Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect

It’s always interesting when Microsoft release a new type of exam, especially when it’s not tied to specific functionality, but rather to an overall approach. The AB-100 exam (don’t pay too much attention to the ‘100’ designator, in my opinion) follows the approach that we’re seeing Microsoft taking – needing to use technology (& here, specifically AI in technology) holistically across multiple solution.

I took the exam in Beta as soon as it launched, though due to preparing for the Power Platform Community Conference (which I’m currently writing this at), it’s taken a bit of time to get this blog post up and published.

As an architect, AI isn’t new to us – we know of multiple different capabilities (spanning Microsoft 365, Copilot Studio & Azure AI Foundry), which we need to use appropriately to handle customer scenarios. AI isn’t new to exams either – there are multiple Azure exams with AI in them, we have multiple Business Application exams with Copilot Studio in them, etc.

However, exams to date focus on a specific part of the technology stack. For example, the PL-600 focused on Power Platform & Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. The MB-700 focused on Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations, and so on and so forth.

This new exam is somewhat of a paradigm shift – needing to understand AI holistically as an architect across multiple parts of the technology stack, what & how it’s used for and where, etc. This is most definitely a new approach, and it will be interesting to see how it users react to it.

Truthfully, having taken it, I’d personally say that it feels a bit more like an enterprise architect exam approach (which also doesn’t exist in the Microsoft stack), albeit focused around Business Applications. Given the way in which Microsoft partners have specialists in each technology part of the stack, it will be interesting to see if this approach will pivot the way in which people are trained/skilled, and deliver projects. I think that there’s likely to be a lot of feedback to Microsoft that it’s not the way that the partner landscape currently works – though perhaps Microsoft is specifically trying to influence this itself to change. Only time will tell…

The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft Certified: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect (beta) – Certifications | Microsoft Learn, though there is NO learning path that’s been created (at the time of writing). I think that this is because Microsoft may want to see the reaction to this new approach, and pivot appropriately, rather than needing to create a lot of content that may potentially need to be re-done.

The official description of the exam can be found at the link above (it’s too long to post here), so please go take a look!

So, as I’ve posted before around my exam experiences, it’s not permitted to share any of the exam questions. This is in the rules/acceptance for taking the exam. I’ve therefore put an overview of the sorts of questions that came up during my exam. (Note: exams are composed from question banks, so there could be many things that weren’t included in my exam, but could be included for someone else!). It’s also in beta at the moment, which means that things can obviously change for when it comes out of beta.

I’ve tried to group things as best together as I feel (in my recollection), to make it easier to revise.

• Business usage of AI
  • Different agents usage and results
  • How to use appropriately for business/agent analysis
  • Different types of metrics and results
  • Best practices for building Copilot Studio agents, and using Copilot Studio agents
  • Looking at the ROI for using Copilot Studio agents
  • Designing the usage of different AI and agent capabilities for business needs
• Building agents
  • What Copilot Studio agents need to work
  • Data types that agents can use
  • Data sources that agents can use
  • Use of knowledge sources for agents
  • Usage of custom connectors
  • Handling token usage with Azure AI Foundry
  • How to handle testing for Copilot Studio agents
  • Different testing types & approaches
  • Extending Microsoft 365 Copilot
  • Using Power Automate with Copilot Studio agents
  • Speech to Text/Text to Speech
  • Handing conversation to live customer service representative using Dynamics 365 Contact Centre
  • Using RPA within an agent
• Models
  • Different types of models that could be used within Azure AI Foundry
  • Orchestration
  • Improving performance
• Security
  • How to handle Copilot Studio security
  • Governance & compliance tooling (eg Purview)
  • Handling/restricting connectors for Copilot Studio agents
  • Ensuring user security when using agents (ie not able to retrieve data that the user cannot access directly)
• Reporting
  • Monitoring tools for Copilot Studio agents
  • Metrics, usage & analytics for Copilot Studio agents
  • Investigating Copilot Studio agent transcripts
  • Monitoring tools for Azure AI models
  • Evaluating Azure AI Foundry model outputs
• Application Lifecyle Management
  • Focusing on AI Agents for Dynamics 365 CE, Finance & Operations, and Power Platform
  • How/what components to use and include
  • What tooling to use for ALM

Overall, the exam seemed to me to be pretty decent – I was worried that it would focus just on Copilot Studio, with not much else in it, but there’s a good balance across other AI capabilities as well.

The big change, for me at least, were the questions around Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations – this isn’t an area that I’m an expert in generally, and most definitely not for AI tooling. I think that this, as I mention above, is what may get the biggest pushback/feedback into Microsoft.

I’m going to be quite interested in seeing how the exam is actually launched (as it’s currently in Beta of course). Having chatted with a few others who have taken the exam (whilst obviously respecting the NDA!), they also think that this is an approach pivot from Microsoft, and are wondering about the real world application of it.

I hope that this is helpful for anyone who’s thinking of taking it – good luck, and please do drop a comment below to let me know how you found it! I’d also be interested in your thoughts/opinions around the direction that Microsoft has taken for this!

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