Microsoft Certified – AI Business Professional (AB-730)

Learning plan

About 12 hours of focused study, split into 4 phases. Pick your weekly pace and the timeline adjusts.

Estimated finish: 2 weeks

What the exam covers

Source: official exam guide. Weights can change, so check before you start.

Before you start

• Access to a Microsoft 365 account with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, ideally at work, so you can try every feature the exam asks about
• Everyday comfort with Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams. No coding is needed

1. Week 1 · 3 h

   How Copilot works and how to use it safely

   • Explain how Microsoft 365 Copilot keeps organisational data private - it respects existing permissions, and prompts are not used to train foundation models
   • Describe how Work IQ, web grounding and the app you are in change the answer you get
   • Tell Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, agents and Copilot Cowork apart, and say which one fits a task
   • Spot fabrication, prompt injection and over-reliance, and verify an answer by checking its citations

   Use: AB-730 study guide · Microsoft 365 Copilot privacy and data protection

2. Week 1 · 3 h

   Prompts, chats and notebooks

   • Write a prompt with a goal, context, sources and expected format, and pick a model where Copilot offers a choice
   • Reference files, emails and meetings in a prompt with the / picker
   • Save, schedule and share a prompt, and explain how Copilot memory and custom instructions affect later answers
   • Find, rename and delete chats, and gather related material in a Copilot Notebook

   Hands-on: Create a Notebook for a real project, add three reference files, ask Copilot for a status summary with citations, then save that prompt and schedule it to run every Monday.

   Use: AB-730T00 course and self-paced paths · Microsoft Copilot adoption hub

3. Week 1 · 3 h

   Content, meetings and agents

   • Draft a Word document, analyse an Excel table and build a PowerPoint deck from a source file with Copilot, then check the result against the brief
   • Use connectors to bring in data from outside Microsoft 365, and generate images and charts for business content
   • Prepare for a meeting, use the Facilitator agent, real-time catch-up and intelligent recap, and collaborate in Copilot Pages
   • Choose between a prebuilt agent such as Researcher or Analyst and a custom agent, and delegate a multi-step task to Copilot Cowork, then review its plan and results

   Use: Microsoft 365 Copilot documentation

4. Weeks 1–2 · 3 h

   Practice assessment and review

   • Take the free AB-730 practice assessment and review every miss
   • Check you know the newest objectives (Copilot Cowork, skills, Facilitator agent), since they are new in the October 2026 outline
   • Run through the exam sandbox to get used to the question types

   Use: Microsoft exam sandbox · AB-730 exam prep videos

You're ready to book when…

• You can name the right Copilot experience (Chat, an app, a prebuilt agent or Cowork) for a task without hesitating
• You can save, schedule and share a prompt and organise chats in a Notebook from memory
• You can list three ways to verify an AI answer before you send it on
• You score 80% or higher on the official practice assessment

Exam tips

• The English exam switches to a new skills outline on October 20, 2026 that adds an agents domain and Copilot Cowork. Check which version applies on your exam date.
• You get 45 minutes, so don't linger on any one question.
• If you fail, you can retake after 24 hours.