MS-700: Managing Microsoft Teams Exam Prep Guide and Resources

The single Microsoft Exam MS-700: Managing Microsoft Teams gives you the Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate certification.

The exam was in beta and beta results were recently released and I’m pleased to say I passed. Graham Hosking (LinkedIn, Twitter) a friend and TS at Microsoft also passed. We pooled our thoughts and resources together for this prep guide.

Think we missed something useful, let me know in the comments and we will update the guide!

Skills measured:

• Plan and Configure a Microsoft Teams Environment (45-50%)
• Manage Chat, Calling, and Meetings (30-35%)
• Manage Teams and App Policies (20-25%)

Staying up to date

Microsoft Teams is constantly evolving, be sure to check out the Microsoft Teams blog here.

You can also subscribe to my every other Tuesday Microsoft Teams news update email here

Online Materials

Here is some great online material

Exam MS-700: Managing Microsoft Teams – the exam, you can book here

Skills Measured Detail – breakdown off all the skills measured and areas you should cover in your prep

Microsoft Teams technical documentation – We won’t link to every section in the skills outline, but the docs are very good and you should work through the relevant topics from the Skills measured outline

Microsoft Teams PowerShell documentation – you need to know the PowerShell, not just the Teams Admin Center

Manage team collaboration with Microsoft Teams Learning Path from Microsoft  – 2 hr 17 min – 5 Modules

Upgrade to Microsoft Teams? – Duration of the course is 2 hours and 40 Minutes

Introduction to security in Microsoft 365? – Duration of the course is 35 Minutes

Coffee in the Cloud YouTube Channel – great videos

 

Plan and Configure a Microsoft Teams Environment (45-50%)

• Plan and configure network settings for Microsoft Teams
• Implement Governance and Lifecycle Management for Microsoft Teams
• Configure and manage guest access
• Manage security and compliance
• Deploy and manage Microsoft Teams endpoint
• Monitor and analyze service usage

 

Security and compliance

Knowing where Microsoft Teams data resides is also key, for example, you should know that 1:1/1:M private chats are stored in the user mailbox whereas the Teams channel chats are stored in the 365 group mailbox. This is key when it comes to applying retention policies and what repositories need to be held for some time.

Retention is a huge topic in itself but familiarise yourself with Teams in the article here:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/retention-policies

Information policies fall into this category too. This again might be an unfamiliar one as it’s E5 and all through Powershell, no UI for this one. So, take a look at how this is set up and recreate if your labs to fully understand it. It isn’t rocket science but there may be some key scenarios checking your understanding of this feature.

PowerShell is king here, so take a look at the small article here:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/information-barriers-in-teams

Access review for guest access to your tenant is a must these days. Get up to speed on how this works and what to configure:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/governance/access-reviews-overview

 

Groups

So you know about the Teams admin portal but what other areas can you do administration from that will affect Teams. You got it Azure portal. You may need to know what Powershell commands there are to administer things like Azure Active Directory and 365 Groups to name a few.

Some key references to be familiar with are:

Group life cycle:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/groups-lifecycle

Guest access

Know the differences between guest access and federation. Where all the settings are for guest access is also key, there’s a great article on this one which was even new to us after investigation after the exam.

Definitely, one to understand for the exam and real-life administration for the multitude of options and configuration that is guest access:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/guest-access-checklist

 

Reports

You guessed the next one, what reports are available in the admin portal and what information are they showing? The exam will test you on what the reports are showing you and your understanding of them.

There are a few, take note of the following and do your research on them. Again there’s a tonne of information here but know what’s what and where they reside:

Teams activity reports:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-activity-reports

Network planner:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/network-planner

Call quality dashboard:?https://docs.microsoft.com/enus/microsoftteams/difference-between-call-analytics-and-call-quality-dashboard

Teams admin centre:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-analytics-and-reports/teams-reporting-reference

Troubleshooting:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/log-files

 

Manage Chat, Calling, and Meetings (30-35%)

• Manage chat and collaboration experiences
• Manage meeting experiences
• Manage phone numbers
• Manage Phone System

Phone System

If you’re not used to the voice aspect in Microsoft teams start looking, but starting with what is phone system and the requirements to enable a user for phone system. Once you understand this build on the auto-attendant and call queues, you’ll have a question or two on this make-up of the features:

Phone system setup:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/create-a-phone-system-call-queue

Auto attendants & call queues:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/what-are-phone-system-auto-attendants

Meetings

A huge part of Microsoft Teams is the features of meetings, you might be asked to understand the differences between a traditional collaborative meeting and a live event. Sounds easy you say but look deeper into things like live events and you will notice other elements that are customisable for that service.

• Exchange calendar setup:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/mailboxes/set-calendarprocessing?view=exchange-p

Meeting settings in Teams:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/meeting-settings-in-teams

Steam / Live events:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/network-overview

Interoperability modes

Skype to Teams is still a huge conversation for Microsoft so it’s natural that you’re going to be asked about it. Understand the granularity of these modes and how they can be configured for the organisation and down to the end-user. Start by having a read specifically what Islands mode does and how the other modes interoperate between Teams and Skype. Yes, including the PowerShell cmdlets.

The modes that you can configure are here:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/skype/grant-csteamsupgradepolicy?view=skypeps

 

Manage Teams and App Policies (20-25%)

• Manage a team
• Manage membership in a team
• Implement policies for Microsoft Teams apps

 

Teams permissions

Teams channels have three membership options from Owners, Members and Guests. There’s a variety of options to choose from which you may also need to be familiar with so take a look at what can be turned on and off for each.

More information for this can be found here:?https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-guests

 

App Permissions

Managing custom apps, app setup, and permissions can be quite complex. If this is something you’ve not recently looked at, it will be worth walking through the setup in your lab/tenant. A refresher on how it works and what’s required to push applications out to your workforce will help you with this exam.

Our recommendation is to start looking at this article as the first point of call when prepping for the exam as it’s one of the least well know of the skills measured: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-custom-app-policies-and-settings