Introducing Microsoft Training Services
Published May 21 2018 09:00 AM 62.7K Views

This article is by Peter Krebs from the Microsoft Training Services team. 

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Update: this feature is now Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways, please find documentation here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/

 

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Today we are announcing the pre-pilot phase of Microsoft Training Services, a digital, customized learning service for Office 365 and Windows 10 that helps customers transform their organizations without investing heavily in training and change management resources.

 Microsoft Training Services - delivering content straight to your intranetMicrosoft Training Services - delivering content straight to your intranet

To date, 25 organizations have participated in the pre-pilot phase, helping to develop and test the service. We’ve learned that customers face key challenges with training their employees how to use Microsoft apps and services:

 

  • Landing the business-specific reasons that new tools are beneficial
  • Customizing adoption and training content to meet the needs of their environment
  • Keeping training content up-to-date
  • Measuring the results of their training efforts
  • Keeping IT and champions up-to-date on new features

Microsoft Training Services solves these problems by delivering:

 

  • Customizable, flexible content – Admins choose to hide or show content based on their environment or build their own custom playlists that are tailored to the unique needs of their organization. End users make their own playlists and share them with coworkers.
  • Experiences sized to the customer need – Our service offers training playlist tools to be incorporated within their existing sites or the full Toolkit for Teamwork experience which can provide the end to end out of the box website for customizable adoption & training content.
  • Always up-to-date content: Microsoft Training Services content is continually and automatically updated, enabling organizations to provide a library of up-to-date learning content for end users and avoid the hassle of having to make the changes themselves.
  • Measurement tools – Management gains valuable insights into the training materials users consume and the types of custom playlists they create and share.

 

No additional training resources or package purchases are required to use either the training content or full site experience solutions. Microsoft Training Services delivers training content from an Azure-hosted content store to a Web part hosted on the customer’s SharePoint communication site. A similar package can be installed that will provide the full Toolkit for Teamwork SharePoint Online full site experience.

 

Microsoft Training Services will be available as a pilot in late July 2018. To be added to the pilot waitlist or to learn more register at https://aka.ms/mtspilot.

57 Comments

Link completed within minutes of it being displayed during the SharePoint Virtual Conference. I'm working on a project right now for a major New Zealand media network where this web part would be perfect, bringing Microsoft training material directly into their SharePoint Comms sites. 

Copper Contributor

Registration completed during the SharePoint Virtual Conference. Project on 12.000 users company.

Registration completed @Naomi ! Waiting exited to spread the word and have more adoption on cloud services !
Iron Contributor

Looking forward to this. Registration completed. 

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Fantastic, just what we're looking for at Dorset County Council to help the adoption and engagement work. I've registered and am now looking forward to learning more.

Registered and looking forward to seeing more!!

Steel Contributor

Registered!  I cannot wait. 

Copper Contributor

Excited about this opportunity!

Iron Contributor

Excited about this option. Question- will there be content segmented based on permissions? The vast majority of our users need to know how to do things at a "contributor" level and below. One of my biggest pet peeves w/ standard MS training on the site is that "getting started" content includes stuff like "set up a new site" or "create a new list" and those options aren't open for most staff. I'd love it if there were a section for users and then something separate for people who manage sites. At least for the SharePoint piece. Same for anything that requires creating an O365 Group- we have that disabled, so people need to request a new group in order to set up a Team, Plan, Yammer Group, etc.

Copper Contributor

This looks great. How do I register for this?

Copper Contributor

Fantastic initative and potentially perfect timing, I’ve registered my interest.

@Elspeth Cottrell the last line of the blog post has a link to register

Microsoft

Although we are still in Pilot Phase and features are in flux, Microsoft Training Services plans to offer the ability to view content by Role, be it an Administrator, HelpDesk, or End-User. In addition, plans are to offer an Administrator the ability to hide and show the content he or she thinks appropriate for the end-user audience. I understand your desire to separate user content from content for those who create and manage sites. To help with varied audience needs, Microsoft Training Services plans to offer the ability to build custom playlists and paths that can be assembled and shared to meet specific audience needs – whether it’s creating a Group for Admins or simple “contributor-level tasks” for end users.

