For more than a year and a half, there was no Microsoft certification for Dynamics 365 Sales at all. MB-210 retired in November 2024, and nothing replaced it.
That left an odd hole in the middle of the Microsoft certification map. Dynamics 365 Sales kept running in thousands of organisations, consultants kept configuring it, and the product itself changed faster than ever as Copilot and sales agents arrived in the platform. Yet through all of that, anyone who wanted a current credential to show for their Dynamics 365 Sales expertise had nowhere to point. The old certificate aged on the CV while the skill it once proved kept growing.
AB-210 closes that hole. The new certification is called Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Sales AI Consultant Associate, and the name signals the shift, because this is not a refreshed MB-210. Microsoft rebuilt the credential around what selling in Dynamics 365 now involves: Copilot, predictive scoring, and a set of named agents that qualify leads, research accounts and help close deals. The exam is brand new and still in beta, which sounds like a reason to wait and is actually a reason to move early, since the first people through become the first people holding it.
So before you book anything, it's worth understanding what Microsoft actually built here, because AB-210 is less a revival of the old exam than a replacement of its whole idea.
The certification gap AB-210 closes
Microsoft trimmed its business applications certification portfolio at the end of 2024, and MB-210 was one of the exams retired on 30 November 2024. The retirement was permanent: no successor was announced, and Dynamics 365 Sales became one of the few major Microsoft products you couldn't certify on.
What changed Microsoft's mind is visible in the product. Selling in Dynamics 365 now runs through AI features that didn't exist when MB-210 was written: Copilot inside the seller's workflow, predictive lead and opportunity scoring, and agents that handle qualification and research on their own. A certification built for the old, manual version of the product would have tested the wrong skills, so Microsoft built a new one instead. The Dynamics 365 Sales AI Consultant Associate certification sits at associate level, runs through exam AB-210, and is currently in beta, delivered by Pearson VUE in English, with 120 minutes on the clock and 700 as the pass mark.
Beta status changes two practical things. Your result won't arrive immediately, because Microsoft scores beta attempts after it has gathered enough data on the questions, and the supporting materials are still filling in around the exam. Neither is a reason to hold back if the skills below already describe your work.
Who should sit AB-210?
AB-210 is aimed at business analysts and functional consultants who configure Dynamics 365 Sales, and there's no prerequisite certification gating it. What Microsoft does strongly recommend is intermediate Power Platform configuration skill: you should be comfortable building and extending model-driven apps, building Power Automate cloud flows, and reading an organisation's sales process well enough to shape the system around it.
In practice, you're probably one of three people. You certified on MB-210 years ago and want a current credential for a platform you never stopped working on. You're a Power Platform consultant whose projects keep drifting into sales territory, and a sales-specific credential would round out your profile. Or you're the analyst who owns the sales process in your own organisation, and the AI rollout landed on your desk. All three routes lead to the same exam, and if you're still weighing which Dynamics track fits you best, our guide to choosing a Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement certification path maps the wider options.
One honest warning for the MB-210 veterans: don't assume your old preparation carries over. The core configuration is still there, but nearly half the exam sits in territory that didn't exist when you certified.
Five domains, and where the weight sits
Microsoft's AB-210 study guide breaks the exam into five weighted domains:
- Configure Dynamics 365 Sales core features for AI, 15 to 20%. This is the familiar ground: business process flows, the security model, the product catalogue, mailboxes and Microsoft 365 integration.
- Optimise AI-driven sales, 20 to 25%. Designing an AI-first sales strategy and configuring the intelligence features, including the sales accelerator, conversational intelligence, predictive scoring, Copilot and forecasting. It also covers the unglamorous side of agents: prerequisites, capacity, billing and credits.
- Qualify and prioritise leads by using AI, 15 to 20%. Lead management plus the Sales Qualification Agent, including the difference between its research-only and research-and-engage modes.
- Develop deals by using intelligent opportunity research, 25 to 30%. The heaviest domain, and the newest: the Sales Opportunity Agent, the Sales Close Agent and the Sales Research Agent, from setup through monitoring.
- Extend and enhance Sales, 10 to 15%. The mobile app, Teams calling, the SMS channel, and extending the platform with Power Automate, Power Apps and Power BI.
Read the weightings and the message is clear. The two agent-heavy domains carry 40 to 55% of the exam between them, so the score is decided in exactly the areas no previous Dynamics exam ever touched. If your hands-on time with the qualification and close agents is thin, that's where the preparation belongs, not in re-reading the product catalogue material you already know.
How do you prepare while it's still in beta?
Start from the study guide above, because it's the only complete map of what the exam expects, and treat the named agents as things to configure, not topics to read about. A trial environment where you deploy the Sales Qualification Agent and the close and research agents, watch what they do with real-looking data, and learn their monitoring screens will teach you more than any summary, since the exam asks about modes, settings and behaviour that only make sense once you've seen them run.
Know what isn't available yet. There's no practice assessment for AB-210, and Microsoft usually publishes one around eight weeks after an exam leaves beta, so you can't rehearse the question style in advance this time. On the other side of that ledger, Microsoft typically offers a steep discount on new beta exams for a few weeks after launch, so it's worth two minutes to check whether the window is still open before you pay full price.
For structured preparation, Readynez runs a three-day instructor-led Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales AI Consultant (AB-210) Course covering the full lead-to-cash process with the AI and agent capabilities the exam weights so heavily. And if this exam is one of several on your team's list this year, which is common now that Microsoft is refreshing its business applications credentials around AI, Unlimited Microsoft Training covers instructor-led courses across the Microsoft stack under one subscription.
The certification gap that opened in November 2024 is closed, and for a while the field is level: nobody has years of AB-210 experience, because nobody can. If you configure Dynamics 365 Sales for a living, that's an opportunity with a short shelf life.
Written by:
Frank Hojgaard
Frank Højgaard is the Founder and CEO of Readynez, where he focuses on how organisations build the skills and capabilities needed to succeed with AI. With more than 15 years in IT training and workforce development, he writes about AI adoption, Copilot enablement, skills intelligence, role-based learning, and how companies can move from traditional course consumption to measurable workforce readiness and business impact.
