A well put off exam… PL-100 – My Thoughts!

Recently I sat my PL-100 exam and passed, allowing me to achieve my Power Platform App Maker Associate certification! When I shared this on LinkedIn and Twitter, a lot of comments and engagement shared the opinion that people wanted to know a little about… READ MORE [https://lewisdoes.dev/blog/a
A well put off exam… PL-100 – My Thoughts!
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Recently I sat my PL-100 exam and passed, allowing me to achieve my Power Platform App Maker Associate certification! When I shared this on LinkedIn and Twitter, a lot of comments and engagement shared the opinion that people wanted to know a little about how I found the exam, as well as what it was like. So, in this blog post, I’m going to go over my thoughts and experience with sitting PL-100, as well as a few tips on how you can prepare for the exam.

My Overall Thoughts

Thinking about PL-100 overall, I didn’t find it to be an overly tricky exam, but it’s certainly broad, and a slightly technical one! Whilst I say that, it definitely still requires some preparation, which I’ll discuss in this post.

I’d say that this exam slightly reflected PL-900 in that it was sure to include a little bit of each part of the Power Platform, however I will also note, it did this slightly less than PL-100. I found PL-100 to be slightly more focused on Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI, with I think one Power Virtual Agents question in there. Topics were definitely a little less evenly distributed than PL-900, and there was a slight increased focus on solution building in my experience. This tested more knowledge points on building Power Platform solutions such as creating Canva Apps, or Power Automate flows, or even configuring Dataverse with more direct topics being on things like relationship creation and security in Dataverse.

My Preparation

To be completely honest, I didn’t spend an awful lot of time directly preparing for this exam, which isn’t to say that I didn’t prepare at all, or didn’t prepare for a longer period even. I’d just call my preparation less direct and focused on the goal of passing this exam, and more on just developing my personal knowledge and skills around Power Platform generally. I’d divide my preparation up into the following parts:

Ongoing Development through Practice

I’d say that the majority bulk of my learning (and I mean around 95%) was simply through practice and work. This has been a bit of an ongoing thing since I started my Power Platform journey, so I’d very simply say that my constant ongoing learning has been the bulk of my preparation here. This has primarily been putting my quickly learnt skills from community contributions and ‘figuring it out’ into practice through work. I’d very strongly mention that I’ve learnt an awful lot since starting to work at a Microsoft partner, HybrIT Services, where I’ve needed to pick up on development best practices and more advanced development quickly. This has involved learning things more focused around Dynamics, ALM, Admin & Governance and a wider approach to developing solutions, but also delivering work to a client/customer. I’d even say I’ve covered a lot of topics that I think went past the scope of PL-100 which was in one way a little sad because I felt rather confident with those topics and hoped they’d give me a score bump, but in a more positive light, it gives me the hope that I’ll hopefully be able to continue with further certifications in the near future of a higher level.

My Direct Preparation – Exam Practice

My only form of direct practice for PL-100 was exam questions / practice. For this I used the PL-100 series from MeasureUp, which is suggested when you go to book a certification. I found this super helpful in identifying the few areas that I needed a little refresher on, prior to me taking my exam. I sat 4 practice tests, and then took the real thing.

The slight difference with the practice exams is that the pass mark is 80% where as on the real exam the pass mark is 70%. So, if you’re not quite getting the 80% mark on the practice tests, don’t worry just yet, keep in mind that you only need 70% for the real thing! Saying this, try to achieve 80% on the practice exams so that you’re more at ease with the real thing. Going into an exam worried won’t put you at the best mindset for sitting it and you’re bound to rush and make mistakes you normally wouldn’t!

Resources

So! Seen as everyone has a different learning style, here’s a few resources I’d recommend in helping you to prepare for PL-100 so you can achieve your App Maker Associate Cert!

Rory Neary – Power Fx Canvas Apps Zero to Hero

So this is a bit of a show stopper… Rory Neary has an awesome Power Apps course directly focused on the Canvas Apps element of PL-100 which is a huge chunk! With over 300 lessons and 250 demos using Power Fx, this course is a must for anyone starting on their journey to achieving the App Maker certification!

Power Fx Canvas Apps from Zero to Hero

MeasureUp Practice Exams

MeasureUp practice exams are a fantastic way to study for Microsoft certifications and are the official practice tests for MS Certs! Check them out below!

IT Certifications Practice Tests and Exams (measureup.com)

Microsoft Learn Preparation – PL-100

Need a more detailed learning path with the specifics to cover the entirety of PL-100’s content? Check out this page on Microsoft Learn which not only lets you schedule your exam, but also provides a learning path as you scroll down to allow you to prepare for the exam. Should you want to you can even take a look an an instructor led pathway to your success

Exam PL-100: Microsoft Power Platform App Maker – Certifications | Microsoft Docs

Only just getting started with Power Platform?

Are you only just getting started with Power Platform? Perhaps you want to target PL-900 as a first point for getting Microsoft certified? I’ve written a blog post on Microsoft’s tech community, which whilst targeted at students, can provide tips to getting started with Power Platform no matter your position. Check it out below!

Pathways in tech from education (microsoft.com)

I hope this post helped you get started with your PL-100 preparation! Let me know your thoughts on this exam in the comments 🙂

Written by
Lewis Baybutt
Microsoft Business Applications MVP • Power Platform Consultant • Blogger • Community Contributor • #CommunityRocks • #SharingIsCaring
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