Office 365 and SharePoint Online (“Sites”) Training Resources

A client of mine asked me about SharePoint training, and I realized I hadn’t blogged about training for SharePoint Online, only – quite a while ago – about some SharePoint Server end user training.  For End User training, you have many options.  This is by no means a comprehensive list indigenerics.com.

In person training:

It was harder than I expected to find relevant in person training for end users.   For example, if I look for classroom-based classes on Office 365 here, I find few things that are both for end users and are current (e.g. no references to 2010 versions).

For example, Clinic 40041A, Introduction to Office 365, is not for end users, it’s for IT decision makers.

I looked at some training from Netcom (random choice, not an endorsement), and found a one-day class that offers a good set of training topics. I wonder how up to date it is though, since it mentions SharePoint Team Sites rather than just “Sites” – which is how they are currently labeled in O365.  It mentions MySites but not OneDrive.  It mentions Windows 8, not 8.1.

Another example of Netcom’s content maybe lagging the product is their SharePoint Demo Session page talking about SkyDrive Pro – now called One Drive For Business.

Admittedly, training always lags the product lifecycle because it takes time to produce good training, so it’s not really fair to Netcom to point out these legacy name usages. A good trainer can provide updates to keep the content current.

One piece of advice I can give when shopping for formal training in the form of Microsoft Official Curriculum is that you want your instructor to be a Microsoft Certified Trainer.  An example of an MCT – again randomly using Netcom because they were listed on one of the Microsoft.com training directory pages – is the presenter they use for this webinar on O365.

Sidenote: The slides for that Netcom webinar are here [PDF].

Again, based on perusing the vendors listed on a page on Microsoft.com, here’s a different vendor with a good O365 course syllabus: Softek in Washington DC.

Update 7/23/2015: I spoke with a rep from New Horizons today, and they offer a SharePoint 2013 class and an O365 class. They can customize classes, so although the O365 class mentions Outlook 2010, they would customize the content to cover Outlook 2013.

One final option for higher level in-person training on Office 365 is a Customer Immersion Experience workshop, formerly known as the Microsoft Experience Center – see here.  This workshop is geared more toward IT decision makers than IT staff..

Computer/web based training:

• On demand training/help
  • http://sharepoint-videos.com/sharepoint-users-training/
    • They also offer in-context help called Visual SP. See below.
  • http://www.walkme.com/products-parent/other/simplify-your-sharepoint/
  • http://tekdoginc.com/office-365-training/
• Webinars
  • From Microsoft, there’s this collection of 15 minute webinars.
    •  Of those, one specific to SharePoint Online is the “Beginner’s Guide to SharePoint Online”: http://blogs.office.com/2013/05/03/webinar-a-beginners-guide-to-sharepoint-online/
• This collection of training courses, videos, and tutorials from Microsoft
• In-Context help:
  • Visual SP
  • SharePoint Shepherd Tutor 2013

Quick Reference Cards:

• From BrainStorm Inc
• From SharePoint Shepherd

For IT Pros, the training roadmap is clearer:  To prove your skills in implementing Office 365, you will want to take exams 70-346 and 70-347, which are about Managing Office 365 Identities and Requirements (346) and Enabling Office 365 Services (347). You’ll want to take a look at the links in the Resources section of that page too.

Now, this list is by no means exhaustive.  I bet there’s some good content on YouTube and SlideShare that I haven’t seen yet. But for now, that’s enough.

–Michael

Updated 12 Feb 2015 with additional resources!

Update 23 July 2015 with information from New Horizons.