Exam AB-900: Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals

Following on the steps of the other AB exams I’ve been writing about my experience with (see Exam AB-730: AI Business Professional & Exam AB-100: Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect), this article will cover the AB-900 exam.

This exam is focusing on the Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities from a user & administration perspective, and doesn’t cover/include anything from Copilot Studio.

Now, though it’s a Fundamentals exam, to be honest it’s the HARDEST fundamentals exam that I’ve ever taken!

The approach is around being able to demonstrate understanding of how to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot, as well as a lot of focus on how to control & administer it.

The official description of the proposed exam candidate is:

As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you should be familiar with Microsoft 365, including core services, security, identity and access, data protection, and governance, along with Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents.

Additionally, you should be familiar with the admin centers used to access Microsoft 365 workloads, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. You need to have experience with AI-driven productivity tools and modern IT management practices.

You must be able to identify the roles of the core features and objects available in Microsoft 365, such as users, groups, teams, sites, and libraries. Plus, you should understand the core security features of Microsoft 365, such as authentication methods, conditional access policies, and single sign-on (SSO).

The overall information for the exam can be found at Microsoft 365 Certified: Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals, and there is an official Learning Path available for it.

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.

One thing to keep in mind about this exam – though I do mention Microsoft Purview in the list of items below, I haven’t gone into it extensively. However, there were a LOT of questions that touched on Purview (& other governance stuff as well) – you REALLY need to be knowing & understanding these capabilities to be able to take & pass the exam. Just guessing the answers is not going to help at all!

Overall, the exam seemed to me to be pretty decent, though with indeed a heavy focus on security & governance (as I’ve mentioned above). I don’t see this as a bad thing though, as it can help to show that administrators really do know what they’re talking about.

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

• Agent types
  • Native Microsoft 365 Copilot agent
  • Native Microsoft 365 Copilot advanced agents (eg Researcher & Analyst). What they are, how to access, what to use them for
  • Custom Microsoft 365 Copilot agent
  • SharePoint agent
• Creating/using Agents
  • Using natural language to create agents
  • How to handle/perform multi-step reasoning
  • Use of notebooks
  • Custom instructions
  • Scheduling prompts
  • Querying data types
    • Structured
    • Unstructured
• Governance & security
  • Blocking access to different types of searches & collateral
  • Blocking access to specific agents
  • Tools to use for blocking
  • How to share agents with other users
  • Assigning licenses to users
  • Data retention policies
  • Data labelling policies
  • Use of Microsoft Purview, covering capabilities, tools, auditing, how to use, etc
  • Use of DLP
  • Data source permissions
  • Conditional access policies
  • Microsoft Defender – what it is, capabilities it has, how to use it, etc.
  • Types of authentication
• Reporting
  • Licensing & usage
  • Adoption & interactions
• Payment options & capabilities
  • Credit usage – internal vs external users
  • Pay As You Go Billing, and scenarios you can use it for

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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