Missed the Day One entry? Get caught up here!
The second day of Mindsharp's Power End User training summit picked up speed both literally and figuratively. Given the number of participants –and the commensurate number of questions and comments made throughout the course yesterday– we ended the day rather alarmingly behind schedule. Consequently, we hit the ground running this morning, on a mission to make up time. With the assent of the course participants, it was agreed to limit open-discussion questions (instructors would be available at breaks and after class for follow-up discussions), and reduce the number of follow-along-on-your-laptop demos in an effort to get caught up in the syllabus.
This time-management method definitely worked effectively, though it does seem to indicate that some consideration might be in order regarding potentially expanding the Power End User summit to four (or even five?) days, at least for groups of this size. And again, being able to leverage the power of having three excellent instructors in the room allowed for one-on-one sidebars throughout the day whenever necessary. In the course of the day today, we: completed yesterday's unfinished module (Working with Document Libraries); and covered three more modules in their entirety (Create and Manage Lists and Libraries; Customize a SharePoint Site Using Web Parts; and Create Sites and Web Pages); in addition to covering most of yet another module (Modify the Look and Feel of a SharePoint Site).
I learned a quite a bit yesterday, but given the foundational nature of much of the first day's modules, a lot of the content was more in the way of a refresher for me. Today, however, as the abovementioned list of modules covered indicates, the floodgates were opened on new learning, and there were times I was caught between my desire to obsessively scribble down notes, and the need to keep up with the rushing river of information. A confession: I kind of figured that the Web Parts module would more than likely be another one that would largely be a refresher. For my hubris, I ended up taking down as many notes on Web Parts as I had on any other module ... and more than on some modules!
If you're wondering why I'm not getting into any specific use cases in these daily wrap-up entries, fear not, that's where my copious notes come in. In the weeks to come, I'll be devoting entire blog entries to each of the (many, many) things I'm learning, courtesy the ace Mindsharp team of Janis Hall, Nancy Kabakjian and Sharee English. The daily learning includes best practices, tips, tricks, detailed how-to information, and a few goodies that don't even appear in the training manual ... a book which, by the way, weighs in at 5.5 lbs.!
On second thought, typing Sharee English's name above reminded me of a "d'oh!" moment of clarity that she helped me arrive at today which I'd like to share. During one of the Lab exercises, which involved switching back and forth between different user accounts with different levels of permissions, I found myself at a frustrating standstill after switching between two users and not seeing the expected changes take effect. Normally, I'd have kept banging away at it but, since the clock was ticking, I raised a hand for an assist. Since the user account I'd switched to didn't have access to the area I had been in when I switched users, it didn't appear as if the user account had actually switched. Well, English immediately sussed out my problem and its solution ... simply navigating to another area of the site, one where the user whose account I'd switched to did have access, cleared everything up. Turns out that that SharePoint's respect of permissions (a.k.a., its security trimming features) was working a little too well for my own good!
Check out day three for the exciting conclusion to "SharePoint Blank Goes to Summer School"!
Posted
Aug 12 2008, 07:29 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Bamboo Nation's de facto managing editor and, while he has learned much about SharePoint in his first year, he gleefully awaits the release of SharePoint 2010, and the reset button that release will represent for SharePoint Blank.