Exam 74-404: New OCS Voice Exam (Beta) now available

Microsoft has made Exam 74-404 available as a Beta through Prometric.  The beta exam is current titled 71-404 “Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 – U.C. Voice Specialization” The final release is anticipated to be ready by April 2010.  If you take the exam and pass you will not need to retake the final version.  It is expected that you do provide feedback on the questions if you take the Beta Exam is this will assist Microsoft in weeding out weak or poorly written questions.  There are no preparation materials available at this point however it is recommended that you take the OCS 2007 R2 Ignite training as well as have experience in setting and configuring voice on OCS 2007 R2 including connectivity to the PSTN and IP/PBX systems.  You can find more info about the exam here. 

Comments

[ocguy]

Hi there,

it was always a good question for me, what the purpose of such an exam would be.

You pass this specific exam, only if you have approx. 1 year -or more!- of realworld experience, as there is 0 study content available, and a significant part of the exam is about troubleshooting stupid (=not trivial) issues. So no other way than real knowledge can help you take this exam.

But! You can only become an expert if you do real-world projects. Labs are only useful to become familiar with the product, but in such a sterile and ideal environment the "great" stupidities of OCS will never pop-up, opposed it always (100% of the time) happens at customer site. And customer most of the time demands certified engineer, as an assurance he will not mess their production AD.

Summary: so how should you become a certified expert, if you have to be an expert to become an expert? :)