This morning I successfully completed my first CRM 2016 certification, MB2-712, obviously I’m not allowed to give any details about specific questions.

If you are lucky enough to have access to the partner source and therefore the “Learning Portal” you’ll find the videos for the exam preparation really good. They were the only source of information I used for my prep.

As this exam is very new you might find additional specific information hard to come by but reviewing anything connected with the CRM 2015 customization and configuration exam will be useful. There is a lot of crossover / commonality between the old and new exams. For example: the basic concepts for security roles and security hierarchy haven’t changed.

To be honest I found the exam pretty easy mainly because it wasn’t that long since I took the CRM 2015 exam.

As is always true when preparing for any of the Microsoft exams its worth going over the skills measured in detail. Make sure you are familiar with every concept mentioned in the skills to be measured.

Configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Configure Dynamics CRM settings
  
  • Configure auditing, document management, and collaboration; configure business units; perform user management; configure email; manage teams
    
• Manage Dynamics CRM security
  
  • Understand security roles; define permissions and privileges; configure access levels; configure security roles; assign security roles; work with multiple security roles; manage access; manage security hierarchy
    

Manage and implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM entities, entity relationships, and fields

• Manage Dynamics CRM entities
  
  • Manage entity ownership; manage entity properties; understand system and custom entities
    
• Configure field customizations
  
  • Understand and configure fields; configure field properties; use calculated fields; use rollup fields; configure global option sets; create alternate keys; configure field-level security; understand status and status reasons
    
• Implement entity relationships
  
  • Understand relationship types; understand cascading rules; work with hierarchical data; understand and configure entity mapping; create connections and connection roles
    

Create and manage Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions, forms, views, and visualizations

• Create and manage Dynamics CRM solutions
  
  • Understand solution components; identify solution types; create managed and unmanaged solutions; configure publishers and versions; work with multiple solutions; import and export solutions
    
• Customize Dynamics CRM forms
  
  • Understand the form structure; build a form; use specialized form components; use access teams and sub-grids; work with navigation; understand form types; use multiple forms; implement form customizations and mobile clients
    
• Implement Dynamics CRM views and visualizations
  
  • Understand view types; manage system, public, and personal views; create, modify, and delete views; customize views; customize charts; customize dashboards; use themes
    

Implement business rules, workflows, and business process flows

• Implement and manage business rules
  
  • Understand when to use business rules; understand business rule scopes; understand how business rules are triggered; configure business rules, conditions, and actions
    
• Implement and manage workflows, dialogs, and custom actions
  
  • Implement workflows; identify workflow types; implement dialogs and custom actions; identify when to use business process flows, workflow dialogs, and custom actions
    
• Implement and manage business process flows
  
  • Understand business process flows; enable business process flows; work with steps, stages, and categories; work with multiple entities; use conditional branching; implement role-driven business process flows
    

If your knowledge on CRM2015 is current, then this is probably the easiest of the new CRM 2016 exams. I will post about my experiences of taking the other new exams as I attempt them over the next few of weeks. Hopefully I will be as successful with those!

But for now I am just happy to have the first one completed. J

If you are about to update your certifications I would recommend making this the first exam you take.