We are in the process of moving to a total product implementation and will be live by summer. We are a small college and have never done an extremely good job of training new people on how to use the current SIS system. We would like to change this model but are struggling to determine the best way to handle this. We are willing to budget for periodic live training on campus if this makes sense.

I am looking for ideas on how you handle ongoing training the the existing staff and new staff on all of the features and function of SIS.

Chuck,

Training on an ongoing basis is a challenge we face as well.  Though we haven't fully implemented a solution we handle training in a few ways.

 1.  We provide access to the Blackbaud website and encourage new users to read the manual.

2.  We utilize the sample data and encourage new users to explore the sandbox.

3.  We are documenting the custom configuration settings and the reasons those decisions were made.

4.  Eventually we will require powerusers to topic specific classes in our Learning Management System, Angel.  New employees will be required to test out in the classroom before being granted rights in BBSIS.

 Hope this helps,

Daniel Ruiz

We are looking at ENS and are considering Rave Alert - Shawn suggested that we talk as I am a fellow Blackbuad implementor.  We have RE, SIS (Admissions and Registrar's, Student-Faculty Portal) implemented and just successfully configured online registration.  We have yet to configure and implement FE and billing.  How far have you gotten?  I know this is a year later but Blackbaud's Learn package is pretty comprehensive and between that and the user's manuals we have survived happily.

Have you implemented Rave Alert? - and if so, how did you integrate with SIS?  Also have you implemented a Financial Aid solution?  Would love to talk - sphillips@johnson.edu