Exploring the PL-200 exam and its objectives

PL-200 is the base exam required for any functional consultant, and it demonstrates their ability to configure, customize, and deploy solutions to meet customer requirements. As such, PL-200 is at the core of a functional consultant's day-to-day job.

While PL-200 is aimed at functional consultants, others involved in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform systems, such as testers, support staff, developers, administrators, and solutions architects, should consider taking the PL-200 exam as it covers many of their core day-to-day skills.

For PL-200, although you need to be aware of the first-party apps (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Marketing), you don't need to have detailed knowledge about the features and functionality of each of the apps. The exam is more about the underlying platform for Dynamics 365, that is, the Power Platform and the Common Data Service.

This exam covers the skills around configuring, customizing, and deploying the platform to meet user needs and completing design tasks that relate to implementing new features and functionalities.

The following sections explore these tasks and the skills required. 

At the time of publishing, Microsoft Dataverse (formerly known as the Common Data Service) was undergoing a branding change. Along with the name change, there are several changes to terminology such as tables (formerly entities), columns (formerly fields), rows (formerly records), choices (formerly option sets), and yes/no (formerly two options). These changes have not yet been applied to the exam. You should be prepared to see the former terms in the exam.