Customers are moving beyond AI experimentation. They are looking for partners who can connect AI ambition to the cloud, data, security, governance, and business application capabilities required to put AI to work. That makes skilling across the Microsoft stack increasingly important.
It can also make the question of where to start more difficult. This month, there is a simpler starting point. The Microsoft Partner Skilling Hub Agent can recommend training, answer skilling-related questions, and generate personalized technical skilling plans based on your role and goals. From there, you can build a focused path across Frontier Transformation, agents, Microsoft 365 Copilot, certifications, hands-on learning, and co-sell execution.
The foundation for AI is broader than AI skills
Frontier Transformation is the shift from targeted AI pilots to repeatable, governed AI capabilities embedded into the flow of work, business processes, and customer engagement. For partners, delivering that transformation requires more than expertise in a single AI product. It requires teams that understand how cloud infrastructure, data, security, agents, and business applications work together.
That foundation matters across customer segments. For partners serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it can support you in guiding customers toward practical AI adoption while addressing security, governance, productivity, and business process needs together.
This month, focus your skilling plan on five areas: validating your technical expertise, building agent platform capabilities, developing AI business application skills, earning industry-recognized certifications, and applying those skills through hands-on learning.
Validate your Frontier Transformation expertise
The Frontier Transformation Engineer Badge gives technical professionals a path to validate their ability to design, build, and deliver AI solutions.
The journey progresses from Microsoft certifications through project-ready skilling and advanced Frontier engineering expertise. It is designed to build capability across agents, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, Security, and the broader Frontier stack, giving your technical teams a structured way to move from foundational knowledge toward advanced implementation skills.
If you are developing a deeper AI engineering practice, consider identifying technical professionals who are ready to progress through the Frontier Transformation Engineer journey.
Build skills for secure, governed agents with Microsoft Agent 365 and Microsoft 365 E7
As customers scale AI and agents, the conversation increasingly extends to how those agents are deployed, governed, and secured.
New Microsoft Agent 365 and Microsoft 365 E7 partner skilling gives your teams a path to build the sales and technical capabilities required for these conversations. Microsoft Agent 365 is the control plane for agents, while Microsoft 365 E7 brings productivity and AI capabilities together with integrated protection capabilities.
Depending on your role, start with one of two learning journeys:
Use the Sales Ready journey to strengthen how your teams position the customer opportunity. Use Project Ready skilling to deepen the technical capabilities needed to implement, secure, govern, and scale AI and agents.
Turn Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork into business outcomes
AI adoption is also changing how work gets done across Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork can carry out multi-step work across Microsoft 365, including creating documents, scheduling meetings, working with email and Teams, conducting research, and managing files.
For partners, the opportunity is to understand both what Cowork can do and how to connect those capabilities to customer workflows and business priorities.
New Microskilling and role-based learning journeys can empower your teams to build the expertise to position, sell, and deliver Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork. Sales professionals can focus on customer scenarios and value conversations, while technical professionals can develop the implementation skills required to turn those scenarios into repeatable solutions.
Explore:
Validate your expertise during Microsoft Certification Week
Building capability is one part of readiness. Validating it through recognized credentials gives individuals and partner organizations another way to demonstrate their expertise.
Microsoft Certification Week – AI, Security & AI Business Solutions gives partners an opportunity to prepare for one of 16 role-based certifications through expert-led training across AI, Security, Cloud & AI Platforms, and AI Business Solutions.
With sessions available across three regions and in 11 languages, you can identify the certification tracks that best match your team’s roles and business priorities, then use Certification Week to create a focused preparation plan.
Build hands-on skills and connect with peers
Offer in-person learning, hands-on labs, and opportunities to connect with Microsoft experts and other partners at Microsoft offices around the world.
Some skills are best developed by putting them into practice. The Skilling Acceleration Series offers in-person learning, hands-on labs, and opportunities to connect with Microsoft experts and other partners at Microsoft offices around the world.
Workshop topics include agentic AI, Microsoft Copilot Studio—with dedicated Copilot SMB and Copilot EPS sessions—Microsoft Fabric, Sovereign Cloud, Security, Microsoft Agent 365, and Microsoft 365 E7. Tailored tracks for presales and technical professionals make it easy to choose the sessions that best align with your role and the capabilities you want to build.
For partners focused on Security, Accelerate CSP: Security Skilling offers dedicated in-person workshops designed to help strengthen your security practice and better support SMB and SMC customers. Choose from a technical workshop focused on Microsoft Security, Data Protection, AI scenarios, deployment, and security operations, or a sales workshop focused on customer discovery, value positioning, and moving security opportunities forward.
Across the series, these workshops are an opportunity to move beyond product knowledge and build practical, customer-ready skills you can apply directly to customer engagements. As you build those capabilities, consider how your teams will turn them into a repeatable customer and co-sell motion.
Put your skills to work with a stronger co-sell motion
Building technical and sales capability is only part of the equation. You also need a repeatable way to identify the right customer opportunities, communicate them clearly, and align with Microsoft sellers. The new five-part Co-Sell Execution Engine video series brings together Microsoft co-sell leaders across SMB, Corporate, Enterprise, and Operations with partner practitioners to show you how to build a more systematic, data-driven co-sell motion.
Each standalone episode focuses on a different part of execution, from co-sell fundamentals and account prioritization to referral quality, operational processes, and the future of connected sales systems in FY27. Choose the topic most relevant to your business or use the full series with your sales and go-to-market (GTM) teams to strengthen your approach. Explore the Co-Sell Execution Engine video series.
Personalize your next skilling step
With more skilling options available, the next challenge is finding the right starting point for your role and goals.
The new AI-powered MyGoals experience in the Microsoft Partner Skilling Hub makes that process more personalized. Choose your role, the topics most relevant to your business, and your preferred learning formats to generate a learning plan aligned to your goals.
You can also use the Microsoft Partner Skilling Hub Agent to get tailored training recommendations, ask skilling-related questions, and generate personalized technical skilling plans using content from the Partner Skilling Hub, LevelUp, and Microsoft Learn. Open the Skilling Hub and select the AI agent icon in the lower-right corner to get started, with no installation required.
Take your skills further at Microsoft Ignite
Microsoft Ignite takes place November 17–20, bringing together Microsoft leaders, customers, and partners to explore the latest AI innovation, build hands-on skills, learn from experts, and make new connections.
If your team is building its FY27 capability plan now, Microsoft Ignite can be another milestone for deepening expertise and translating new technology into customer opportunities. Register for Microsoft Ignite.
Keep learning with the partner ecosystem
Skilling does not end when a course or workshop is complete. Partners can also use the dedicated partner skilling discussion board to discover resources, connect with subject matter experts, get questions answered, and continue building capability across Microsoft solution areas.
The opportunity ahead is to connect these resources into a deliberate plan. Validate the expertise you already have, identify the gaps that matter most to your customer strategy, and give your teams opportunities to learn, certify, and apply those skills.
Start with the Microsoft Partner Skilling Hub and choose the next step that moves your team from learning to customer-ready capability.