Productivity Hub 2010 Released

The Productivity Hub, a SharePoint 2007 site template, was a sleeper of the end user readiness and training strategies for Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007.  I blogged about it in the past here https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ianpal/archive/2009/09/04/the-productivity-hub-is-now-available.aspx

But, we have just released the 2010 version of the Productivity Hub.  This means the site template can be deployed into a SharePoint 2010 OR 2007 environment, and the content is related to Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

It’s a fantastic tool  to help users manage and read content such as articles, documents, videos, and training they are interested in as well as rate, tag and share them.  But more importantly it also helps to identify technology champions and coaches in your business AND what to do with them once they are discovered.  We will be releasing regular content pack updates to allow you to keep The Hub up to date with the most current online material published from Microsoft.

The new Productivity Hub can be found at: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=4aaa9862-e420-4331-8bc3-469d7bae0ff1

Overview

Microsoft has developed the Productivity Hub to help support your ongoing end user training efforts.

The Hub is a SharePoint Server site collection for 2007 and 2010 that serves as a learning community and is fully customizable. It provides a central place for your training efforts, and includes training content from Microsoft’s core products. Microsoft also provides ongoing and updated content packs.
The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking capabilities, such as blogs and discussion groups. In addition, it offers the Coach program, a change management feature to help you train end users to self-help, reducing the burden on your training and IT staff. The Coach program impacts productivity in a collaborative and positive way.

The 2010 version of the Productivity Hub includes a quiz feature, a section called ‘Get it Done’ that offers training for tasks such as email management and collaboration, and also features Silverlight. There will be a non-Silverlight version of the 2010 Hub delivered in late June.

The 2007 Hub contains 2007 content only (v2) with 2010 content added in v3 (to be released in June 2010). You can also add 2010 content packages to your current Hub. Watch for more document on migration from your 2007 Hub to your 2010 Hub.

What the Productivity Hub is:

  • Format: Pre-loaded SharePoint site collection, optimized for Web 2.0 functionality and easily deployed within SharePoint Server 2007 or SharePoint 2010 environment, depending on version
  • Content: Convenient end user productivity training in a variety of formats (documents, videos, podcasts, etc.). Receive free quarterly updates of content that you will learn about through the Productivity blog.
  • Blog: The Productivity blog offers tips and tricks for end user productivity. Use it as is, or your training staff can use the posts as their own to help them get started in running an internal blog.
  • Train the trainer: Includes IT/Manager section to aid with deployment of the site collection, and guidance to develop the Coach program
  • Products: Office 2007 and Office 2010 (including SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint 2010), Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8, Project, Visio, Live Meeting, and Communicator

You can also download additional content packages that expand the training materials you can make available through the Hub.