Iron Contributor

@Peter Krebs Thank you so much! That is excellent news!

Copper Contributor

Hi @Peter Krebs - what languages are you *planning to* provide training materials in? Anything else than English?

Copper Contributor

We are currently in the process of rolling out Office 365 and soon to be rolling out Windows 10, to around 40,000 users, these users are a mix of Volunteers and Employed Staff.   We have a dispersed user base spread over 350 locations at some incredibly remote locations across the UK and Ireland. This kind of training material would be fantastic for our organisation.

Brass Contributor

Trying to register, but the forms is stuck after hitting the Submit button.

Is registration closed? Thank you.

Brass Contributor

This is great! Registered and ready to hear more about this.

Iron Contributor
So hope we are one of the choosen ones just rolling out a soft launch of Microsoft Teams and piloting windows 10 would be so useful right now!
Copper Contributor

Do we have a view on the extent of localisation to date?  Would be incredibly useful for global customers to be able to offer the services in their chosen languages, rather than straight US English :)

Iron Contributor

@Peter KrebsReading the key challenges we customers face when it comes to adoption (copied below for reference) was spot on!  Registered my company's interest in this summer's Microsoft Training Service's pilot !!!

  • Landing the business-specific reasons that new tools are beneficial
  • Customizing adoption and training content to meet the needs of their environment
  • Keeping training content up-to-date
  • Measuring the results of their training efforts
  • Keeping IT and champions up-to-date on new features
Iron Contributor

This could be perfect for my 150,000 seat customer. We would like to get into the program asap please.  I signed up above.

Steel Contributor

What from I can see this looks fantastic. I work as a consultant to support training and adoption and the need for materials like this is very important. As an employee at a Microsoft partner company, I am concerned Microsoft is now offering FREE resources that compete with offerings we have laboured to develop ourselves for our customers. Any thoughts @Naomi Moneypenny?

Copper Contributor

registered and can't wait, we've been trying to create a sharepoint site to do this function but having something ready made, user friendly and regularly updated will be a fantastic edition to my growing training section for our staff

Copper Contributor

Registered and can't wait to see the trial - does anyone know if this is the envisaged replacement for the training offered at onlinelearning.microsoft.com?

Microsoft

The site where the customer adds the webpart….. does that site need to be in O365, or can it be on-prem?

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Reg. completed.  Cannot Wait!!! So, so excited... 

Microsoft

Is this available to Government customers? Does it cost the customer anything? 

Copper Contributor

Whats the latest availability of the new training service for enterprise customers?

Iron Contributor
I registered and got a message to say "We’ve received an overwhelming response to the announcement for this new service. We are still working on details and plans for the pilot phase, but we expect to launch it in Q3 of the 2018 calendar year (Q1 of Microsoft’s fiscal 2019)."
Microsoft

I registered my customer back in June and have not received any notification.  Partnering w/my customer would be an incredible opportunity for Microsoft as they have forward thinking and strategic vision to offer regarding training services.  How can i find out of they were either rejected or accepted into the beta program ? 

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Wondering if there's been any progress on this.  I haven't heard anything yet but very excited at the prospect.

 

Brass Contributor

I'd also love to have an update on this. This article mentioned late July 2018... what's the new target date? Thank you.

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Hi All, Wondering if the pilot for this has started yet?

Iron Contributor

Most likely we hear more about this during the Ignite event next week. :crossed_fingers:

Iron Contributor

If any of you are there at Ignite 2018, could you please ping us here in this thread if/when you get some news about this mysterious "Introducing Microsoft Training Services" post. Thx in advance.

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I note that MS have released some new training content.. (well I haven't seen it before anyway)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/athome/digitalskills/improve/?_lrsc=0f9b98dc-ca23-43df-be05-d0212003...

Iron Contributor

thanks @Colm Counihan and here is a similar site called Microsoft Learn, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/ but i can't tell if either of these is this "Microsoft Training Services" that @Peter Krebs and @Naomi Moneypenny are talking about in the 21 May 2018 blogpost

Copper Contributor

Does anyone have an update on when this will be available? has the pilot started? I registered but nothing received yet.

