If Your Company Pays for Your BlackBerry, Did They Provide You With Training?

[cpayne102]

I'm interested in seeing what companies are doing for their employees when they get a BlackBerry. Does the employee receive the BlackBerry in a box and expected to learn how to use it on their own or does your company offer any kind of formal or informal training?

Please share with me what your company is doing, and if you use training providers please let me know which ones have worked well for you.

Thanks!

[crackie]

our Company handed out the blackberrys in the box along with drop in chargers for them in there weekly meeting, we had a sprint IT guy come in and try and show the people how to use them. I was not at the meeting and was told it went very BAD. So where trying to show them in house how to use them and also sent them a link to the rim website where they could watch a video on the basic use of the blackberry.

I guess from what i'm told is that most of the admin dont want the Blackberry and just put them in there desk and shut them off. Oh well, good thing i'm not paying that bill, but if they have any questions on the few that use them, we will sit down and show them.

[mcgyver68]

Not a chance. "Here you go". "Buh-Bye!"

[blazanik]

outlook traiing alongside your BB and how to use the lookup feature to search global address book.

[Dawsonj]

I've given out about 300 BBs in our agency. I conduct a 45 minute presentation and walk the new users through the basic features including how to access the internet through our proxy. I usually have between 5 and 20 per deployment.

[Priest1974]

We have a few thousand BBs that our service techs use for handling their service calls. I built a self-paced interactive CBT that walks them through how to use their BB.

[cpayne102]

Thanks for the replies.

Crackie-sorry to hear about your Sprint experience. I wonder if it was just unorganized. Too funny about the admins...while we're all addicted to our crackberries, they have no idea what they're missing out on!

macgyver- that's the norm around here. I'm trying to fix that.

Dawsonj, how often do you schedule the presentations? And do you only conduct them face to face? Any virtual presentations?

Priest1974, for the interactive CBT are you tracking who is actually going through the learning?

[k8108]

Hi, I've been lurking on these forums for a few months, now. Curve 8900 user. I saw this post and had to laugh. My husband was given a BB Curve about a year ago at his work, with basically no instruction. He is pretty high level management at a local hospital. He knows how to place/answer calls, take pictures, text, email. That's basically it.

I got my Curve a few months ago and found CB when I was googling help for it, being a brand new BB user.

I have been able to show him so much more about his BB since I've been hanging out here! I'm basically his IT gal. Too funny! But thank goodness for CB and all the great info and the great people here.

[Priest1974]

Originally Posted by cpayne102

Priest1974, for the interactive CBT are you tracking who is actually going through the learning?

Sorry for the slow reply. Yes, we do track. We push all of our learning through an LMS so that everything is tracked.

[paddygirl16]

Mine was thrown at me in the box with a good luck to you. Since I have had a personal BB for over a year and half, and have been a proud member of CB, I didn't feel lost. However, I am surprised on how clueless my colleagues are on all the wonderful features.

At the same token, as a private BB user, I was amazed that the different carriers do not share alot of information to the consumers that purchase these phones. At least maybe a list of helpful websites, like CB. I was lucky that a friend introduced this site to me only after weeks of having by BB.

[Dawsonj]

Dawsonj, how often do you schedule the presentations? And do you only conduct them face to face? Any virtual presentations?

We usually do at least one presentation a month. I prefer face to face. It's easier for me to gauge if the user "gets it". We have some unique agency specify security requirements that the users can't look up on the carrier websites. I want to make sure the users are comfortable with the berry before turning them lose. For our remote offices we have used Live Communicator for users in our field offices.

[cpayne102]

CrackBerry is awesome and so are its members. Thanks for your insightful responses. If you can think of anything else to add, please do so...

What are companies doing to train their employees on BlackBerry devices?
Who are the top three BlackBerry training providers?
What are the recommended BlackBerry training approaches?

[captain_giggles]

Originally Posted by cpayne102

What are the recommended BlackBerry training approaches?

I've trained 100's of blackberry users. If you can't do one-on-one (which is easiest because you can just walk the user through all the features), hands-on in-class is best with the bbry model being used connected to a PC and projected onto a screen. Written documentation is nice to hand-out but I don't think it's absolutely necessary after a 20-30 minute hands-on training.

[cpayne102]

Thanks Captain Giggles!

[murialita]

I typed up a short "Tips and Tricks" for the users to get them started without having to read the 230+ page manual first. Then I sat with them for 10-30 minutes going over things. I also scheduled an hour long demo/QA session. No one showed up.