Feedback about MS-102 retirement

I agree with this.

MS-102 covers skills that are still very relevant for people who actually manage Microsoft 365 environments every day. Identity, security, compliance and tenant administration are not going away.

AB-650 is not a replacement for that. AI administration is a different area and, for many organizations, not nearly as relevant to daily operations yet.

Retiring the Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert certification without a proper successor leaves a clear gap. I would much rather see Microsoft keep a broad Microsoft 365 administration certification alongside the newer AI-focused certifications.

I've been studying for MS-102 for the past few weeks alongside my job, and only today (!) noticed the retirement warning on the Learn page.

Maybe I should have kept a closer eye on Microsoft's certification announcements, but I honestly never expected Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert to be retired without what appears to be a true successor.

It's difficult not to question whether I should continue prepping for a certification that's about to be retired. That being said, I will continue with it, because I still believe MS-102 represents a broader and more well-rounded skill set for Microsoft 365 administrators than AB-650 appears to cover.

I was just about to book the MS-102 exam today when I came across the announcement while looking for the scheduling link.

This all feels so absurd.

Google Workspace did the same thing by downgrading the Professional Google Workspace Administrator certification to an Associate certification.

We'll have to see what its replacement will actually cover, but regardless, I don't see the logic behind downgrading these certifications. It sends the wrong message about the level of expertise they represent.

It's almost as if expert-level tenant administrators are no longer needed...

After all, we have AI now... 

I agree that AB-650 should remain a separate exam. Just for the sake of AI, there's no need to change all the existing certifications. You can update some of the objectives and add AI-related content where it makes sense.

When a legacy certification exam is retired and replaced by a new version, Microsoft should automatically issue a free certification voucher to all candidates who previously passed the original exam. This ensures existing certified professionals can easily update their credentials without a financial penalty.

Tinezones has always been the problem hasn't it, us leads and mcts excluded in stuff for years and years, its only my baraging for more timezone friendly meetings we get included. This was a meeting held in one timezone and is non friendly was excluded let alone the poor wording and communication. As my fellow mcts here in Australia say, some of which have 20 25 30 plus years on them, which respect what im trying to do here atm thinks certain personal need to stop drinking the coolade and start championing for the learners.

I did my best today to catch Microsoft's attention about this topic by forwarding this internally. Lets see what happens after October.

There is also another site about this as well :)

Keep up the good work!

Microsoft Credentials roundup: June 2026 | Microsoft Community Hub

I wanted to leave the following feedback, as someone who works in Microsoft 365

I am very disappointed with the way Microsoft has chosen to go forward with their certification roadmap. 

As someone who works in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem daily, I've lost the opportunity to pursue PL-600, MS-203, MS-300/301, and now upcoming MS-102, these are just a handful of certifications that would absolutely have been meaningful and exciting for me to obtain

I have no way to validate any of my skills in a lot of areas in Microsoft 365.

I want to step back and discuss the retirement of MS-102 in light of an associate level AI certification.

The communication about the retirement of MS-102 has been extremely poor. I'm writing this Mid-July, and the certification page still has a retirement date set to: None.

Essentially, that leads me to believe a lot of people are being misled because they aren't even aware of the tech community blogpost from last month indicating the impending retirement of this exam

Here's the other problem:

People are now forced to sit down and take retiring exams because the replacements are an extremely poor substitute. It's completely unfair. 

The logical decision could have been integrating more AI into these existing exams instead of retiring them and replacing them with exams that don't even correlate. Or maybe putting them as prerequisites. I looked at the curriculum for PL-400 vs AB-100 and it's not at all architecting solutions in power platform

In summary: Abandoning services like Exchange Online, Teams, Power Platform, and SharePoint Online as a start in favor of agentic AI is an extremely poor decision

I highly doubt all of this will get reversed. But we should have Exchange Online certs, sharepoint online certs, teams certs, power platform certs, more certs of what we as Microsoft 365 Engineers and Admins use every single day, because the industry still demands all of this.

This company needs to stop acting like the only important thing is Copilot and AI, and listen to what your customers are indicating. There's a lot that can be done better here. Maybe gather live feedback and engage with us instead of just putting on blindfolds in this manner

Thanks

unfortunately, this discussion is not going to make any difference because we see the focus towards the (ai slop), they are driving 200km/h to AI everything