Microsoft 365 Certified: Endpoint Administrator Associate (MD-102)

Windows fleets drift when deployment, identity, and security are handled inconsistently. That drift shows up as stalled Autopilot enrollments, noncompliant devices, and help desk tickets that take too long to resolve. IT teams complete this MD-102 training to build a shared, repeatable approach to the full endpoint lifecycle in Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Entra ID.

Role fit: This course is built for junior systems admins, desktop support, and help desk staff with about a year of Windows experience. Team Leads can assign it to standardize how the team provisions, joins, configures, updates, and supports devices, including remote support through Remote Help in Intune.

Time investment: The course has 26 skills and about 26 hours of video per learner. At a few hours per week, most learners finish in 4–6 weeks.

Risk and change management: The course covers compliance policies, security baselines, attack surface reduction, and onboarding devices to Defender for Endpoint. Learners build working knowledge of how to create and manage endpoint security policies, review device issues, and respond to findings in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management. The September 2024 update skills align the course to Microsoft’s current MD-102 exam guide, and course notes call out the Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID rename so teams use current Microsoft terminology.

Certification readiness: The course closes with an MD-102 review built on self-check review points, practice quiz questions, and an Exam Challenge. Together, these help IT Directors and Team Leads gauge whether learners are ready for the MD-102 exam.

IT teams use this training to run Windows endpoints with fewer hands-on touches, fewer escalations, and a clearer path from deployment to secure, compliant devices.

The course works through scenarios your team already faces. Examples include bringing a fleet of new laptops to a tested golden state with provisioning packages and imaging. They also include repurposing a device for a different department or recovering it after a failure with Windows Autopilot. The training also covers rolling out security baselines the way updates should go out: lab first, then a pilot, then expanding rings.

• Faster, repeatable deployments: Practitioners migrate user state with USMT, automate installs with WSIM and MDT, and plan for app compatibility before upgrades. They learn that an upgrade won't fix problems with an existing app or piece of hardware. Those problems carry over to the new system.
• Quicker help desk resolution: Team members build repeatable troubleshooting actions across multiple machines, so endpoint issues can be resolved more consistently.
• Less guesswork in troubleshooting: Admins use Intune compliance and configuration profile reporting, along with the Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management dashboard, to review and respond to device issues without digging through thousands of event logs.
• Lower data-loss risk: Teams apply app protection policies to company data such as intranet sales figures and legal documents. They also onboard devices to Defender for Endpoint and use attack surface reduction.

A case study based on a multi-branch company gives Team Leads a realistic way to check that staff can apply these skills together.

Knowledge

• When to choose an in-place upgrade, a clean install, or a migration, and why recurring app or hardware problems carry over into an upgrade or rebuild
• How provisioning packages, images, the ADK, WSIM answer files, MDT, and Windows Autopilot fit into a Windows client deployment strategy
• How Entra ID join and registration, role-based access control (RBAC), and the Intune Connector for Active Directory support hybrid and cloud identity
• How compliance policies, configuration profiles, security baselines, and update rings work together, including piloting changes before a broad push
• How Defender for Endpoint onboarding, antivirus, endpoint detection and response, and attack surface reduction help protect devices
• How built-in Intune views and reports help verify device compliance, configuration, deployment status, and app updates

Ability

• Migrate user state with USMT, apply provisioning packages, and build automated deployments with WSIM and MDT
• Configure Windows Autopilot to provision, reset, or repurpose devices, and troubleshoot failed deployments using hardware IDs, profiles, and diagnostic logs
• Support users remotely with Remote Help in Intune, Remote Assistance, Windows Admin Center, and PowerShell Remoting over WinRM
• Deploy Windows Hello for Business, join devices to Entra ID, and assign administrative roles with least privilege in mind
• Troubleshoot compliance and configuration profile issues from the Intune admin center, without digging through raw event logs
• Deploy and update apps, including Microsoft 365 Apps, and apply app configuration policies across supported platforms