Microsoft certifications are role-based and span several tracks - Azure infrastructure (AZ), Microsoft 365 (MS/MD), Security, Compliance and Identity (SC), Data (DP), and Power Platform (PL). Most people start with a Fundamentals exam, pick the Associate that matches their job, and work up to an Expert or Specialty credential. Here is how the tracks progress, with free practice for every exam.
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1
Fundamentals
Start here if you are new to the platform or subject.- AZ-900Microsoft Azure FundamentalsCloud and Azure basics: core services, pricing, SLAs, and governance. The entry point for everyone.View AZ-900 practice exam →
- AI-901Azure AI FundamentalsCore AI and machine-learning concepts and the Azure AI services that implement them.View AI-901 practice exam →
- DP-900Azure Data FundamentalsCore data concepts and how relational and non-relational data work on Azure.View DP-900 practice exam →
- SC-900Security, Compliance, and Identity FundamentalsSecurity, compliance, and identity fundamentals across Microsoft Entra, Defender, and Purview.View SC-900 practice exam →
- PL-900Microsoft Power Platform FundamentalsPower Platform fundamentals: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Copilot Studio.View PL-900 practice exam →
2
Associate
Pick the role that matches your work.- AZ-104Microsoft Azure AdministratorDay-to-day Azure administration: identity, governance, storage, compute, and networking. The most popular associate exam.View AZ-104 practice exam →
- AZ-700Azure Network Engineer AssociateDesigning and implementing Azure networking. For network engineers.View AZ-700 practice exam →
- MS-102Microsoft 365 AdministratorMicrosoft 365 tenant administration: identity, security, and compliance across the suite.View MS-102 practice exam →
- MD-102Microsoft Endpoint AdministratorEndpoint administration: deploying, managing, and protecting Windows devices with Intune.View MD-102 practice exam →
- SC-200Microsoft Security Operations AnalystSecurity operations: detection, investigation, and response with Defender XDR and Sentinel.View SC-200 practice exam →
- SC-300Microsoft Identity and Access AdministratorIdentity and access administration with Microsoft Entra.View SC-300 practice exam →
- SC-500Cloud and AI Security Engineer AssociateSecuring Azure and AI workloads: identity, platform, data, and security operations. The successor to AZ-500.View SC-500 practice exam →
- PL-300Microsoft Power BI Data AnalystBuilding and publishing Power BI reports and data models. For data analysts.View PL-300 practice exam →
3
Expert
Design solutions across a whole platform.- AZ-305Azure Solutions Architect ExpertDesigning Azure infrastructure solutions across identity, data, continuity, and infrastructure. Do AZ-104 first.View AZ-305 practice exam →
- AZ-400Azure DevOps Engineer ExpertDevOps: combining people, process, and tooling for continuous delivery on Azure.View AZ-400 practice exam →
- SC-100Microsoft Cybersecurity ArchitectDesigning a Zero Trust strategy and cybersecurity architecture. An associate security background is recommended.View SC-100 practice exam →
4
Specialty
Go deep in one focused area.Additional role tracks
Choose by role or subject; these are alternatives to the progression above.- AB-100Agentic AI Business Solutions ArchitectMicrosoft Certified: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect Expert (Exam AB-100) - architecting agentic AI business solutions across their lifecycle: planning solutions by identifying business scenarios, assessing feasibility and readiness, and choosing between Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry and Power Platform; designing solutions covering agent architecture and orchestration, knowledge and grounding, tools and extensibility including MCP and agent-to-agent work, identity and permissions, and responsible AI; and deploying solutions covering environments and application lifecycle, evaluation and testing, monitoring and observability, cost and capacity, security and data protection, human oversight, and the operating model that keeps an agent correct after launch.View AB-100 practice exam →
- AB-620AI Agent Builder AssociateMicrosoft Certified: AI Agent Builder Associate (Exam AB-620) - designing and building integrated AI agent solutions in Microsoft Copilot Studio: planning and configuring agents, agent flows and topics, integrating enterprise knowledge sources, tools (MCP, custom connectors, REST APIs, computer use), multi-agent collaboration (A2A) and Microsoft Foundry integration, and testing and managing agents with ALM.View AB-620 practice exam →
- AB-730AI Business ProfessionalMicrosoft Certified: AI Business Professional (Exam AB-730) - using generative AI productivity tools, primarily Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents such as Researcher and Analyst, to improve daily work and business outcomes without writing code: generative AI fundamentals and responsible use, creating and managing prompts and conversations, building simple agents, and drafting and analyzing business content across Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams.View AB-730 practice exam →