Iron Contributor

@Kathryn Musselle @aboozer Microsoft Training Services has transitioned into Microsoft Learn. Check out my recent post on the future of Microsoft Training Services. 

Iron Contributor

thanks @Jag Kakarlapudi, now we know to look for "Learn" and not "Training Services"

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thanks @Jag Kakarlapudi , I saw the 15 minute intro to the Microsoft Learn team on the Ignite live stream.  What I was hearing was very different to what I was expecting to hear about Microsoft Training Services.

 

The teaser (the original article posted above) sounded like it was end user training (more aligned with the content on https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/athome/digitalskills/improve/) that could be surfaced on SharePoint Team Sites, Comms sites and even possibly within MS Teams. 

 

Microsoft Learn does not appear to be targeted at the typical end user segment (or Foundational Skills). 

 

e.g. MS Learn Business User  covers PowerApps , Flow , Azure ..  these are "advanced skills" . 

 

I'm disappointed that MS Learn/MS Training Services isn't pitched at the basic/foundational skill level for end users.

 

Are there other recommended , OOTB  services that already meets the end user/fundamentals training for O365? e.g. www.office.com/training

Brass Contributor

I'd echo Colm's comments above, the original article promised more end-user focused content and having registered the day this blog was posted, to have no feedback or response from Microsoft in over 4 months doesn't inspire any level of confidence.  I've a 23K rollout of Office 365 at the moment and this would have helped immensely but I guess we'll have to look at other more traditional options now.

 

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

 

 

Iron Contributor
I registered for us at the same time and same automated response that we were in the pilot. Heard nothing after that but yesterday I found a blog post about it had been 'renamed' : https://blog.modernwork.academy/microsoft-training-services-is-microsoft-learn I since find out - it is still in Pilot phase with the current target release date for the solution is Q1 of the 2019 calendar year. Further updates will be added here as the program develops: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/custom-learning-for-office-365-faq-d4457e92-be70-4f8a-baeb-...
Steel Contributor

Yeah, I was super excited when I read the original post about end user training as that's a huge gap for my company and our 20k+ global employees. But now when I look at what's here (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/browse/) I'm WAAAAAY less than impressed. I don't face ANY of those training gaps. None of our users have access to or need for Azure and if they want PowerApps, there are plenty of other resources. Very disappointing. :(

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I am a bit confused about the messaging here..

 

In the Modern Work Academy blog article there is a reference to Microsoft Training Services being the same as Microsoft Learn (or visa versa) - this article is based around a Tweet from MK on the SharePoint Team.

 

however in the post by Mandy Clark (good find btw!) , there is a link to an article on support.office.com , that says:

"Custom Learning for Office 365 (formerly Microsoft Training Services) is a digital, customized learning solution that helps customers transform their organizations"

The custom learning for Office 365 service sounds much more like the original Microsoft Training Services originally introduced by this article. Microsoft Learn sounds like something which is somewhat similar but totally different at the same time (i.e. it's not basic end user training )

 

So perhaps Microsoft Training Services has branched out into 2 separate services??

  1. Custom learning for Office 365 (for the end user stuff)
  2. MS learn (for the Power user/citizen developer etc. folk)

 

 

Copper Contributor

Is there a way to sign up for more information and updates only, and not the pilot? Thanks.

Is there a way to complement Microsoft content with in-house content or third-party content?

 

This is exactly what we already offer for our customers (in German). We deliver the training material directly to the client's Office 365 tenant in Stream. There we sort the videos into different channels which are divided according to the roles in the companies (www.office365akademie.de)

 

Thomas Maier, MVP

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I got around to viewing BRK 2131 - OneDrive user adoption and found a reference to Custom Learning for Office 365 there (at 26:11)aka.ms/customlearningfaqaka.ms/customlearningfaq 

According to the presenters.. Custom learning for O365 is due for release in Q1 2019

Copper Contributor

thanks Colm,

I just had a look at the https;//aka.ms/customlearningfaq and it looks like there may be training for end users after all. Looking forward to Q1!

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