>> Hello everyone. We have a jam-packed session of Less Code,
More Power for you today.
We are joined by Joe Griffin and he is going to teach you-all
about certifications and why you should
take your next certification. Stay tuned.
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>> Hello everyone. Welcome back to Less Code, More Power.
I'm your host, Sarah Critchley,
and I'm joined by the amazing.
>> Dona Sarkar. Hello.
>> This is amazing. We're so happy to be
back and we have an amazing guest for you today.
His name is Joe Griffin.
You will have heard of him because
you will have likely tried to or
wanted to take a certification exam on the Power Platform.
This is exactly why we wanted Joe on the show
today because he's not just a fountain of knowledge,
but he does so much coaching and mentoring and content
around certification and really like Microsoft Learn as a whole.
Joe, welcome to the show.
>> Hello. How are you doing today?
>> We are awesome. This is our natural habitat, I think.
It's great to have you on the show.
Introduce yourself to the audience.
Pretend the audience has never seen you or heard of you.
Can you give them your elevator pitch?
Tell them who you are, what you do,
and why you focus on certification in Microsoft Learn.
>> Yeah, sure. Hi. My name is Joe.
I'm a Microsoft Certified Professional
and amongst of the things based in the UK.
Do a lot of work with Power Platform,
Dynamics 365 on the technical side of things usually.
You should find me coding away somewhere trying to
maybe do some wits off your Power Platform.
>> Because that's it, right? You don't
just focus on certification,
but I've seen a lot of technical presentations from you as well,
so you've got a lot of things going on.
>> I'm just bored. I'm like a child at
Christmas and you give me anything about the Power Platform,
I'm just wondering off in all different directions just playing.
Blame the platform, not me.
>> I love watching just you perform, as we call it, perform.
What is so interesting to me is how passionate
you are about the topic of certifications,
which some people are like certifications are awesome,
some are like they're boring.
But you have such a compelling reason why
people should get certified and you do
so much work to make it easier.
People might be terrifying of
testing honestly, I'm very bad at testing.
Can you tell us about how you got into
the certification field in the first place?
>> It was a bit of a rocky start.
I started off initially trying to do SQL Server certifications,
just absolutely just hitting
my head against a brick wall for ages.
Then I started working with a time Dynamic CRM,
which is now Power Platform,
Dynamics 365, all that stuff,
and everything just clicked from there.
Just found something that worked from there.
Once you get one exam,
you're just l want another one,
I want another one.
It becomes a bit of a addiction and it doesn't help as well.
We get really cool badges,
so each one you get you get a badge.
It's like why not,
just keep doing it, get the badges.
>> I know Ignite, when we were having real life conferences,
they actually did real life badges.
Have you got a few of those?
>> No. That's top of my swag list in
terms of just waste 50 pounds,
20 pounds, buy the badges and then just walk around all day.
>> You would have a sash, wouldn't you?
>> A sash.
>> Dynamics, Power, SQL.
>> Yeah, just walk across campus here. Look at me. Look at my sash.
It's amazing.
>> I love that you've started with SQL.
Were you trying to make your life difficult trying
to get a SQL cert?
>> I've got a fun spot for SQL,
so I do like SQL a little bit,
but those exams are hard, really hard exams.
>> Yeah. If you're not a SQL,
in fact, expert, you're not going to pass this exam.
I'm looking at just SQL stuff and SQL exams,
I'm going to opt myself out of this.
>> What's great about the business apps and Power Platform
Dynamics 365 is you've got a whole set of different exams.
They're really great for beginners to actually jump into.
Whereas before maybe you needed to
be a technical expert in the subjects,
but now the barrier of entry is just so much lower and
therefore excuse not to get certified is not a good area anymore.
>> We hear you have something to show us. What you got?
>> We do. Today I want to talk about some of
the new certifications that have come on board for Dynamics 365.
I'm going to start by just sharing my slides on here,
just so we can go through it.
Let's get the equipment to open.
>> This is great. I'm so happy.
>> For those of you who don't know,
Dynamics 365 basically sits on top of the Power Platform,
gives you a set of
different capabilities that you
can easily add onto your Power Platform System.
If, for example, you need a sales application,
you need a customer service application,
you can really straightforwardly get this bolted on as part of
your Power Platform, System
environment and then enjoy all this good stuff
out of the box without needing to develop it from scratch.
You've got these two really great new exams
that have come on stream that
are ideal if you want to get into Dynamics 365 for the first time.
The first one we can see on the slide here is the CRM exam.
