MS-102 study guide
MS-102 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
MS-102: Microsoft 365 Administrator is the one required exam for the Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert credential. Microsoft frames the role as the integrating hub across Microsoft 365 workloads - someone who coordinates with architects and with the administrators responsible for infrastructure, identity, security, compliance, endpoints, and applications. The MS-102 study guide has 4 sections and about 1,488 words.
01Deploy and manage a Microsoft 365 tenant
Every tenant starts with an initial contoso.onmicrosoft.com domain that cannot be renamed or removed; routable addresses must live on a custom domain you verify by adding a TXT record (or an MX record if the domain already routes mail) in public DNS. Plan the full record set: MX for routing, one SPF TXT record (it must resolve in a single DNS lookup), two DKIM CNAMEs ( selector1 and selector2.
369 words, about 2 min02Implement and manage Microsoft Entra identity and access
Users are cloud-only, synced from AD DS, or guests invited through B2B collaboration. Groups are assigned or dynamic: dynamic user rules rely on supported attributes (for example user.department -eq "Sales" ) and dynamic device rules rely on device attributes; a dynamic group must be converted to assigned before its rule can be edited.
374 words, about 2 min03Manage security and threats by using Microsoft Defender XDR
Microsoft Defender XDR correlates signals from Defender for Office 365 (email and collaboration), Defender for Endpoint (devices), Defender for Identity (on-premises Active Directory), Defender for Cloud Apps (SaaS), and Defender Vulnerability Management inside the Microsoft Defender portal. Related alerts roll up into incidents, and advanced hunting runs KQL across tables such as EmailEvents, EmailUrlInfo, DeviceProcessEvents, and IdentityLogonEvents.
364 words, about 2 min04Manage compliance by using Microsoft Purview
Sensitivity labels classify and protect content with encryption (including usage rights and offline access), content marking (headers, footers, watermarks), and auto-labeling - client-side in the app or service-side scanning of SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and Teams. Labels reach users through label policies that set the included users, default label, mandatory labeling, and help link.
381 words, about 2 min