What Do You Do for New User Orientation?

An anonymous reader asks: "What do you do for new user orientation? I started at a company as part of a very small help desk / MIS department. Part of my job is to give orientation to all new computer users for the entire company (no more than 10 new users a week). Right now I have to sit with each user, go over logging in, passwords, email, outlook, Microsoft Office, and so on. This takes between 30-45 minutes. What do other IT departments do? I was thinking of a Flash presentation or website, and maybe even a short orientation movie. What ideas have you tried and how well did they work?"

Comments

Large turnover

[LiquidCoooled]

Maybe you are swaming them with stuff they don't need.
Large numbers of new users every week can mean immense expansion or they are really put of by your new user orientation meetings.

If its turnover, perhaps it would be easier to skip the email/office stuff until they need it.

New Users

[notaspunkymonkey]

The Company I work for try to bunch together new joiners and run a full 1 day computer introduction training session in one of our dedicated training rooms, on their second day (with first day being the usual this is your team, this is the fire regs etc). New Joiners get the benefit of meeting other people starting at the same time as them - and then get the run through on how our systems work - with more structured training for specific applications they may have to use carried out later that week. Its fairly informal but also gives us the chance to go properly through our computer use policy etc. we are finding that fewer people need these intro's as time progresses, however you still get the odd person who is mystified by the whole thing.

Set up a wiki

[Max Romantschuk]

A wiki is probably the most flexible way to set up something like this. It can serve both as an introduction (think pages linked one after another) and as a general documentation tool.

And unlike a flash presentation it's searchable and less of a pain in the rear end to update.

PS. Wikis can be read only for regular users too...

Re:Set up a wiki

[simm1701]

and get the new starter to expand on the wiki anything they found the wiki did not explain well enough for them, after they have learnt it the hard way

I did the same after starting here - added a wiki page of all those things I wished I had known during the first few weeks here (new company, new country) so jotted them down to try and save the same pains for anyone who joined after me. A few other brit contractors have already sent me an email thanking me for putting it together