Microsoft Teams may feel familiar in day-to-day workplace use, while the Microsoft MS-700 exam tests something much broader. Its difficulty becomes clear when questions move from everyday usage into administration, governance, policy behaviour, meetings, apps, devices, and Teams Phone.
The MS-700 exam is difficult in a practical rather than abstract way. Candidates are not simply asked whether they know where a setting appears in the Teams admin centre; they need to understand how Microsoft Teams behaves inside a Microsoft 365 tenant, how policies interact, how users experience those settings, and how an administrator would troubleshoot when the expected outcome does not happen.
Last updated: 2026. Microsoft Teams continues to change through admin centre updates, Teams Phone adoption, governance features, and Microsoft 365 integration. Candidates should always compare any study plan with the current Microsoft Learn MS-700 exam page and the live skills outline before booking the exam.
What the MS-700 exam actually measures
MS-700 is the Microsoft exam for administrators who manage Microsoft Teams. Its scope sits around planning and configuring a Teams environment, managing chat, channels, meetings, calling, apps, external collaboration, governance, and operational monitoring. It is not primarily an identity protection exam, a threat protection exam, or a broad Microsoft 365 administrator exam, although those areas can appear where they affect Teams administration.
The official Microsoft Learn exam page is the source of truth for the current skills measured. Microsoft can revise exam objectives as the product changes, so candidates should treat the skills outline as the blueprint rather than relying on older study notes or recycled question banks. In practice, the exam rewards administrators who can connect a requirement to the correct Teams feature, policy, licence dependency, or operational tool.
The exam commonly includes scenario-based questions rather than simple recall. Candidates may see multiple-response questions, case-study style prompts, drag-and-drop sequencing, and interactive items that resemble administrative workflows. The challenge is often choosing the most appropriate configuration for the scenario, not remembering a single definition.
Exam format and scoring: why 700 does not mean 70%
Microsoft certification exams use scaled scoring. For MS-700, the passing score is 700 on a scale that runs from 100 to 1000. That should not be interpreted as a raw 70% pass mark, because exam forms, item weighting, and scoring models can vary. A candidate may answer a similar proportion of questions correctly on two different forms and receive different scaled outcomes depending on how the form is calibrated.
Microsoft also changes the exact number and style of questions by exam form. The safest assumption is that the exam will include a mix of shorter knowledge questions and longer scenario questions, with enough time pressure to make slow reading and second-guessing a real issue. The practical takeaway is simple: preparation should focus on understanding decisions and consequences, not memorising a fixed bank of answers.
Who finds MS-700 hard, and why background matters
The difficulty of MS-700 depends heavily on a candidate’s day-to-day role. A Microsoft 365 administrator who already manages users, groups, SharePoint, Exchange, and compliance settings will usually understand the tenant context quickly. That same candidate may still find Teams Phone, devices, meeting room scenarios, and call quality troubleshooting harder because those topics behave differently from general collaboration administration.
A unified communications or voice engineer often has the opposite experience. Calling concepts, number assignment, routing choices, and device considerations may feel familiar, but Microsoft 365 governance, policy assignment, guest access, external access, app permission models, and compliance boundaries can take more work. This matters because MS-700 is not a pure telephony exam; Teams Phone is tested as part of a wider Teams administration role.
Newcomers to Microsoft 365 tend to struggle with policy granularity. Teams has meeting policies, messaging policies, app permission policies, app setup policies, voice policies, emergency calling settings, external access settings, guest access controls, and more. The exam may test whether a candidate understands which policy affects which user experience and what happens when organisational defaults, group assignments, and direct assignments overlap.
The topics candidates underestimate
Teams Phone is one of the most common sources of difficulty. Candidates need to understand the differences between Calling Plans, Operator Connect, and Direct Routing at a conceptual and administrative level. The exam is unlikely to reward vague familiarity; it expects candidates to know what each option implies for numbers, carriers, session border controllers, emergency calling, user enablement, and troubleshooting paths.
Guest access and external access are another frequent trap because they sound similar but control different collaboration patterns. Guest access allows people outside the organisation to be added into teams and participate inside the tenant’s collaboration space. External access, meanwhile, governs communication with users in other domains without adding them as guests. Mixing those up leads to wrong administrative decisions in both the exam and real environments.
Policy precedence also deserves more attention than many candidates give it. In a real tenant, the question is rarely “where is the setting?” More often, it is “which setting wins for this user, and why?” Candidates should understand how Teams policies are assigned, how group-based policy assignment changes administration at scale, and why testing with real users is safer than assuming a tenant-wide default has applied everywhere.
Monitoring and troubleshooting can also be harder than expected. Call Analytics and Call Quality Dashboard are not decorative reporting tools; they help administrators investigate poor user experience, device problems, network patterns, and service quality issues. Candidates who only read about these tools without opening them in a tenant usually find scenario questions harder because they cannot picture the investigation workflow.
A practical way to prepare
The most effective preparation starts with the official skills outline and then turns each objective into a tenant task. Reading is necessary, but MS-700 is much easier when a candidate has configured policies, compared outcomes, and seen how Teams administration feels in a live interface. A structured MS-700 Managing Microsoft Teams course can help when the learner needs guided labs and a clear route through the objectives, but the underlying principle is the same: theory needs to be tested against real configuration.
A safe lab tenant is especially useful. Candidates should practise creating teams and channels, configuring meeting and messaging policies, assigning app policies, enabling guest and external collaboration in controlled ways, and reviewing the user experience from more than one account. Teams Phone practice can be more difficult because appropriate licences, numbers, calling options, and add-ons may be required. Where full telephony configuration is not realistic, candidates can still study the architecture, compare Calling Plans, Operator Connect, and Direct Routing, and practise the related policy and user-management steps that are available in the tenant.
