Top 5 Help Desk Calls or App Training Tips... 3

[mmorancbt]

A partner and I are creating some free videos aimed at the non-technical user. These are short micro-training, free videos, for a blog aimed at small or mid-sized businesses and their employees.

Most will be between 30 seconds to 5 minutes in length.

My question to you:
What are the top 5 application (MS Office, Web Browsing, Email, Basic Computing, etc.) concepts or specific tasks you believe would greatly help the general user population.

Again, the audience is non-technical. I'm thinking of "how to do a mail merge in word" or "how to best perform yahoo and google searches and work with the results" or ??? whatever.

If you work the help desk or provide support to people, what things would stop most of the "noise" if it were understood?

Thanks.

Matthew Moran (career blog and podcast below)
Career Advice with Attitude for the IT Pro

http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/career

 

[strongm]

>Didn't Mitnick just get out of jail?

Depends on your definition of 'just' ...

 

[harebrain]

My first set of videos will cover blogging and RSS.

A suggestion: pop over to the XML forum and look for the numerous questions from people trying to set up a feed. That ought to give you some ideas.

(Point taken, strongm. It's good to know someone's awake.)

 

[mmorancbt]

Excellent suggestion. Will do.

My audience is primarily business owners (non-technology passionate). The goal would be to help them with understanding its basic use - and readily available technology to both create and read feeds. More importantly, why? (the value).

Matthew Moran (career blog and podcast below)
Career Advice with Attitude for the IT Pro

http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/career

 

[gb0mb]

The videos I would create:

Security-
Browsing
Email and Attachments
Downloading and executing files
HTTPS
Password Complexity
Password Hasher For Browser

The Computer:
CMD
Ipconfig /all
Ping the gateway
Repair connection
The browser
Clear Cache
How to install Firefox


I am looking at this as a user with limited rights on there machine. (Except for installing Firefox)

If people understood some of the basic concepts listed it would save a world of trouble.

Gb0mb

........99.9% User Error........

 

[snootalope]

If you work the help desk or provide support to people, what things would stop most of the "noise" if it were understood?"

I think #1 is; The user needs to understand that while at work and using Internet Explorer, the software is vulnerable to the unbelievable amount of junk on the internet. They need to know that going to sites that they don't need to to to is a risk in itself. If they want to visit these sites, they need to do it outside of work. When their at work, we need them to work, not play on the internet. Fortunately, the company I work for has allowed me to put in a proxy that does nothing more than block sites that don't exactly fit in our book as a trustworthy site. Sure, the easy ones are in there, Porn, weapons, gambling, etc. But, half way down our block list is "anything relating to blogs."

Good luck to ya

 

[mikeydidit]

I hope that things have settled a little since your last reply on here. I hate the bad times that you are having to go through right now. Life does seem to throw some challenges at you sometimes.


I have been "stalking" this site for a while and you can probably get some help with the security here. These guys seem to be extremely sharp and can help you with that part.

Security, hacker detection & forensics

I hope things go well for you and your family Matt.

Mike Jones

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison

For the best response to a question, read faq690-6594

 

[gbaughma]

How about:

"How to look up something on

http://www.snopes.com

*BEFORE* sending out that e-mail to everyone you know looking for a non-existant kid who never had cancer and doesn't want any more damned business cards"

hehe



Just my 2¢
-Cole's Law: Shredded cabbage

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[kmcferrin]

"How to look up something on

http://www.snopes.com

*BEFORE* sending out that e-mail to everyone you know looking for a non-existant kid who never had cancer and doesn't want any more damned business cards"

Awesome!

I get 3-4 of these a week from family members. At first I would reply to them saying that "If you get messages like this, you can look them up on Snopes.com to see if they are hoaxes, which they usually are and this one is." After that didn't seem to make a difference, I would do a reply to all on the email, including all of the previous forwarders and their addressees as well, then cut and paste the article from Snopes along with a link to the article. I figured that if I embarrassed them enough then they'd stop sending me the messages, or at least look them up first. That still hasn't worked, as I still get these messages. Only now they're always prefaced with "I know that this probably isn't true, but I'm forwarding it anyway just in case."

