As you have probably heard, SharePoint 2010 has a total new interface on the user side: it has the ribbon as we know it from Office 2007.
There are a couple of reasons why this can probably become an issue and will require extra training for your end users:
a lot of companies are still running Office 2003, and will probably hold on upgrading until Office 2010 is available. These people have never seen the ribbon before!
the ribbon is “security trimmed”, but where in MOSS 2007 any option that you did not have access to was hidden, it is grayed out in SP 2010. This gives some very strange results if you only have read access: you get a ribbon full of disabled buttons.
Some functions are less accessible than befor, e.g. the content types. It requires some extra clicks to get where you want.
Definitely something to consider when you start planning your end user training!
A lot of IT projects fail because users struggle with the change that the new tools bring them. As an IT implementer or trainer, it is good to “unlearn” everything you know about the software, and view it from a user perspective.
The video below shows that what is simple, is not always obvious!
I had a great time in my last SharePoint Power User training, and as always, I learned a lot from the questions raised during the course. What do you think about this one: is there a quick and easy way to filter a long SharePoint list, without using Search, without using the column headings or the datasheet view?
I bumped into this nice extension on Codeplex: the SharePoint InstantListFilter. It adds lookup columns at the top of every document library and list, and you can use them to filter the list by typing in them; the results are shown immediately on the screen (jquery).
My development skills are non existing, so I can not evaluate the solution technically, but it is really a lifesaving functionality when you are browsing through long SharePoint lists (especially when there is no metadata or views defined).
Of course, there are some limitations:
it only filters in the displayed results
it is a feature activated on site level
If you want to see it in action, have a look at the demo.
When you are talking to a customer about the setup of their new SharePoint site or portal, very often they have trouble visualising the structure and look and feel of the interface they will get. Of course, it is rather easy cranking up a virtual machine and prototyping in SharePoint directly, but then you risk that they will focus on the colours and fonts instead of the functionality they will get (you know, the marketing guy saying: “that’s not the blue of our house style!”).
During the SharePoint Best Practices Conference last february, I attended a workshop by Ruven Gotz, and he talked about Balsamiq Mockups as a tool to help you run requirements workshops. I tried it out today, and it really is a great application that any Information Worker consultant should have in his/her toolset.
What I like about it:
it is an Adobe Air application, so cross platform (I am testing on my Mac, but will use it on a pc)
very simple and intuitive
it produces “style independent” mockups, so nobody will complain about colours or fonts, but focus on the functionalities
Reasons enough to give it a try. And if this would not be enough, read some more about the company behind this product. In an era of profit, shareholders value, unlimited growth, they got their priorities right.
