I was invited to take the Beta version of the user exam for SharePoint, officially called Microsoft Office Specialist, SharePoint 2010. This was the first time that I have taken a Microsoft Office Specialist exam, though I have taken around 50 Microsoft Certified Professional Exams. But they are quite different, basically it is a simulation of SharePoint and one is assigned many different tasks to perform. Great fun.
After getting the certification I am teaching the SharePoint user interface to two students who would also like to write the exam. Since I had received it as part of a review program, I decided to use Geoff Evelyn’s MOS 2010 Study Guide for Microsoft® Office SharePoint® from O’Reilly. The books is a good match to the exam objectives, I did not spot an exam objective that is not covered here. The intended audience would be someone who has been working with SharePoint for a while, and wants to write the exam. The book does not work as well outside the intended audience, for example, a SharePoint beginner. The exercises do not work just doing them in order, as an instructor I had to fill in the gaps and do some preliminary work to get the exercises to work. Another example, page 24 mentions content types but they are not explained until page 75, where they are explained very well. A step in the direction of giving more SharePoint background is the only companion download to the book, a 13 page Appendix: Overview of SharePoint 2010.
