Forum Discussion
Sharepoint suitable for a training site?
we use office 365 for all our staff, and im now trying to build a training/community portal around using and best practice. Will be covering Windows, 365, Onenote, OneNote for classroom etc with videos, guides etc.
If we are using 365, videos on Office Video, then I thought Sharepoint might be suitable.
We need this to be easy to access, and be responsive because theres a lot of mobile/tablet use.
Even with the modern Sharepoint experience, im not sure if its the right tool for this. Anybody had any experience using Sharepoint for this sort of thing, or got any other solution ideas?
9 Replies
Some great suggestions already made. Perhaps you can try Yammer integrated with SharePoint using embedding and specific groups. However it is not the easiest thing to set up.
Here's more on embedding Yammer:
https://developer.yammer.com/docs/embed
https://www.yammer.com/widget/configure
One Note was mentioned and it's a great tool. Have a look at the One Note Classbook feature. Not maybe to use but it might give you ideas as how to structure your information and training support using OneNote. It's a pity it is focused on Education. It has great scope for corporate use.
I am still working on whether this approach is going to work when modern team sites are fully deployed, but here's a link to a very detailed description of how I use SharePoint to deliver this exact outcome: Step-by-Step Approach to Building a Governance and Training Delivery Site for SharePoint. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions about the approach.
- That's really great Susan, thanks for sharing that, some useful stuff in there.
But how do you deal with access from all sorts of devices inc tablet and mobile?Theoretically, you can use the same general approach using a site built using modern pages,, which will render fine on mobile devices. It will be better once more page layouts are available. That said, even without a responsive layout, this approach works on tablets. It doesn't render as well on a smaller phone. You need to consider how you users will need the help information-what are the practical use cases. In places where we have used this approach, the majority of users are accessing SharePoint help from their desks. It works on mobile when they are mobile, but that hasn't been the primary use case. I am currently working on a solution that is fully responsive and it's a lot harder to set up and maintain, but it looks great on mobile devices. I just wonder how often it will be "consumed " that way.
Great deck Susan! I really like working towards the incluscion of JIT and in-context support along with the overall training/governance plans.
- Thanks everyone, some good advise here. I don't think there's a simple solution which is a shame. I'll have a mess about
- I have put together a few training sites within SharePoint and have seen the most success with community driven sites. These sites can be moderated by either "champions" or "ninjas" or people who own the portal. Community sites allow for discussions to be viewed by all and have actual questions answered if the training they are looking for isn't on the site. I use the Community site template and the discussion capabilities for this. I then use lists to build an appendix of all the training that is out there with appropriate metadata so it can categorized, searched, filtered, etc. I normally then use tiles so people can drill into the subjects they want to learn about (very similar to this site now). Another good thing to make sure you build out is the search experience. You could add a vertical refiner to the overall search page that goes back and only searches your training content. I have seen Videos be some of the most effective training tools. I do believe that building a nice portal for training isn't too bad but getting really good training materials that people actually want/need can be hard.
One good option for smaller teams or if you want to distribute a larger training deck is OneNote. It is very intuitive to use and has great searching and categorizing. I have fully shifted from team wiki's to team OneNote's to build knowledge bases.- OneNote is actually a great idea Drew!
Really easy to create content and searchable.
But I have a worry that this might initially be too complicated to our users who have never heard of OneNote or office 365. I'll have to have a pay to see how easy this is for users
- Hi Tim,
When creating new Intranet's for my clients I often include a Wiki Collection for them which includes how to do common tasks and How To Guides. it works well for what is required but I am not 100% on whether it has responsive design.
If I were you I'd set up a new site collection for testing, set up a couple of pages with some embedded content and Pig latin and do some testing with access via Tablet/Mobile to see if it is suitable.
1-2 hours work and you'll know if it meets your requirements or not.
Regards,
Antony
