In the last week, we have started the Power Platform certification series. As part of the certification series, you and many others in our community submitted their feedback.
Survey Results
Here is the post I have added on LinkedIn a couple of weeks before when we announced the Power Platform certification series.
I wanted to thank everyone for submitting the feedback, that was very helpful and I learned a little bit about what you are trying to achieve. Below is the screenshot of the survey summary.
I think the idea about this particular program is more about helping you to prepare for the exam and maybe provide initial guidance on what to learn and what to look for in a systematic way. Also, I would be sending emails in the next four weeks on what you should do so that this might help you to pass the exam. If you are interested in getting emails, please make sure to sign-up using the form.
Many of us might be working either as citizen developers, IT admin, or maybe you’re a pro developer. This would be the foundational certificate that anyone of us can do. It gives an understanding of what the Power Platform is all about. The program that we are going to start is going to help you to get started with the power platform, understanding some of its core components. In addition, the approach we’re going to take is by working on sample project and then start mapping the different core components to the requirements of the sample project.
Why PL-900
If we are trying to achieve anything then it’s the “Why” that we need to ask ourselves. If we know our “Why” then everything fall-in place. Below are some of the responses we have received when we asked why our community friends wanted to do the certifications on Power Platform.
- Knowledge and professional growth
- To be a valuable person in the IT industry
- To explore power platform
- Upgrade skills or upskill
- Better compensation
- Show customers that you are certified
- Career growth or advancement
- To get a better job or change in career
- from one role to another.
- Personal goal for 2021
- Organization need
- Corporate mandatory certificate for every year
The below screenshot shows insights from the MS Forms.
To help some of our friends, we have started the Pl-900 certification challenge.
Welcome to PL-900 certification challenge
A 4-week certification challenge that will help you to improve your skills and prepare for the PL-900 certification. Please note, this is not a guaranteed one to pass the PL-900 exam :). The intention of this program is even if you do not write the exam, you will learn about Power Platform fundamentals use it at your work.
Each day, you will get an email about what topics you should be studying for the certification. Along with the content, we will be sending you the action items that we want everyone who are part of this to complete on a daily basis.
Below is the high-level plan for the next four weeks.
Week 1: Introduction to the core components of the Power Platform.
Week 2: Power Apps.
Week 3:Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents.
Week 4: Power BI.
To be honest, we might not wait for week 4 to introduce Power BI instead it will be done in week 2 so all the introductions of the concepts will be done very early and there are plenty of labs you will be doing as part of the preparation.
Systems instead of Goals
Atomic Habits by James Clear is one of my favorite books which takes about the systems instead of goals. According to this book, there was research done on three different groups. The first group was given the basic instructions and the second group was motivated by people in addition to instruction on how to do exercise but the third group got the details about when (time) and where (Location) along with the instructions. The results from the 3rd group are 50% more than the other two groups.
We are trying to follow the same approach while preparing for Pl-900 certification by blocking our time for preparation for the exam which means we have more chances for completing this exam successfully.
Community
We could have used Facebook groups, but there is a lot of distraction if you use Facebook groups, which is the main reason are we just choosing a different platform Circle.co. I hope this is going to be much easier for you to interact with the other members, but, you could always email me if you get stuck with any of the challenges or leave me a comment below. I think that should be good to help you, in a day or two. if you need help quickly, this would be the best place because you have a lot many people to answer your questions.
Sample Project
This program that we are going to start is to help you to get started with the power platform, understanding some of its core components. And, and also the approach we’re going to take is maybe even taking a sample project and then start mapping those, um, different components for the sample project. So that’s how we’ll be doing it.
Below are the high-level requirements of the sample project.
- All company employees can request information about return to the office.
- All company employees will be able to submit the requests.
- Submitted requests will be reviewed by the Manager, IT department.
- The system will send an email notification to the employee and the manager when the form is submitted.
- Health and safety departments need access to the reports.
- All requests will get archived after 30 days and deleted permanently after 90 days.
Lets get started with Day 1 of week 1.
Day 1 – Schedule your exam and Block your calender
You have two simple actions for Day 1:
Action Item 1:
All you have to do is register for the PL-900 exam.
Go to the official Microsoft PL-900 certification page and register for the exam.
Action Item 2:
Add a calendar event for the next 4 weeks or whatever time you need. If you can do it within 4 to 6 weeks is great.
We strongly beeive that once you register for the exam and block your calender. you will be more focused and put an effort to complete the examination.
Once these action items are done, please start with Day 2.
Day 2 – What is Power Platform and Set-up Development environment
Hope you scheduled your exam, if not please complete your action items on Day 1.
Day 2, you will be learning about what is Microsoft Power Platform and setting up the environment required.
Step 1: What is Power Platform
We would highly recommend starting with MS Learn regarding the introduction of core components of Power Platform. Read-only this page today and understand the core components. This is very important if you are new to Power Platform.
Step 2: Set-up environment for practice
Below is the list of resources to set up the environment to work with Power Platform.
You can use this for up to 90 days. Please follow the steps as described in the link.
CDX is a great place if you wanted to set up the tenants with the data but this will not work with a personal account.
If you have done with Steps 1 and 2, congrats. Let us start with Day 3.
Day 3 – Sample Project Requirements and Azure DevOps
Day 3 I would like you to read and understand the sample project requirements.
Return to Office requirements:
- All company employees can request information about return to the office processes.
- All company employees will be able to submit the requests so they can return to the workplace.
- Submitted requests will be reviewed by the Manager and the IT department.
- The system will send an email notification to the employee and the manager when the request is submitted.
- Health and safety departments need to have access to the reports.
- All requests will get archived after 30 days and deleted permanently after 90 days.
If you have any questions about the sample project requirements, please leave a comment below.
Optional action item:
Read an article on how to capture the requirements on Power Platform. It is an excellent read, even if you do one more step on setting up DevOps and creates an epic, features, user stories, and tasks would be great.
Once you are done, lets us start with day 4.
Day 4 – Intro to Power Apps
Day 4, we will be talking about Power Apps. Please follow the below video to learn about Power Apps.
Video 1: Introduction to Power Apps
Video 2 and 3: What are templates and demo of the sample template.
Video 4: Features of Power Apps.
Additional resources:
MS Learn: Get started with Power Apps
Hope this helps to get started with Power Apps. Let us start with day 5.
Day 5 – Intro to Power Automate and Flows
Welcome to Day 5,
Hope you have had a great week so far and this would be the last lesson for this week. You will be learning about Power Automate.
Video 1: What is Power automate (Aka MS Flow)
Video 2: Types of flows
Video 3: Create a flow using the OOB Template.
Congratulations on completing Day 5 and week 1, I will see you on day 6 next Monday.
Summary
I hope week 1 of PL-900 was helpful. In Week 2 you will learn how to build your first Power App and Power Automate MS Flows and more about the other core components.
Are you preparing for PL-900 certification or any other Microsoft certification? Do you like the approach we are taking here? Have any feedback that you wanted to share or question you wanted to ask? Please leave a comment below so we all can learn more about it.
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