The Microsoft 365 Certified: Messaging Administrator Associate certification proves your skills to implement, configure, operate, and troubleshoot, track recipients, provide protection and mail flow in cloud or hybrid enterprise environments. The accreditation is designed for administrators and can be obtained by passing one exam MS-203 exam.
The exam MS-203: Microsoft 365 Messaging contains 40-60 questions of various types, which will be known right at the exam. They can include case studies, short answer, labs, mark review, drag and drop, hot area, multiple choice, best answer to name a few. If the exam will contain labs you will be given 120 minutes, if it will be without labs – 100 minutes. As for the price, the exam will cost you $165.
Concerning the exam content, it consists of four parts, each of which is dedicated to a definite topic and checks specific skills. To start with, the exam questions will test your skills in managing organizational settings and resources. These include planning and operating organizational settings and client access, and managing recipient resources. To be more precise, in this part, your skills to manage address book and email address policies, GAL, OAb, HAB, configure Autodiscover, global Outlook and virtual directories, manage user, resource and archive mailboxes, as well as license for shared resources will be evaluated.
The second part deals with planning and managing the mail transport architecture. This section will check how competent you are in dealing with connectors. You should be able to create and configure connectors to route mail, protect the mail flow, and configure enhanced filtering. You also should be skilled in managing the mail flow rules, hybrid mail flow, along with remote and accepted domains. And to top it all, you should know how to troubleshoot the mail flow and be able to track a message, analyze its trace and headers, utilize the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant, Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer, and transport logs.
The third part is devoted to a hybrid configuration and migration. This implies your ability to utilize a hybrid environment, plan and carry out migration. So, you should be able to use the Hybrid Configuration Wizard, operate the Edge server role, configure OCT, implement the Exchange Hybrid Agent, and deal with the Exchange certificates in a hybrid setting. The following skills tested include your ability to implement various migration methods, configuring migration endpoints in Microsoft 365, operating batches that refer to mailbox migration and troubleshoot this migration.
The fourth topic is focused on securing the messaging environment. Here, you should be able to operate role-based permissions in Exchange, message hygiene, and compliance. That’s why you should be ready to demonstrate your capacity in planning RBAC roles, operating group roles and managing user roles. Your skills to configure and operate Anti-spam and Anti-malware policies, configuring SCL, Safe attachments and links, managing Anti-phishing will be assessed. And, finally, this part will validate your skills in configuring DLP policies, sensitivity labels, retention policies, and operating the main eDiscovery cases, journal rules and content search.
Your salary with the Microsoft 365 Certified Messaging Administrator Associate certificate will be about $91,439 per year, according to the Ziprecruiter website.
If you would like to develop your skills you can also opt for the following certification of the associate-level: the Microsoft 365 Modern Desktop Administrator, the Microsoft 365 Security Administrator, Microsoft 365 Teams Administrator designations. If your aim is to advance your skills further and earn more, then you need to gain the expert-level accreditation, known as the Microsoft 365 Enterprise Administrator Expert.