Exam MB-260: Microsoft Customer Data Platform Specialist
Candidates who pass the MB-260: Microsoft Customer Data Platform Specialist exam will be able to develop solutions that provide insights into customer profiles and track engagement activities to improve customer experiences and retention.
Knowledge requirement:
- Candidates should have hands-on expertise with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Power Query, Microsoft Dataverse, Common Data Model, and Microsoft Power Platform, as well as one or more additional Dynamics 365 apps.
- Secondly, they should have first-hand familiarity with privacy, compliance, consent, security, responsible AI, and data retention policies.
- Thirdly, candidates must have prior expertise with KPIs, data retention, validation, visualisation, preparation, matching, fragmentation, segmentation, and enhancement procedures.
- Lastly, they should be familiar with Azure Machine Learning, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Factory in general.
Microsoft MB-260 Exam Details
- There are 40-60 questions in the Microsoft MB-260 exam.
- Scenario-based single-answer questions, multiple-choice questions, arrange in the right order type questions, drag & drop questions, and mark review, drag, and drop type questions are all examples of exam questions.
- A candidate must, however, get a score of 700 or better in order to pass the exam. Furthermore, the Microsoft MB-260 exam is only offered in English and costs $165 USD.
Microsoft MB-260 Exam Course Outline
To assist in better preparation for the MB-260 exam, Microsoft provides a course outline that covers the important components. This includes the following:
1. Design Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data (5–10%)
Describe Customer Insights – Data functionality
- Describe Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data components
- Describe support for near real-time updates
- Describe the differences between individual consumer and business account profiles.
- Describe support for Microsoft Fabric
- Describe the tables and relationships in Customer Insights – Data
- Describe real-time ingestion capabilities and limitations
- Describe benefits of pre-unification data enrichment
- Identify when to use the managed data lake or an organization’s own data lake
Describe use cases for Customer Insights – Data
- Describe use cases for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Data (Microsoft Documentation: Audience insights for Dynamics 365 Customer Insights)
- Describe use cases for Customer Insights – Data APIs (Microsoft Documentation: Work with Customer Insights APIs)
- Describe the integration between Customers Insights – Data and Customer Insights – Journeys
- Describe use cases for machine learning
2. Ingest data (10–15%)
Connect to data sources
- Attach to Microsoft Dataverse
- Attach to Azure Data Lake Storage
- Ingest and transform data using Power Query connectors
- Attach to Azure Synapse Analytics
- Update Unified Customer Profile fields in near real-time
- Troubleshoot common ingestion errors
- Attach to data stored in Delta Lake format
- Configure incremental refresh
Transform, cleanse, and load data
- select tables and columns (Microsoft Documentation: Tables)
- resolve data inconsistencies, unexpected or null values, and data quality issues (Microsoft Documentation: Clean, transform, and load data in Power BI)
- evaluate and transform column data types (Microsoft Documentation: Data types in Power BI Desktop)
- Transform data from Dataverse
3. Create customer profiles through data unification (35-40%)
Select source fields
- Select Customer Insights tables and attributes for unification
- select attribute types (Microsoft Documentation: Manage attributes and attribute groups)
- Describe the requirements for a primary key
Remove duplicate records
- Deduplicate enriched tables
- Define deduplication rules, including exceptions, winner, and alternate records
- Manage merged preferences
Match conditions
- Specify a match order for tables
- Define match rules
- Define exceptions
- Include enriched tables in matching
- Configure normalization options
- Differentiate between basic and custom precision methods
- Configure custom match conditions
Unify customer fields
- Specify the order of fields for merged tables
- Combine fields into a merged field
- Combine a group of fields
- Separate fields from a merged field
- Exclude fields from a merge
- Change the order of fields
- Rename fields
- Group profiles into Clusters
- Configure customer ID generation
- Describe B2B unification
Implement business data separation
- Understand business unit separation prerequisites
- Access business data in Dataverse
- Implement Customer Insights – Data business unit integrations
Review data unification
- Review and create customer profiles
- View the results of data unification
- Verify output tables from data unification
- Update the unification settings
Configure relationships and activities
- create and manage relationships (Microsoft Documentation: Create and manage relationships in Power BI Desktop)
- Create and manage activities (Microsoft Documentation: Track and manage activities)
- Combine customer profiles with activity data from unknown users
- Describe how to use customer consent
- Describe how to use web data for personalization
- Describe relationship paths
- Set the B2B account relationship with contacts
Configure search and filter indexes
- Define which fields should be searchable
- Define filter options for fields
- Define indexed fields
4. Implement AI predictions (5–10%)
Configure built-in prediction models
- configure and evaluate the customer churn models, including the transactional churn and subscription churn models (Microsoft Documentation: Transactional churn prediction)
- configuring and evaluating the product recommendation model (Microsoft Documentation: Product recommendations overview)
- configure and evaluate the customer lifetime value model (Microsoft Documentation: Customer lifetime value (CLV) prediction)
- Configure and manage sentiment analysis
Implement machine learning models
- describe prerequisites for using custom Azure Machine Learning models in Customer Insights – Data (Microsoft Documentation: Custom machine learning models)
- Create and manage workflows that consume machine learning models (Microsoft Documentation: Deploy machine learning models to Azure)
- Describe prerequisites for using custom models from Azure Synapse Analytics in Customer Insights – Data
5. Configure measures and segments (15–20%)
Create and manage measures
- Create and manage tags
- describe the different types of measures (Microsoft Documentation: Create measures for data analysis in Power BI Desktop)
- create a measure (Microsoft Documentation: Create Measures)