- AB-731AI Transformation LeaderMicrosoft Certified: AI Transformation Leader (Exam AB-731) - leading AI adoption as a business decision-maker rather than a builder: identifying and prioritising the business scenarios worth funding, sizing and defending the value case, weighing risk and responsible AI as business decisions, and understanding what generative AI can and cannot do; choosing between Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, Copilot Studio agents, Microsoft Foundry, Power Platform and Dynamics 365 for a given need, with the licensing, security, data protection and governance that each implies; and running the implementation - readiness, pilots, change management, skilling, adoption measurement, scaling and the operating model that sustains it.View AB-731 practice exam →
- AB-900Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration FundamentalsValidates foundational skills for supporting, securing and protecting an AI-enabled Microsoft 365 environment - the core features and objects of Microsoft 365 services including licensing, the admin centres and the security model of Microsoft Entra ID, data protection and governance with Microsoft Purview including sensitivity labels, DLP, insider risk, DSPM for AI and SharePoint oversharing, and the basic administration of Copilot and agents covering licences, pay-as-you-go billing, usage monitoring, prompt management and the agent approval and lifecycle process.View AB-900 practice exam →
- AI-103Developing AI Apps and Agents on AzureValidates building, managing, and deploying generative AI and agent solutions on Microsoft Foundry - Azure AI solutions, generative AI and agentic apps, vision, and text analysis. The active replacement for the retired AI-102.View AI-103 practice exam →
- AI-300Operationalizing Machine Learning and Generative AI SolutionsValidates setting up infrastructure for machine learning operations and generative AI operations on Azure - designing and implementing MLOps infrastructure, the model lifecycle from training through deployment and monitoring, GenAIOps infrastructure in Microsoft Foundry, generative AI quality assurance and observability, and optimizing RAG and fine-tuned model performance. Leads to Machine Learning Operations Engineer Associate.View AI-300 practice exam →
- AZ-802Administering Windows ServerValidates deploying, implementing, managing and troubleshooting Windows Server as a workload on-premises, in the cloud and in hybrid environments - AD DS, hybrid management with Azure Arc and Windows Admin Center, Hyper-V and Azure virtual machines, DNS and DHCP, storage and file services including Azure Files and Azure File Sync, securing the operating system and AD DS, and monitoring and troubleshooting.View AZ-802 practice exam →
- DP-300Azure Database Administrator AssociateValidates ability to plan and implement data platform resources, implement a secure environment, monitor and optimize resources, and configure high availability.View DP-300 practice exam →
- DP-420Building AI Applications with Azure Cosmos DBDP-420 leads to Microsoft Certified: Azure Cosmos DB AI Developer Associate (renamed from Azure Cosmos DB Developer Specialty on 6 October 2026) - modelling and partitioning data for Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL, querying and writing through the SDKs, distributing data across regions and choosing a consistency model, integrating with Fabric and the change feed, tuning indexing and request-unit cost, and maintaining the solution through monitoring, backup and restore, security and data movement. The 6 October 2026 outline adds AI retrieval and RAG solutions and agent memory systems; this bank is being realigned to it.View DP-420 practice exam →
- DP-600Microsoft Fabric Analytics Engineer AssociateValidates implementing analytics solutions with Microsoft Fabric - maintaining a data analytics solution (security, governance, and the development lifecycle), preparing and transforming data in lakehouses and warehouses, and implementing and optimizing semantic models with DAX and Direct Lake.View DP-600 practice exam →
- DP-700Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer AssociateValidates implementing data engineering solutions with Microsoft Fabric - ingesting and transforming data, implementing and managing an analytics solution (lakehouse, warehouse, Real-Time Intelligence), and monitoring and optimizing.View DP-700 practice exam →
- DP-750Implementing Data Engineering Solutions Using Azure DatabricksDP-750 leads to Microsoft Certified: Azure Databricks Data Engineer Associate - setting up and configuring an Azure Databricks workspace and its compute, securing and governing Unity Catalog objects, modelling, ingesting, cleansing and validating data in the lakehouse, and building, deploying and troubleshooting Lakeflow pipelines and jobs.View DP-750 practice exam →
- DP-800Developing AI-Enabled Database SolutionsDP-800 leads to Microsoft Certified: SQL AI Developer Associate - designing tables, programmability objects and advanced T-SQL across SQL Server, Azure SQL and SQL databases in Fabric, securing and optimising them, shipping schema changes through SQL Database Projects and Data API builder, and implementing AI capabilities from embeddings and vector search to retrieval-augmented generation.View DP-800 practice exam →
