that it is entirely portal driven rules out any DevOps engineers unless they want to brush up on their Azure portal skills. I suspect there will be some DevOps assessments coming in future however to test those GitHub and Azure DevOps skills.
Is it as important as a certification? I don’t think so. I personally liked the labs being part of the certification requirements as it is a good test of both knowledge, practical know how and problem solving.
I can see these being a useful training tool however and being an advocate and author of lab based training courses myself, I definitely see the benefit of these assessments and I do hope that Microsoft continue to release and (importantly) maintain them.
azurealan.ie 