This is all looking at what we call the
Customer Relationship Management Applications.
You're able to do things such as
working with artificial intelligence,
working with model-driven apps,
doing things such as learning about
the various different modules such as Dynamics Marketing,
Dynamic Sales, and stuff like that.
The great thing about these exams is that maybe you could do,
let's say, a training session on it.
But all of these exams,
you can actually learn yourself.
There's a whole range of different modules that are
available online could see at Microsoft,
they can actually get you-all the info you need to pass this exam.
You just set all these modules on here,
get to the end of it, pass the exam, and there you go.
Nice shiny badge. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
>> That's epic.
>> Yes. This is a good way to learn the product very well.
You say, I'm going to take
an exam and as you're going through exam prep,
you end up learning a lot.
I feel it more than you would learn just randomly trying things.
You have this very specific goal.
>> Yeah, it's so much better than
10 years ago because in theory you've got
these online training modules that are
constantly being updated with the latest stuff.
You can do them at your own pace, there's no pressure.
As we'll see as well, you can
actually earn XP and level up as well.
Who doesn't like earning some XP?
>> We all like leveling up,
it's almost like human levels.
This is awesome because it guides you.
I hear so many from people that are new to the space,
like BizOps as a whole.
I feel like people are like "I don't know where to go.
I don't know what, I don't know sort of thing."
I feel that this,
especially how this is presented in your deck today,
Joe, is that it guides people through.
Almost takes their hand or pushes them from
the back and be like this is the direction that you need to go.
>> This is it. When we jump in and
have a look at what's on the Learn website,
you'll just see how accessible
this content is and stuff like that.
I'll say you've got a really nice journey you can follow.
You can also do
an instruction led course as well if you wanted to.
But really, the power is in
your hands to actually go away and learn this stuff.
What's great is it doesn't just cover what
we term, the CRM side of things,
you've also got these sort of bigger ERP,
Enterprise resource planning, applications as well,
which also have some relation to the Power Platform.
We've also got a new exam for that as well.
We can actually, again, get certified.
We can learn some of the same things in
terms of how the Power Platform fits in alongside that.
We can dive into detail and learn about
things such as Dynamics 365 finance, human resources.
Again, look, we've got
the self-paced online learning modules that we can go through.
It makes it really easy for us to do this.
In facts, I need to look at
doing this exam yourself at some point.
The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going
to through these modules on
here because I know
they're going to get me prepared with the content.
They're going to have some really great examples,
exercise I could work through.
It's going to hopefully get me
to where I need to be for these exams.
>> Brilliant. This is great.
One of the things I know that you do from additional content,
Joe, is you almost take this and you help pad it for people.
You say, this is a great place to start,
but you actually list out people's blogs.
You list out content that helps with the exams as well.
Because one of the challenges that I find people
also have is that people sometimes
don't always resonate with certain ways that they learn.
That's something that I think is really important to you.
>> Yeah. Just a shut up for me,
at the moment I'm doing a blog and a video series
around end of Exam PL-400.
That's for development stuff like that.
Again, hopefully going a bit deeper in terms of the content.
I guess really supporting what we've got available around this.
The great thing about
the MS Applications community
is it's always doing similar things as well.
Regardless of which exam you're going for,
there's bound to be official
and community resources available for you to turn to.
>> That's awesome. This is great
>> Looking good so far. All of this stuff is
available as part of the Microsoft Learn website.
I'm just going to minimize the screen
now and just switch across to my web browser.
If you just give me two seconds.
>> For those people that are watching,
this is a great starting point.
You may be nervous, maybe you've not taken an exam before,
especially from a Microsoft exam,
listen to what Joe is saying and hear him when
he's trying to guide you to Learn content,
what you can do to address that.
Joe, I know you're probably going to cover this,
but it's okay to fail an exam.
Nothing is going to happen if you fail an exam.
>> I failed exams very recently,
I failed the PL-200 exam.
I think back in the day my record was probably
four attempts before I passed it in the end.
We all fail. You just need to move past there.
>> PL-900, when I first took it two years ago,
I failed it immediately because I didn't
understand what are PL-900.
I had no idea what these PLs were.
I'm just like, I don't understand half of these questions even.
I didn't understand the prep needed.
I didn't know any of this dynamic stuff before I took PL-900,
because I didn't fully
crack the relationship between these things.
I often feel like the first time
taking an exam is really learning to take the exam,
and the second time you're prepared more.
It's like job interviews,
the first time you interview for a job you
may fail horribly because you've
no idea what this process looks like.