- MB-310Dynamics 365 Finance Functional ConsultantMicrosoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Finance Functional Consultant Associate (Exam MB-310) - implementing and managing the finance capabilities of Dynamics 365 Finance: financial management (chart of accounts and financial dimensions, ledgers, currencies and journals, cash and bank management, sales tax, financial reporting, intercompany accounting, consolidation and period close), accounts receivable with credit, collections and subscription billing, accounts payable and expense management, budgeting including budget control and budget planning, and fixed assets including asset leasing.View MB-310 practice exam →
- MB-500Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Apps DeveloperMicrosoft Certified: Dynamics 365: Finance and Operations Apps Developer Associate (Exam MB-500) - implementing and extending finance and operations apps: planning the architecture and solution design including application lifecycle management with Lifecycle Services and the Power Platform admin center, applying developer tools in Visual Studio and Azure DevOps version control, designing and developing AOT elements (forms, menus, labels, tables, views, queries, maps, data entities and classes), developing and testing X++ code including Chain of Command, event handlers and the SysOperation, workflow and SysExtensionSerializer frameworks, implementing reporting with SSRS, Power BI, Excel and electronic reporting, integrating and managing data solutions through OData, custom services, business events, dual-write and the data management framework, and implementing security while optimizing performance.View MB-500 practice exam →
- MB-800Dynamics 365 Business Central Functional ConsultantMicrosoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Business Central Functional Consultant Associate (Exam MB-800) - implementing and configuring Dynamics 365 Business Central without code: setting up the application (companies, data migration with configuration packages, security, dimensions, and workflows), configuring financials (chart of accounts, posting groups, journals, currencies, accounts payable and receivable, and fixed assets), configuring sales and purchasing (inventory, items, costing, and pricing), and performing operations (processing purchase and sales documents, financial documents, payments, and fixed-asset and inventory transactions).View MB-800 practice exam →
- MB-820Dynamics 365 Business Central DeveloperMicrosoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Business Central Developer Associate (Exam MB-820) - developing extensions for Business Central in AL: describing the architecture and apps, installing and configuring a development environment and creating, debugging and deploying extensions, developing by using AL objects (tables and pages, reports, XMLports, codeunits, entitlement and permission set objects, and queries), developing by using AL (UI customization and onboarding, development standards, and extending Business Central), working with development tools (semiautomated testing and telemetry), and integrating Business Central with other applications through REST services and APIs.View MB-820 practice exam →
- MS-700Microsoft Teams AdministratorValidates planning, deploying, managing, and securing Microsoft Teams - meetings, calling, and collaboration governance.View MS-700 practice exam →
- MS-721Collaboration Communications Systems EngineerMS-721 Collaboration Communications Systems Engineer - planning, deploying, configuring, maintaining and troubleshooting Microsoft Teams Phone, Teams meetings, webinars and town halls, and Teams Rooms and certified devices, including PSTN connectivity and Direct Routing, auto attendants and call queues, dynamic emergency calling, network readiness and call quality, and device management across Windows and Android.View MS-721 practice exam →
- SC-401Information Security AdministratorValidates administering information security in Microsoft 365 with Microsoft Purview - information protection and sensitivity labels, DLP and retention, insider risk, alerts and eDiscovery, and protecting data used by AI. The successor to the retired SC-400.View SC-401 practice exam →
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How CertGrid helps you pass
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Frequently asked questions
Which Microsoft certification should I get first?
A Fundamentals exam that matches your area - AZ-900 for Azure, SC-900 for security, DP-900 for data, PL-900 for Power Platform. They need no prior experience and build the vocabulary the later exams assume.
Do I have to take the exams in order?
No. Fundamentals exams are recommended but never required prerequisites. Experienced professionals often start directly at the Associate level for their role.
What is the difference between the AZ, MS, SC, DP, and PL tracks?
AZ is Azure infrastructure, MS/MD is Microsoft 365 and endpoints, SC is security/compliance/identity, DP is data, and PL is Power Platform. Choose the track that matches your job, then follow it up through Associate and Expert.
Do I need an Associate before an Expert exam?
It is not officially required, but Expert exams like AZ-305 and SC-100 assume hands-on, associate-level knowledge. Most people earn the matching Associate first.