Comments on: What are the most valuable subjects for beginning users of SharePoint?

By: EndUserSharePoint

EndUserSharePoint — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:34:52 +0000

Just an update… I’m finalizing the schedule and have incorporated many of the ideas and requests you have asked for. At last count, I’ve got over 20 workshops available for the first 3 months of 2009.

It should be pretty exciting. — Mark

By: Donna

Donna — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:54:35 +0000

I have read most of the input. It made me feel a lot better. We are in the same boat as most of the responders. Finding the training we need on the topics we need has been very hard, then throw budget into the mix….. I would like to see Master pages, themes, and CSS. We had a consultant come in and create this for us and now we want it changed. Workflows is also a topic we need help with. Any chance you will move into InfoPath and forms later?

Thanks,
Donna Graham

By: William Hogg

William Hogg — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:17:35 +0000

As others have mentioned, I would like to see more discussion of metadata and using it to categorize documents and list items instead of the old fileshare directory-folder model.

By: Jackie Blanchard

Jackie Blanchard — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:18:50 +0000

Mark, We’re running MOSS.

By: EndUserSharePoint

EndUserSharePoint — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:10:23 +0000

Marie-Pier,

Yes, both of those subjects are beginner, 200 level, material. The CQWP is MOSS only, so I’ll have to think about that one, but will probably cover it.

While I’m at it, anyone who has posted here or in the future, let me know what you are running: MOSS or WSS. That will help determine which platform to teach on.

Thanks in advance,
Mark

By: Marie-Pier Gaudette

Marie-Pier Gaudette — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:05:19 +0000

I would love to hear more about the CQWP, which I heard is very powerful. What can it do? How to make the displayed results look good?

I would love to know more about connecting web parts. (Does this qualify as beginner?)

By: Kenny Moore

Kenny Moore — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:30:42 +0000

How to create a department (R&D, Mfg, Supply Chain, Finance, and Marketing) home page that looks good, is useful, effective and serves as a portal to other important information in SharePoint. I would prefer to see some specific examples of how to use SharePoint to optimize business processes without IT involvement (no server side components or changes to settings). I would include building a business performance dashboard, travel request approval tool, action item list that is capable of rolling up items from lists located in other sub sites, escalation/tracking list that will send email notifications based on defined business rules. I’d also like to hear a good argument why we should use a doc library over our file shares. Most of the people I talk to care more about how quickly they can access the files and move them around in a folder structure over anything else. From their perspective SharePoint is clunkier and less responsive.

By: Mick Brown

Mick Brown — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:42:57 +0000

Mark, The schedule looks good to me. For me the whole point of “Endusersharepoint” is that it does exactly what it says on the tin.

The approach that Dux Raymond Sy took with his Project Management book was great. It was SharePoint 101 with Project Management as the end game. Dessie, yourself and the extended community are contributing some excellent whistles and bells but I think they work best when they are used in a business context (ie. the SharePoint Dashboards workshop). I think there is a lot more scope for that type of approach – A finance dept site, customer or order management solutions (linking webparts to share clients/contacts/sales pipelines etc).

The workshops are great because they focus on real solutions to real problems. For me this is what makes the site unique (I take little interest in those ten a penny sites offering “pimp my site” web parts!)

By: Lee Reed

Lee Reed — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:49:03 +0000

I would agree that Wiki’s, for example, might not be a good beginning user topic. Not because beginning users wouldn’t easily understand them, but because it takes the focus off of SharePoint’s other more powerful capabilities. Wiki’s often become ‘brochure-ware’ and are not kept up.

I like to keep my classes focused on ‘content that moves and grooves’. SharePoint lists that change over time, the publishing and expiration of announcements and tasks, etc. I tell my classes that if information never changes on your SharePoint site, people will only visit a handful of times and then will never return.

I would keep the emphasis on the biggest-bang-for-the-buck items..and it’s different for every client. My client right now is HUGE into meeting workspaces while others are interested only in version control and calendars. That’s what makes our job so much fun….clients are like a box of chocolates….

By: EndUserSharePoint

EndUserSharePoint — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:22:39 +0000

Follow up to Lee’s post: Click his name, next to the number 28, in the above post. That will take you to the graph.

Nice work, Lee. I’ll play devil’s advocate here. Those are the subjects people are interested in, but is it necessarily what they really need?

From an instructor’s perspective, it’s a hard call because you and I both know content types are critical, but beginning to mid-level users have so little experience with using them, they don’t even know why they would want them.

It’s a hard juggling act. Thanks again for the graph. — Mark