>> Then when you look at the page in here,
you get some quite formerly text down here.
You click on this,
view this skills measured list and you start again,
"Oh my God, what's all this on here.
This is impossible."
That can scare people off.
But if we were to bear with this page,
scroll down a little bit, we can say, okay, what's this here?
We've actually got learning paths
down here that we can follow. This is interesting.
If I was to, example,
click on, let's say, this one here,
maybe I want to learn a bit more about Dynamics 365 Marketing,
I get a two hour 43, minute learning path
with various different modules that I
can complete at my own measure.
The content in here is really good stuff.
We can see it's all really nicely clearly labeled out.
We can earn XP as we continue.
I've already been through this once already.
I've already got at Level 7 at the moment.
I'm really close, it's just a few more to get me over the thing.
But as you can see, you've got
this really nicely accessible content,
mixture of diagrams and things like that,
and if we were to continue,
go right to the end,
we even get a little knowledge check.
We can just validate that we know what we're talking about,
we can answer these basic questions and
just confirm that we're on the right track of all this.
All you need to do to get started with actually doing
this is just go to the Microsoft Learn site.
It's just docs.Microsoft.com/learn,
login with your account or peers.
You can see I'm logged in like so.
Then we get all of the various
different learning paths available to us.
I can see I've got a few starts on here that I
can just maybe go back to later on.
I can see some more popular ones down here.
It's not just Power Platform and Dynamics,
as well, we've got Azure in here,
we've got Microsoft 365.
Regardless of what you're trying to learn,
there's going to be some really great content on here and it's
all free as well.
How good is that?
>> There's new stuff all the time. We just
introduced Fusion DEVS learning path,
which is for teams.
It's really for teams to learn together,
where you've got IT prototype people,
admin, COE-IT, you've got the traditional coding DEVS,
like many of us are,
who live in Visual Studio,
and then you've got the citizen of who might be an expert in,
say, building a PowerApp, or SharePoint, that sort of thing.
But really, teams of people come
together to solve business problems. That's the real world.
It's not like one person implements a thing and
rolls out to 500,000 people, it doesn't work that way.
This Fusion learning path really teaches you
the value of learning together in teams and
this learning path is
something that people should do together, I think.
I'll send that over to you, Joe.
We'd love your feedback on it.
>> Another thing just to wrap up,
it's not related to an exam per se,
but you've also got ALM modules covering what you just said, Dona.
Not just that, but also some really great topics
such as Accessibility as well.
You can actually learn,
what do I need to do when I'm building these solutions,
when I'm building these platforms to make sure
that my solutions are accessible,
I'm catering to as many people as possible and
ultimately, making sure that we're
building accessible and inclusive solutions as well.
This is a really great learning path just to go through.
It's not tied to an exam,
but it does open your eyes
and make you think differently about some of these stuff.
>> I just took it, Joe and I learned
so many new products, new features,
and other types that I didn't know about
like PowerPoint Designer was
urgently made for mobility challenged people,
but now everybody uses it because who's
actually got at UX design other than designers.
It's just a fascinating learning path.
I thought It was just eye opening,
all the things that are in the accessibility learning path,
so take it, people.
>> This is always dangerous.
This is almost like once you follow the rabbit,
you're going to add so much stuff to your dashboard.
>> Let's just say you start to become obsessed with
it and then you're collecting the badges,
then you just wake up one morning and
you're just looking at all your badges go in,
what's happened here, and you're feeling great about it.
Get involved, this is really good stuff here.
>> Joe, we never let anyone go
without assigning homework to the audience,
so what is your call to action for our audience today?
>> My call to action is that you need to make
sure that you've got a Learn account setup.
Get your Learn account setup today,
and make sure that you sign up to at least one learning path.
If you're new to the platform,
check out some of the fundamentals
exams that we've spoken about today,
identify a nice little learning path for you,
work through it until the end,
get some XP, level up.
Then through that, hopefully,
you can start to get a bit more confidence and who knows,
maybe you can sit for an exam in the future.
>> That's awesome. We're good.
>> Thank you Joe so much for being with us today.
Great call to action.
Setup your Learn path, get addicted.
Even if you just want to do learning paths
and not want to take an exam, that's absolutely fine.
Because people learn in their own ways.
I find it useful to do a project, to learn.
Many people find it useful to
go through a learning path a few different times,
but find your own journey.
But definitely create a Learn account because
all these stuff is there for free at your disposal.
>> Absolutely.
>> Joe, thank you for teaching us so much fabulous stuff.
>> Till next time. Less Code.
>> More Power.
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