Why?

At any rate, I'd like to throw another vote in about how to understand and use files and folders. I'm surprised how many people fail to comprehend the concept that you should store data in an organized hierarchy instead of just one big pile. Even the "folder" metaphor fails to sink in for most people.

The problem only gets more complicated when MS Office apps save files to a certain folder, then the camera software downloads them to a different folder, then the image editing software stores the edited photos in a different folder from the previous two, and then when you try to browse to attach a file to an email the Explorer window opens yet another different folder by default. A lot of it would be helped if people didn't just save things in the default location. I can't tell you how many times I've had the following happen:

Someone: "I downloaded and saved this file but now I can't find it anywhere."
Me: "Where did you save it to?"
Someone: "I don't know, if I did know I wouldn't have called you."
Me: "So when the dialog box popped up asking where you wanted to save the file, did you just click OK without looking or did you choose a specific folder."
Someone: "I just clicked OK."
Me: "So if you try to download the file again, does it show that same directory?"
Someone: "Oh look, there it is! Thanks!"

And it's only going to get worse, because rather than helping people understand how to use a folder hierarchy Microsoft is working harder to integrate better desktop search, with the thinking being "now it doesn't matter where you store your files, because you can index and search you entire hard drive!" Unless, of course, you store the file in one of the many locations that are excluded from searches by default...

 

[aarenot]

How about explaining where the "ANY" button is?

 

[harebrain]

At any rate, I'd like to throw another vote in about how to understand and use files and folders. I'm surprised how many people fail to comprehend the concept that you should store data in an organized hierarchy instead of just one big pile. Even the "folder" metaphor fails to sink in for most people.

Have you wandered the halls and taken a look at people's desks? If they don't grasp organization concepts in manual systems, what makes you think things will be any different in an automated system? The point is that many people are not simply computer-illiterate, they are completely clueless. Giving these people computer training won't help them; they need more basic training.

 

[jrbarnett]

With a nod to the files/folders arguments, I'd say that they don't exactly come through as ideal to the users where their files are stpred.

If you open Windows Explorer, at the top level you have Desktop, with sub folders of My Documents (which is located as a subfolder of the C: drive in a default setup), My Computer with drives for each of the local or network mapped drives, then control panel, shared documents and the Documents folder (which is also My Documents).
Unless I'm very much mistaken and have very much misunderstood (for years) how this works, the Desktop folder does not contain my C: drive, DVD writer or control panel.

So much for organised and clear.

Its only if you know where things are located on disk that you actually see for yourself where these are located.

John

 

[jsteph]

jrbarnett,
I agree that Windows makes things more complicated as it tries to dumb it down. It's irony at it's most frustrating level.

Displaying the Desktop and My Documents as discreet, separate folders, hierarchially above C: is very confusing to users when you try to teach them a simple parent/child folder structure.

Further, trying to dumb down My Documents by 'dynamically renaming' it to "Username's Documents" worsen's the problem. I don't know how many times I've said "Look in the My Documents...", when it actually says "Joe Schmoe's Documents". And what's worse is that it's not even consistent when and where it does it's renaming. It's just another "because we can" decision by over-excited MS developers who thought it'd be 'neat' and 'friendly'. Like Microsoft Bob.

Anyway, my whole point is that the folder structure is a relatively simple concept to understand, and MS should just leave it as C:\, D:\, etc, and let user's simply learn to drill-down to find things--with the only 'dumbing down' being allowing for shortcuts to common folders (such as the infamous My Documents), but clearly setting them aside as Shortcuts, not as hierarchial entities of themselves.

And don't get me started on the 'offline folders' fiasco...what a clusterf**k that is! It only synchronizes the 'easy' files to syncronize, not letting you know which files aren't syncronized because they weren't easy enough for the ms developers to figure out how to do it. Plus it doesn't sync if you move a file directly to the local c:\docs&settings\mydocs\ folder instead of the 'shortcut' mydocs....what a mess.
--Jim