- configure measure calculations (Microsoft Documentation: Create measures for data analysis in Power BI Desktop)
- modify dimensions (Microsoft Documentation: Modify or Delete a Database Dimension in Solution Explorer)
- Schedule Measures
Create and manage segments
- Describe methods for creating segments, including segment builder and quick segments (Microsoft Documentation: Working with segments)
- create a segment from customer profiles or measures (Microsoft Documentation: Suggested segments)
- Create a segment based on a prediction model
- Project attributes
- Schedule segments
Find suggested segments
- describe how the system suggests segments for use (Microsoft Documentation: Segments overview)
- create a segment based on a measure (Microsoft Documentation: Suggested segments based on activity data)
- Create a suggested segment based on activity
Create segment insights
- configure overlap segments (Microsoft Documentation: Segment insights)
- configure differentiated segments (Microsoft Documentation: Customer segmentation and targeting)
- Review the overlap or differentiator analysis
- Find similar customers by using AI
6. Configure third-party connections (5–10%)
Configure connections and exports
- configuring a connection for exporting data (Microsoft Documentation: Data export service)
- create a data export (Microsoft Documentation: Export case data in eDiscovery)
- define types of exports (Microsoft Documentation: Exports)
- configure on demand and scheduled data exports (Microsoft Documentation: Exports)
- define the limitations of segment exports
Implement Data Enrichment
- enrich customer profiles (Microsoft Documentation: enrich customer profiles)
- configure and manage enrichments (Microsoft Documentation: Data enrichment)
- enrich data sources before unification (Microsoft Documentation: Enrichment for data sources)
7. Administer Customer Insights – Data (5–10%)
Create and configure environments
- identify who can create environments (Microsoft Documentation: Create and manage environments in the Power Platform admin center)
- differentiate trial and production environments (Microsoft Documentation: Environments overview)
- Connect Customer Insights – Data to Dataverse
- Connect Customer Insights – Data with Azure Data Lake Storage Account
- Manage environment
- Assign user permissions (Microsoft Documentation: Assign user permissions)
- Create an environment in Customer Insights – Data
- Manage keys in Azure key vault
Manage system refreshes
- differentiate between system refreshes and data source refreshes (Microsoft Documentation: Refresh database)
- describe system refresh policies (Microsoft Documentation: Overview of the Office cloud policy service for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise)
- configure a system refresh schedule (Microsoft Documentation: Configure update settings for Microsoft 365 Apps)
- monitor and troubleshoot refreshes (Microsoft Documentation: Performance troubleshooting plan for Office 365)
For more: Check Microsoft MB-260 exam FAQs
Exam Policies
All exam facts and information, as well as exam-giving techniques, are contained in the Microsoft Certification Exam policies. According to these exam policies, certain rules must be followed during exam time or at testing sites. Some of them are:
Exam retake policy
According to this policy, candidates who fail the test for the first time must wait 24 hours before retaking it. During this time, they can reschedule the exam on the certification dashboard. They may be asked to wait at least 14 days before taking the exam again if this happens a second time. A 14-day waiting period is required between the third and fourth tries, as well as the fourth and fifth attempts. Candidates, on the other hand, are limited to five attempts each year. In addition, the 12-month period begins with the first attempt.
Exam reschedule and the cancellation policy
Microsoft will temporarily waive the reschedule and cancellation costs if candidates cancel their examinations within 24 hours of the scheduled appointment. There will be no fee if you reschedule or cancel an appointment at least 6 working days in advance. If a candidate cancels or reschedules a test within 5 business days of the planned exam time, a fee will be levied. Finally, if a candidate does not show up for an exam appointment or does not reschedule within 24 hours, the whole exam fee is forfeited.
Microsoft MB-260 Exam Study Guide
Exam objectives
In order to gain a good start on the Microsoft MB-260 exam preparation, candidates must be familiar with the exam objectives. The Microsoft MB-260 exam objectives contain important topics that will help you comprehend the key sections. Examine the study guide to have a better understanding of the topics and to boost your preparation.
- Designing Customer Insights solutions
- Ingesting data into Customer Insights
- Creating customer profiles by unifying data
- Implementing AI predictions in Customer Insights
- Configuring measures and segments
- Configuring third-party connections
- Administering Customer Insights
Microsoft Learning Platform
Microsoft gives you access to learning platforms with a variety of tools to help you prepare for your exams. Visit the Microsoft official website to discover everything you need to know about the Microsoft MB-260 exam and to prepare for it. Candidates will also gain in terms of better studying subjects and passing the test as a result of this.
Microsoft Docs
The Microsoft documentation is a knowledge source that provides in-depth information on the test subjects covered in the Microsoft MB-260 exam. You may also reference Microsoft documentation to learn about the various scales of different Azure services. This is comprised of courses that will assist you in learning a great deal about the numerous services and ideas included in the test.
Online Study Groups
When it comes to studying for tests, candidates might benefit from online study groups. In other words, joining study groups will keep you in touch with experts and professionals who are already on this route. You may also use this group to discuss your test-related query or concern, as well as to study for the Microsoft MB-260 exam.
Practice Tests
Taking practice exams is important for enhancing your preparation. By assessing yourself with Microsoft MB-260 practice exams, you will discover your weak and strong areas. Additionally, you will be able to enhance your response abilities, allowing you to save substantial time during the exam. After finishing a whole subject, taking the Microsoft MB-260 exam practice tests is the best way to progress. This will also aid in successful revision. So, to prepare for the Microsoft MB-260 exam, go online and look for the best practice exam tests.
