Monday, July 14, 2008

Sharepoint Server and WSS Certificates

I have posted before general Sharepoint resources that are relevant to certain Microsoft certificates. However, in the next few posts I want to talk specifically about four Sharepoint exams that I passed not long ago and give some pointers.

Before I get into that, I want to mention what happened with the 2 beta exams I was supposed to take and then my testing center canceled. Essentially, I ended up getting 2 free exams from Prometric to make up for them. But since the day I was scheduled was the last day for the beta exams I couldn't register for them then. So I took a couple Sharepoint exams instead. Here it is.

In general, a very good resource for all four exams and especially the Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) ones is the Inside Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 book from the Microsoft Press by Ted Pattison and Daniel Larson. If you have access to books24x7.com, an online version of it is available there. Today I am going to talk about the 70-630 exam.

Inside Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 book


TS 70-630: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring


The fastest way to learn the material for this exam is to take a practice test and study its answer explanations. The following test providers have practice tests for this exam, Transcender, MeasureUp, and Self Test Software.
The test should not have any development questions so focus on configuration, things you can do by moving and clicking the mouse around with very little typing. Here are more specific tips:
  • Familiarize yourself with the administrative console features.

  • Get familiar with the site and other settings pages.

  • Know how to do simple settings tasks like adding an item to a menu and changing the site logo.

  • Understand Groups and Audiences.

  • Know the basics of using the STSADM and Prescan tools.

  • Understand the different connection files, UDC and ODC.

  • Know what Restrictive Read is.

  • Know how to see the servers running in a web farm and what services they are running.

  • Understand Quiescing.

For more information visit the Microsoft page for the exam.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!