On the Prophix Academy, I see many great courses about very advanced topics, such as DPM, Integration, template building, migration to the cloud, etc. But I don’t see any basic end-user introductory videos. Are perhaps they located somewhere else?
As we start to roll out Prophix internally, we will need to create training for how to use our templates, etc. And of course we need to build that training because it will be specific to the use of template we’ve created. So this isn’t the type of training I’m looking for.
What I’m looking for is a way to introduce new users to Prophix who might be data miners or even just getting around. Basic navigation and terminology; how to use the ad-hoc query builder; etc. At this point I find myself scheduling one-on-one working sessions with each new user, and this ends up not only taking a lot of my time but, more importantly, generally delays users from getting started because they have to wait for my availability.
How are some of you addressing this need? Are there community training videos or documents I just haven’t found? Or is everyone creating their own custom training on the basics of using Prophix? I’d love to hear what’s working for you.
I do provide two-stage training myself using Teams and sharing my screen. The first run-through I’ll show them how to get the reports they’ll need to do their jobs, and answer any questions they may have as we’re going through some of the basics. Then I’ll leave them to their own devices, and check in with them (it’s pretty easy to see when they’re going in).
The next stage, for those that need it, is I’ll provide them some hands-on training on crafting ad hoc analyses and designing templates. To be honest, there’s only one person so far that’s designed templates other than me, so that’s not that big a requirement. For ad hoc there’s probably about a half dozen I’ve provided that to so far, though the actual number of folks who’ve crafted ad hocs is three or four. So we might have a much smaller implementation than you. (our total users is currently 20, I expect that to balloon to 35 or so in the next couple of months).
I hope this doesn’t stop the discussion, because I really want to see more customer answers too.
From the Prophix Academy side, we do have online courses targeted to users with Reporting and Standard user licenses. These are basically the first chunk of lessons from the Administrator User course you see.
We have also worked with customers to create customized online end user training, which is a wonderful solution if you can swing it. We also deliver training live, both generic and customized to your environment.
I would be happy to talk about this further, please give me a shout.
@jennifer.speer, would it be an “acceptable use” if i were to grab portions of that administrator training and repackage it for my new users? (Internal distribution only.) Basic navigation and Document Explorer are applicable to everyone, and ad-hoc tool is applicable to many of my users, especially as we are still in development mode so we don’t have pre-created templates for everyone yet.
We’re also trying to explore the best ways to do this - Prophix is a great tool for those with a background in Finance - but we’re trying to roll this tool out to our department managers and their assistants for their use in annual budgeting and monthly budget reviews, and a lot of them struggle with basic accounting concepts, so a lot of the technical training is a struggle for them.
The need to internally train your organization can be difficult to handle. As you’ve already pointed out, the training available on Prophix Academy is great but it can be too generalized or difficult to understand for end-users not already grounded in technical concepts.
The route that my team plans to take is to leverage our intranet to host training documents and videos. Custom documentation can be written up and include embedded screen captures to help with clarity. You can even record your own training videos by leveraging available screen recording technologies such as OBS. In this way you can tailor your documentation to be specific to your organization’s use-case of Prophix and more accessible to new users. If your organization doesn’t have an intranet capable of hosting said documentation it could alternatively be uploaded to a secure file sharing site such as Google Drive and provided to new end-users in that manner.
There is, of course, an initial time investment in the creation of training materials. However, it is more time efficient overall to create said materials with the idea of re-use rather than personally hosting training sessions repeatedly.
Prophix Academy videos are great to introduce concepts and functionality to users.
One approach I’ve used in the past with clients is to
Have a training session with their end users covering specific areas viz. Ad hoc analysis, Template studio, Dashboard interact-ability, etc.
The session is recorded from the client’s end, and their IT teams breaks this up into many shorter videos
This enables the end user to refer back to these videos whenever they’d like to, and have the videos be local to their instance
Prophix Academy can also be leveraged if the user wants to deepen their understanding and / or try out new functionality since these videos may not always be up-to-date and there is always new functionality released into the tool
I usually do training sessions with different groups based on their needs. In advance, I will find out what their goal is and what they are looking for, and strive towards building a training session around that. These trainings are done via teams, which allows them to see what I’m doing and I let them navigate on their computers as i’m going through it myself. These videos are also recorded so it can be distributed to those that need it. Lastly, one of our CSP reps provided a prophix cloud help page that has both paid and free “how-tos”, which new users found very useful!
In my opinion, end users need to see their live data in training sessions to really become engaged with the software. I tailor hands on training sessions for each group of end users and have detailed handouts as well.
I agree with the perspective that custom training is required for end users of the final budget/forecasting templates, and definitely it’s required for explaining the data models to advanced/ad-hoc reporting users. I fully expect to spend time explaining the cube design and dimensions—our data is organized in a way that specific to each client and not something that could be trained on generically.
But during the modeling and building process, before we have all the reports finalized and in fact while we are in the process of building cubes (so things aren’t yet final), there is still a need to introduce new users, usually data power users who are familiar with other reporting tools, to the Prophix environment. They missed the initial training for whatever reason, and admin training is just too irrelevant.
So I was hoping there would be Prophix-produced generic tool usage training for ad-hoc or even template building that I had been overlooking. There are some basics, but they are woefully inadequate. Even the admin training skirts over the use of the ad hoc tool, for example. While one can find and open the tool, one is not equipped to use the tool for any particular purpose after completing that training.
I’m acquiescing to the conclusion that I was afraid would be the case: I’ll need to build this myself. I myself only learned it through spending dozens of hours using the tools in working sessions with consultants or CSP reps, trolling through red carpet, and just plain experimenting. That’s not an affordable investment for all of our users to learn how to use the product. Instead, it will mean that most users will not invest the time to learn it and will instead rely on one or two power users. So in addition to explaining how the data is structured, which is best doke through a reference document with some customer-centric examples, I’ll also need to figure out how to boil down what I’ve learned about the tool into best practices and recommended approaches, which will be hit-and-miss at best because after all, I’m still learning!
Prior to 2020, we had small groups (2-4) in a room where they could all login to their own data while I navigated on the big screen to demonstrate. Most of our end-users are only looking at data or utilizing drill-across feature to see details. When more attention is required, I use Teams and they share their screen while I “help” them through whatever process they are having trouble with. At this point, most end-users are only reading/reviewing financials or budgets; when we introduce them to data entry, I will create a user-guide specific to our environment so the screenshots are accurate. Good luck! It is a big endeavor!
We have done two Zoom calls with end users and have made sure they have a easy to use dashboards and reports to look at. We also send them a report package on a set frequency so they get used to seeing the data. We also put “powered by Prophix” in the title of the reports so they understand what system generated the reports and see the value of our investment. We follow up with users individually a few weeks after the training to see how they are doing using the system and anything they need help with.
I tend to use a “train the trainer” approach. Within each work group, I’ll identify a person who will likely be a champion for using Prophix in their department. Then, I’ll train them and let them go to work training others in their group. This tends to build teamwork within their departments and also creates some support for Prophix within various departments when people feel like they own part of the solution.
I agree with Donna. The majority of our users review their data in templates that we save in their favorites or send to them via workflow. They also utilize the drill-across functionality to see detail but that is about it.
We created a Power Point presentation called Prophix for Dummies, in the style of the popular how-to books. We did in-person and virtual trainings with end-users and distributed the file for reference.