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.

Training, training, training...

We're now at the point in the project where we are all getting our training on the system. Although this isn't new to me it is to the rest of the team and it's been interesting to see how easily everyone has picked up the new system.

This is partly to do with having a very good trainer (Hello Dave!) and also the fact that the system makes sense. Compared to our current systems, OpenText and Shado, Squiz Matrix is ridiculously easy to pick up and use and you can start creating pages very quickly. We had all created and published out a modest 6 page site within 10 minutes...

Dave also has an exam at the end of the training sessions designed to ensure that the attendee has understood all points covered during the day. Thankfully, the team all passed with 95% or more so we're in a rather strong position to now move on and start training our internal editors in how to use the system.

Lucky really as I currently have a list of 160 editors waiting to be trained!

Squiz Matrix training... done!

 

Wow, what an intensive two weeks we have all just had! Our first taste of getting hands on with our new CMS and we have all come out of it with questions, solutions, ideas and some impressive grades!

Lead by Dave (@dletorey) from Squiz we had 4 training sessions packed into 2 weeks to cover everything we might need when the new site launches.

MATR 101 - The basics!
MATR 201 - Using the system as an admin (complex!)
MATR 210 - Forms and other things!
MATR 330 - Design, look & feel, CSS, etc. (@3ur0g33k was happy!)

The sessions were all out of the office and down in London at Squiz HQ in their training rooms and this really helped with keeping us all focused on being trained and not distracted by the phone & email. Thankfully, there was also a steady supply of tea, coffee and biscuits to keep us all going!

So, what was the training like?

Really good! The system is far more powerful than we first thought and as this is only stage one of our roll out plan I was able to map a lot of functionality onto the next phase as well. From pulling content out of site to the Simple Edit Interface we were all really impressed with the tools we will have available to us 'out of the box'. This allows us to launch with a brilliant new site, years ahead of where we are at the moment, and still have functionality in reserve to roll out of the next 12 months.

What will be interesting is when we come to train our editors on the system and what their reaction will be to the new edit interface. We're quietly confident that it will go down well as it is far easier to use than our current system but then you never can tell what peoples reaction will be!