Monday, December 8, 2008

Mom, just click on the BLUE “E”… Yes… Double CLICK…. With the left mouse button… No the MOUSE is the … Forget it… try this…

Does this sound familiar? This was essentially the conversation I had with my own Mother (sorry Mom...) about a year ago. She has just purchased a brand new computer with Vista, replacing the ancient monolith that she had faithfully called me for assistance with nearly every month for the past 5 years. Now the calls became daily if not multiple times daily… Well, this went on for the first couple weeks and finally after setting up nearly everything “just like my old system” she would say I began to get some relief. Then… a new email address and online photos.

I had just started with Transcensus and was really going through the training on SHO Guide. I decided that night that I would record a script that would walk her through accessing her email and send it to her old email address. The problem was that I needed her to download the “player.” The player is a simple 1 Meg installation on our website and allows you to play “scripts.” Now this may seem simple but apparently she had already forgotten her password for her old email address so I couldn’t just send her a link in an email. Oh, no… I had to get her to open a browser, type in the website address and get to the right page to “download” the player. Finally, I ended up creating her new email address for her and doing a GoToMeeting to configure and create desktop shortcuts.

The point of this is… now that she has the player installed, I can quickly create a script and email it to her to walk her through (or do it for her) nearly anything including configuring the browser to block pop-ups, change Word back to 2003 style sheets and automate access to her email including opening the browser, entering her username password for her.

Now apply this to your job and training employees how to complete a task in a given software application...

This is the coolest technology I have ever used… www.transcensus.com/videos.htm

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