December 10, 2007

Gwyneth Williams Casazza

Training is a great way for you to learn about Office. But guess what? There's a flip side to training that you may not know about. We, the writers here at Microsoft who write the training, also learn things from you. What have we learned? Read on and I'll tell you.

This column is a continuation from a previous Office Hours column "Know about the free training courses for Office?" written by my honourable and esteemed colleague Andy. If you're not familiar with training on Office Online, you can read that column to get acquainted with the what and the how of it. Training courses help you learn about Office products.

Why do I know about training on Office Online? Because I write it. I work with a handful of other writers who do the same. When I talk about "we" in this column, that's who I'm talking about. You may think that when you take a course, you're the only one who learns. But guess what? We, the writers, learn too. We learn from you.

First of all, rest assured that what we learn is not via any big-brother-watching-what-you're-doing-on-the-Web technology or anything spooky like that. The way we learn is very simple and very transparent. At the end of every course is a Feedback page (you can get there by clicking the arrows in the course or by clicking the Feedback link in the table of contents). On the Feedback page, you rate the course using the stars:

One star means Poor (not a good course) and five stars means Excellent.

You can add specific comments about the course by typing in the box that looks like this:

When you click Submit on the page, your rating and comments come to us, the writers who create the training. And guess what? WE READ YOUR COMMENTS. In fact, I consider it a really important part of my job to listen to what you're saying.

 Note   Due to the sheer volume of the comments we receive, we can't respond to individual requests; if you need personalized support, click the Contact Us link which you'll find at the bottom of any page on the Office Online Web site.

Your comments are important

We love it that you tell us what you think. Why? Well, first of all, we're fully aware that we don't always get things right the first time round. So, we really do appreciate it that you take the time to offer your comments and suggestions. The more constructive your feedback, the more chance we have of doing better next time.

You've read this far, so I'm guessing that you are curious about some of the things we, on the Training team, have learned and what we're doing differently because of what you've told us. Here's a list of some of our favorite "lessons learned" along with some things that surprised us.

Nine things we've learned from you, our readers

 Note   You can find all of the courses listed in this portion of the column in the See also box at the top of the page.

1. You like being read to   When we started creating online training for Office 2003, the audio was for introductory parts of the course only. Then we'd tell you to "click the Next button to continue the lesson on your own."

   You didn't like that. Time and time again, we'd see comments requesting "more audio" and "I would like the entire course to be audio." So, we've done that. All of the courses about Office 2007 are all audio, all the time.

   Not in the majority? Muting the audio is always an option: To stop the audio from playing on all pages, press Mute . To restore the sound after muting, press Mute again and then press Play .

2. Everyone wants to know how to create a Table of Contents in Word  Well, maybe not everyone, but lots and lots of you want to know how to do this. If training courses were records (oh goodness, does anyone out there remember records?) the course "Table of Contents I: Create a basic TOC" would be our solid gold hit.
3. You're not always interested in the same things we are  Mainly I write about Outlook. Sometimes, I guess correctly about what people will find most useful. For example, "Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007" is popular and I expected that because most people are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of e-mail they receive.

   One course that everyone seems to love, though, and whose popularity surprised me is "Create great-looking signatures for your e-mail." Before I wrote the course, that wasn't a feature I used much. Of course, now I can't live without it.

4. You want some guidance about what's available, especially for entry-level topics   This should have been a no-brainer for us. But, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes we need you to tell us exactly what you're after before we clue in. To help you find training and to give a little more insight about what certain courses offer, we've created "Training roadmaps" and a guide to "Beginner's Training for Office 2003."
5. A touch of humor makes the medicine go down  We realize that we'll never be Jerry Seinfeld or Jon Stewart, and it would be foolish for us to try. But let's face it, sometimes the way software works IS funny. So, having a sense of humor about it can help keep all of us going. Take this customer comment on a course about that side-splitting feature Excel PivotTables for example:

   "…humorous in the right spots."

   Other times (as in this comment from a course on Outlook .pst files) we're clearly just annoying you, as in this comment:

   "Funny, but the jokes just made it longer to get to the point."

   We'll keep working on this to get the balance right.

6. Shorter is better  You're busy. You want to know what you need to know and that's it. That's probably all I really need to say about that.
7. You like the tests  Many of you like the tests so much that you've actually asked us to include for more test questions! What a bunch of brains you are. You ask, we deliver. You'll see more test questions in the courses about the Office 2007 programs.
8. Access courses are really popular  That much we get. Many of you want more courses on Access. Who are all of you Access users? Now's your chance to weigh in. Use the comment box at the bottom of this article to let us know what you want.
9. We can please some of you some of the time…  For example, comments about "Get to know Access," range from comments like this

   "Good overview, well presented review, not boring."

   to comments like this:

   "…stupid extremely boring and hard to stay awake."

   We haven't given up. But, remember, the more specific you are with your feedback, the more likely we'll be able to take specific action. One person's "boring" is another person's "well presented overview."

Anyway, thanks for reading this and thanks again for all of you who take the time to comment about what we do. Because of your efforts, we're able to offer more of what you want.

About the author

Gwyneth Williams Casazza has been working on Office content for a very long time. She started her career at Microsoft editing Knowledge Base articles that customer support engineers would FAX to customers — that's right, articles were FAXed because Gwyneth has been working at Microsoft since before the Internet was a superhighway that it is today. When she's not writing, Gwyneth spends time with her family — or more accurately: she and her husband chase after their two small boys. To keep in shape for that, she chases after a soccer ball once a week with her team the Midfield Crisis (part of an "old lady" soccer league whose motto is, "You're never too old to learn something new").