Skills & Certifications Plan — Tier 2 Tech Support (MSP / Golf Clubs)¶
Goal: move from Tier 2 → senior/sysadmin, deepen Microsoft stack mastery, and prove it with certs that map directly to daily work (AD, Azure, M365, Entra, Intune). Order is roughly "easiest + highest ROI first."
Aligned with Club Support's official roadmaps¶
Two internal roadmaps were imported (_imported/IT * Certification Roadmap.docx).
The career paths they define:
- Support track: IT Support Technician → M365 Administrator → Systems
Administrator (M365); long-term M365 Engineer.
- Field track: IT Field Technician → Senior Field Tech → IT Support
Specialist / Tier 2.
This plan merges those with current (post-retirement) exam codes.
⚠️ The official Support roadmap still lists MD-100 and "Modern Desktop Administrator" (MD-101) in stages 1 & 3 — both are retired. The current single exam is MD-102 (Endpoint Administrator).
Tier 0 — Foundations (quick wins, 1–4 weeks each)¶
| Cert | Why it matters here | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| ITIL 4 Foundation | Maps 1:1 to Atera ticketing, SLAs, incident/change/problem. Improves how you triage and escalate. Short, cheap. | Low |
| MS-900 (M365 Fundamentals) | Solid mental model of the whole M365/Entra/Intune family you support daily. | Low |
| AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals) | Vocabulary + core Azure concepts (tenants, subscriptions, identity). | Low |
Suggested order: ITIL 4 → MS-900 → AZ-900. Do all three in ~3 months.
If starting from zero (field track), begin instead with CompTIA ITF+ → CompTIA A+ → Network+ before the Microsoft exams.
Tier 1 — Core operational skills (the daily-driver certs)¶
| Cert | Why it matters here | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| MD-102 — M365 Endpoint Administrator Associate | Intune / MDM — device enrollment, compliance, app deployment, Autopilot. Directly your job. | Med-High |
| AZ-104 — Azure Administrator Associate | Azure admin core: identity (Entra), storage, networking, VMs, governance. Backbone of Azure work. | Med-High |
| CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) | Required-ish baseline security knowledge; good for risky-user triage, phishing tickets, conditional access. | Med |
These three are the heart of Tier 1 → 2 progression.
Tier 1b — Operational workload certs (highly relevant to your tickets)¶
From Club Support's Support-roadmap Stage 3 — directly match recurring work:
| Cert | Why it matters here | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| MS-203 — M365 Messaging Administrator | Exchange Online — mailbox policies, transport rules, spam filtering, shared-mailbox/offboarding work. Core to your email-heavy tickets. | Med-High |
| MS-700 — Teams Administrator | Teams calling/meeting/policy config (you run 3CX + Teams). | Med |
| SC-900 — Security/Compliance/Identity Fundamentals | Cheap primer on zero-trust, conditional access, compliance — pairs with SC-300. | Low |
Tier 2 — Specialist / capstone¶
| Cert | Why it matters here | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| MS-102 — M365 Administrator Expert | Capstone across M365/Entra/Intune/defender/compliance. Requires a prerequisite assoc cert first. | High |
| SC-300 — Microsoft Identity & Access Administrator | Deep Entra ID: conditional access, B2B/B2C, privileged identity, MFA. Big for multi-tenant MSP work. | Med-High |
| CompTIA Server+ / Network+ | Fills gaps if you touch club servers, switches, WiFi, CCTV. | Med |
| CCNA 200-301 | Only if you own club networking (POS, WiFi, VLANs, VPNs). Otherwise optional. | High |
Tier 3 — Tech-support craft (soft skills / triage)¶
- HDI Support Center Analyst (HDI-CSR) — de-escalation, ticket quality, customer comms. Great for phone-heavy work.
- HDI Support Center Manager — later, if you lead a queue.
Suggested 12-month path¶
| Months | Focus | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | ITIL 4 + MS-900 + AZ-900 + SC-900 | Foundations done; sharper ticketing + M365/Azure vocabulary |
| 3–6 | MD-102 (Intune) + MS-203 (Exchange) | Confident device + email management across all clubs |
| 6–9 | AZ-104 + SC-300 | Confident Azure / Entra admin + identity/conditional-access depth |
| 9–12 | MS-700 + start MS-102 | Teams + capstone in progress |
Hands-on skills to build in parallel (no cert needed)¶
These compound faster than any exam — practice them on the job:
- PowerShell + Microsoft Graph SDK — automate anything you do >3 times.
- Atera API — pull/push tickets programmatically (the offboarding form already records the Atera ticket # per request).
- Git basics — version your scripts (this
ai/folder is a fine start). - Conditional Access policies in Entra — secures every tenant.
- Intune Autopilot — zero-touch device provisioning for club staff.
- KQL / Log Analytics / Defender — for incident investigation.
- Documentation discipline — write SOPs as you solve tickets; they become your knowledge base.
Habits that pay off¶
- Write the ticket-resolution note as the step-by-step SOP. Two birds.
- Keep a personal snippet library (Espanso) for repeat replies.
- One PowerShell script per recurring ticket type.
- Track recurring tickets — if a problem shows up 3×, it's a documentation gap.