PowerShell should not be skipped. Teams administrators do not need to become full-time scripting specialists for MS-700, but they should recognise when Teams PowerShell or related Microsoft 365 PowerShell commands are the practical way to inspect configuration, apply settings consistently, or validate assignments. Candidates who rely only on screenshots of the admin centre often miss the operational logic behind large-scale administration.
A useful study rhythm is to treat each topic as a scenario. For example, rather than reading “meeting policies” as a feature category, the candidate can ask how to restrict recording for one department, allow transcription for another, change lobby behaviour for external participants, and confirm the policy has applied to the intended users. That style of practice mirrors the way exam questions are written and makes knowledge easier to retrieve under time pressure.
MS-700, MS-102, or MS-500: choosing the right exam
MS-700 is the right fit when the role is centred on Microsoft Teams administration. That includes Teams governance, collaboration settings, meetings, apps, Teams Phone, devices, and the operational health of Teams services. It is especially relevant for Teams administrators, Microsoft 365 administrators with Teams ownership, service desk leads moving into collaboration administration, and UC engineers expanding into Microsoft Teams.
MS-102 is broader. It maps to the Microsoft 365 Administrator role and covers tenant-wide administration across identity, services, security, compliance, and endpoint-related responsibilities. A professional whose work is mainly around the full Microsoft 365 tenant rather than Teams-specific operations may find MS-102 a better primary target, with MS-700 added later if Teams becomes a dedicated responsibility.
MS-500 historically aligned with Microsoft 365 security administration, including identity protection, threat protection, and compliance-oriented security work. Candidates comparing it with MS-700 should be clear about the job they are preparing for: Teams service ownership points toward MS-700, tenant-wide administration toward MS-102, and security administration toward the relevant Microsoft security certification path. The distinction matters because studying the wrong exam can create confidence without preparing the candidate for the tasks they actually perform.
Common preparation mistakes
The biggest avoidable mistake is preparing as if Teams administration were only a set of menu locations. Microsoft can change admin centre layout and wording, while the administrative concepts remain more durable. Candidates should understand why a setting is used, who it affects, and how to verify the result.
- Skipping hands-on tenant practice and relying only on videos or notes.
- Ignoring Teams Phone because it feels specialised or difficult to lab fully.
- Confusing guest access with external access.
- Underestimating policy precedence and assignment methods.
- Avoiding Teams PowerShell until the final stage of study.
- Using braindumps instead of the official Microsoft skills outline and documentation.
These mistakes are connected by the same pattern: they turn a practical administration exam into a memorisation exercise. A better approach is to build small scenarios, configure them, document the outcome, and then explain why the configuration worked. That process also improves real workplace capability, which is the main value of the certification.
How hard is MS-700 compared with everyday Teams administration?
Everyday Teams administration can be narrower than the exam. An administrator might spend most of their time handling team creation, meeting settings, app requests, guest collaboration, or support tickets. MS-700 asks for a wider view, including planning, governance, lifecycle management, voice, devices, and monitoring. That breadth is why experienced administrators can still find gaps during preparation.
Even so, the exam is manageable for candidates who already understand Microsoft 365 basics and are willing to practise. It becomes harder when the candidate has never worked in a tenant, has no exposure to collaboration governance, or treats Teams Phone as optional. The most reliable sign of readiness is the ability to read a business requirement and explain the administrative steps, dependencies, and likely side effects.
FAQ
Is the Microsoft MS-700 exam hard?
MS-700 is usually a moderate exam for administrators with real Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 experience. It becomes harder for candidates who have only used Teams as an end user or who have not practised policies, guest and external access, Teams Phone concepts, and troubleshooting tools.
What score is needed to pass MS-700?
Microsoft reports MS-700 results on a scaled score from 100 to 1000, and the passing score is 700. This should not be read as a raw 70% requirement because Microsoft exam scoring can account for different item types, weighting, and exam forms.
Which MS-700 topics are most challenging?
Candidates often find Teams Phone, policy precedence, guest versus external access, app governance, and call quality troubleshooting challenging. These areas require more than recognition of terms; they require understanding how settings affect real users and how administrators confirm the outcome.
How should candidates prepare for MS-700?
Candidates should start with the official Microsoft Learn skills outline, then build hands-on practice around each objective. Good preparation includes configuring policies, testing collaboration settings with multiple accounts, reviewing Teams Phone options, using Call Analytics or Call Quality Dashboard where available, and becoming comfortable with Teams PowerShell for inspection and administration.
Is MS-700 better than MS-102 for Microsoft 365 administrators?
It depends on the role. MS-700 fits professionals responsible for Microsoft Teams administration, meetings, apps, collaboration governance, Teams Phone, and devices. MS-102 is broader and is better aligned to tenant-wide Microsoft 365 administration across multiple services.
Building confidence before booking the exam
MS-700 is hard enough to expose shallow preparation, but it is fair to candidates who study the current objectives and practise in a tenant. The strongest preparation combines Microsoft Learn, product documentation, hands-on configuration, and scenario-based review. Candidates should aim to explain administrative choices clearly rather than recite settings from memory.
Readynez can support that preparation through Microsoft training, including Microsoft courses for administrators who want a structured route through the ecosystem. Those planning several Microsoft certifications may also compare options such as Unlimited Microsoft Training. A practical next step is to map the MS-700 skills outline against current responsibilities, identify the weakest areas, and ask for guidance before setting an exam date.
