Sharepoint advanced 70-332 FAILED. Frustrating!

MeatCatalogue

Sharepoint doesn't seem to have a section on techexams, so I'm posting this here.

This morning I failed my 70-332 sharepoint advanced solutions exam (I passed 70-331 about a month ago by the skin of my teeth). First time I've ever failed a Microsoft exam. On the plus side I didn't do well enough to wish I had changed "one or two" answers to pass.. but I also did poorly enough that I don't want to reschedule it for tomorrow. At least second shot is active and I'll get a $free second crack at it.

Has anyone on techexams passed this exam? I had several questions out of left field that are NOT mentioned whatsoever in the "skills measured section" of the website. This is frustrating. Questions on configuring Yammer, and others on o365 hot failover to Azure config/admin databases. Lots of SQL questions I did not prepare for either.

If anyone could give me advice who recently passed it, I would appreciate it! If you did, how did you score?

Imcured

Hey

I have just failed the same. I passed the 70-331 with a good score around nearly 800, but have not had a good experience with the 332.

Firstly my machine crashed several times and I was moved to another machine. I failed with a low score of 618. I was really quite surprised at the lowness of the score because I had felt pretty confident about my answers throughout (save a few topics which I'll come to.). I called Pearson Vue to double check that there were no missing answers or something awry because the fail actually did surprise me. They told me that a ticket was logged and escalated and that I needed to wait until mid next week to call back for an update. Now I have a free second chance shot for this but that gives me four weeks - two of which I will be abroad for and unable to study. So rather than wait, unsure if there was a technical fault or it was my own performance, I decided to rebook for yesterday on my second shot. Would you believe, at the same testing centre here in Melbourne Australia, at a different computer, my test crashed yet again (with an out of disk space error at a UNC share to a local server which I spotted labelled in the office.) I was again moved to a different machine, and my session restarted mid-test at the new station. Clicking to the next question was leggy, and it didn't feel stable. I was also unable to leave comments on questions I had flagged for comment.

The second shot I took was a very very different set of questions, and I was even more confident, yet I failed again this time with 634. And I still don't have resolution over whether there was a technical issue with either tests or it was just me!

I will say this - the sets of questions I received for the 70-332 were quite different to practice tests I had used online; there is content in them that is NOT listed amongst the Skills Measured on the Microsoft site https://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-au/exam-70-332.aspx.

I found, like you, there were questions on Warm Failover to Azure, and SharePoint Online questions such as how to configure Yammer in branding of the SP online part of a hybrid setup. I was kind of annoyed to see this as it hadn't formed part of my lab setup or study plans.. When was this introduced to the skills measured??

Overall if I was to set out areas that surprised me and I'd recommend looking into, it would be service federation, hybrid configuration and SharePoint online - especially with regards social features, yammer configuration and what functionality can and cannot be implemented in SharePoint online - video sharing, my sites, full trust farm solutions, etc. and SQL DR supported and unsupported technologies (e.g async commit always on unsupported for Analysis Services Reporting DB),

I also found the English to be of questionable quality; ambiguous scenarios laid out before asking questions - where you aren't certain of prerequisites being in place for questions, or aren't 100% sure what they are asking. I am quite sure I spotted a typo, too, where the word 'only' was used inappropriately. It felt like there was an English as a Second Language element to the wording - not good.

I'll call Pearson back up next week on the off chance there was a miscalculation but if not then it seems the weak areas for me that I outlined above are weighted quite heavily: my score of 634 yesterday was quite harsh I felt so they may be placing quite an emphasis on the hybrid stuff.

I'd be very interested to hear other people's experiences from sitting the 332 recently. I definitely wish I'd sat earlier because I have colleagues who passed earlier that I know did not have these problems.

Cheers

knownhero

Sorry to hear that you both failed. I'm on my way to these two exams just got to get the 70-411 out the way.

Mod! We need a SharePoint section for sure!

MeatCatalogue

I wanted to update this thread to say I finally passed!

After I failed my second shot last may (2015) I emailed microsoft with my displeasure about yammer questions, azure, etc being on a SHAREPOINT exam. They replied with a voucher for a free second second shot (3 tries for the price of one) and that I had ONE YEAR to take it.

I took the year - and in that year worked a lot with sharepoint online since my most recent consulting gig was moving a mid size retailer to O365. That got me some very good experience for those "out of left field" questions they asked. Which might I add, are ridiculous.

I did pass last week with a score of 850 - very happy about it. Sadly, sharepoint 2016 just came out. Time to start a studyin again.

knownhero

Congrats on the 332 pass! I just passed the 331 and about to start the next one.