36 down, 38 to go...

Training started last week and we have just begun week two of a reasonably comprehensive run through of Edit+. So far 36 people have been trained and we have 38 left to go... thankfully though, all the feedback has been positive! Bringing in an editor that people can easily understand and use to add content to their page will mean that the team and I can spend time developing new functionality rather than acting as technical support.

The whole process has highlighted the frustrations that people have with the current system, including some issues we didn't expect:

• I can't add anchor points
• I have to use a separate content clean up tool when pasting from Word
• I can't build forms
• I can't edit tables

Luckily Edit+ and Matrix addresses all of these issues and many others that haven't been raised yet! But, it does surprise and sadden me that our editors currently have such a poor editing experience, although it explains the lack of engagement that we are currently battling.

Never mind, it'll all be fixed in a month or so, roll on June!

Week two of Edit+ #training... 36 people down 38 to go! #UHDev
— Kris Collins (@iamkriscollins) May 28, 2013

It's time for some editor training!

With only 2 months until the new website launches we are starting to reach the point where we need to engage with and train our existing editors in Edit+. A potentially huge task when you initially look at it...

The starting point for this is to look at who currently has an account and their activity within the site. It turns out that getting a list is pretty easy but that finding out how engaged they are is far trickier. The current CMS's we use don't give you stats on editors so we have very little idea about who owns what page, login details, activity, etc. So I am essentially starting from scratch and trying to build a list that highlights who is still active, the area they edit and their level of activity.

The starting point is to email all 152 of them and see who replies! Then, those who reply are listed and asked to provide details on their area and level of activity. This then give me a list of 74 people, a 50% cull on old accounts.

Now that I have a more up-to-date list I can book people in for training slots. I've decided to use Doodle as the booking system as it was recommended to me by a colleague. I have to say, it's a great tool, really easy to use, flexible and not packed with functionality i'm not interested in! Having set-up the dates and times of the training sessions it's then just a case of emailing the list of editors and letting them select the slot that works for them.

As you can see from the screenshot the layout is very clear which has led to no questions coming back to me about how to book onto a course. So far, of the 74 active users 68 of them have signed up via Doodle, not a bad drop out rate.

So, if you're looking to run training courses, events or drop in sessions then Doodle could be a useful tool for you to use.

All I need to do now is create a training site, training materials, session content... nothing too major.