Microsoft 365 Certified: Fundamentals (MS-900)

Microsoft 365 rollouts often stall when only a few admins understand the platform. Help desk staff, project leads, and business-facing roles end up guessing about licensing, identity, and security. That creates escalations and inconsistent answers.

Role fit: This beginner-level course suits new admins, help desk technicians, staff moving into Microsoft 365 support roles, and sales, support, or management staff who work around Microsoft 365. It covers Microsoft 365 fundamentals across cloud services, account management, identity and access, data security, productivity apps, and device-management concepts such as Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager, and Azure Active Directory. It does not train engineers to configure these services in depth. The instructors point learners to deeper CBT Nuggets courses for that.

Time investment: 18 skills, about 16.8 hours per learner. Team Leads can preview the opening skill before assigning the course.

Risk and compliance: The course covers identity and access management, threat defense, data security, and auditing/eDiscovery. It warns plainly that teams should not configure eDiscovery without experienced help.

Change management: Three 2025 update skills cover renamed products, consolidated services, licensing tiers, and the shift from Configuration Manager toward Intune. Staff who studied the earlier material can focus on what changed.

IT Directors can use the course to give teams a shared Microsoft 365 vocabulary. Microsoft retired the MS-900 exam on 31 March 2026, so the course is assigned today for that fluency.

IT teams use this training to build a shared, accurate vocabulary for Microsoft 365, so service desk staff, new admins, and business-facing roles can explain options clearly and escalate the right issues to the right people.

The course grounds concepts in workplace scenarios. It contrasts on-premises IT with cloud services. It covers Windows deployment and update concepts, including deployment rings, Configuration Manager, and the move to Intune as remote work changes how IT supports devices. It also covers frontline workers using scanners and tablets, practical Copilot use cases for Microsoft 365 questions, and the identity and threat landscape your tenant faces.

• Faster onboarding for new IT staff: New hires learn how Teams, SharePoint, Loop, Viva, Entra, and Purview fit together before they touch production settings.
• More effective Copilot adoption: Your team sees how Copilot can help answer practical Microsoft 365 questions, such as whether a license supports a specific capability.
• Lower compliance risk: Practitioners learn where auditing, eDiscovery, and the Purview compliance portal sit. They also learn the instructor's explicit caution to hand eDiscovery to experienced specialists rather than improvise during legal discovery.
• Clearer licensing and security conversations: Team Leads can explain base versus add-on licensing and navigate XDR views such as attack surface maps and threat analytics when stakeholders ask what the organization is protected against.

The 2025 update segments cover new objectives, renamed tools, and consolidated products, so teams that trained on the earlier version can catch up without starting over.

Knowledge

• How local, traditional corporate IT and cloud models differ, including virtualization, redundancy, and the cloud service types Microsoft 365 builds on
• The role of core productivity and collaboration apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Viva, Loop, Lists, Stream, and Whiteboard
• Endpoint deployment and management options, including wipe-and-load and computer-replace methods, Windows Autopilot, Configuration Manager, Intune, and Windows 365 for hybrid and frontline work
• Identity and access management with Microsoft Entra, plus how cloud identity concepts carry over from on-premises Active Directory
• Threat defense and Microsoft 365 XDR concepts at a fundamentals level, including how to recognize key security capabilities without needing deep click-through administration
• Base vs. add-on licensing and the account management and support models covered on the 2025 MS-900 objectives

Ability

• Explain Microsoft 365 services and cloud deployment models clearly to stakeholders, end users, and leadership
• Describe where Microsoft 365 productivity, collaboration, and content creation tools fit in common team workflows
• Find and adapt existing Power Apps and describe where Power Automate and reporting fit team workflows
• Identify key Microsoft 365 security views and explain what they show at a fundamentals level
• Recognize when advanced security or compliance work should be routed to experienced staff, which helps lower legal and operational risk
• Hold a solid grasp of the 2025 MS-900 objective updates