Passed 70-697 here is my esperience
I took the 698 exams on January 5, 2018, and passed with a 740. Anyone thinking of taking the 698 first please do so. It's a lot less content to cover than the 697 exams. When I took the 698 I took a short class in college and purchased the testout.com lab. Also, considering I have about 5 years in the IT world.
The exam itself was not that hard and I had plenty of time left "52 questions 150 minutes". The thing about Microsoft exams you really have to pay attention to the type of verbiage they structure in the sentences. For the 698 exams, I had like 5 PowerShell questions, some DISM questions, 4 fill in the blanks, use drop down below questions, like 5 drag and drop in correct sequence questions. Overall just study and get a solid understanding. Remember everyone learns differently.
Now let's talk about the 70-697 exam. There are a lot of threads on here stating the exam is very difficult. There is some truth to that but my exam was not at least to me that difficult or at least I knew what to expect the second time around. Remember every exam is going to be different in regard to the questions given. That is just how Microsoft delivers the exam.
So, I took the 70-697 exam on April 27, 2018, the first time around and failed with a 625. I think I failed it because I was overconfident and a bit tired. On the second try, I got a 700 and a pass is a pass. On the whole subject of study, there are at least 10 to 15 questions on each section so do prepare to see a wide range in each section. Some of the questions were in drag and drop, fill in the blanks, a lot of corporate environment what-if scenarios, multiple choice, I had like 3 PowerShell command questions. I did see questions about ODT click-to-run such as setup.exe /download - setup.exe /configure. Do know the difference between Scanstate and Loadstate, IPsec/ikev2.
You really need to study and try to get a broad understanding of it all. Now, as far as studying for the exam I use a few websites.
First I still had a valid subscription to testout.com which was purchased through a school so, I used that for some reference. which by the way was very detailed and the practice questions were like 70 to 200 questions.
I also purchased the practice questions exam on Udemy.com which was pretty good. I did see some questions on the real exam and they update the questions every 2 to 3 weeks I think.
Some might know this one I also purchased the Virtual labs on Cybrary.it which are pretty good and some of the steps to complete the labs are long so prepare to do them at least 2 or 3 times.
Then I purchased CBT nuggets by Antony Sequeira which by the way its $84.00 comes with virtual labs and practice exams by Kaplan I believe, but it might have changed. Although informative not very detailed pretty much its just a crash course. The Remote app content was like 5 minutes but also consider Azure remote app is phased out and replaced with Citrix XenApp. The practice questions were very good and the good thing about them is if you get a question wrong it provided a link to Technet.
I also used this document by Mike Russcher "70-697_Notes_final" which was from this forum and I found it to be very detailed and some of the study material content was on the exam. Almost forgot, sign-up for a trial for Azure, Intune, office 365 because there is going to be questioned on how-to setups/scenarios. Also, study these 3 subject on Hybrid deployment not just Standalone. There is some question about CNAME enterprise enrollment and device enrollment. Know the difference. DO NOT FORGET TO STUDY Remote apps which will be on the exam.
I wanted to provide some feedback because there was very little on this forum, and too far apart. Anyways, Good luck and if you fail re-take the exam within 1 week that is how long I waited to re-take the exam the 2nd time around.
