How to Make the Most of your Remote Training

by Monique Bulette 31. January 2012 16:32

Prepare an Optimal Learning Environment

Prepare for the class by making sure that your workstation meets the minimum requirements, have a stable internet connection, a speakerphone or headset, and check for any firewall issues. By double checking everything before class starts you make the morning of class stress free.

Pre-Class Checklist:

When you’re setting up your learning environment, make sure you have an interruption free atmosphere so that you can focus on the class. It is easy to get distracted and miss important information.

Also, it is also helpful to have two computers or monitors to separately view the instructor presentation and remote into the hands-on lab environment.

Speak Up!

Every class starts with introductions. Take this opportunity to get to know your instructor, classmates, and to share about yourself as well as how your company is planning to use the technology. The more information the instructor has about your goals and expectations the better they can tailor the class to your needs.

During class, we highly encourage you to ask questions and participate in classroom discussion. The instructor presentation is only part of the training experience, a lot of the best learning happens organically through class participation. Don’t be shy! The instructors want to hear your questions and comments. It makes for a more exciting and interesting class for everyone.

If you have a question that may not be applicable to the entire class, the instructor may suggest that you take the conversation offline. Either way, we want to make sure you walk away with your questions answered.

Give Feedback

Don’t be afraid to give feedback throughout the week. If class is moving too fast or slow, you’re struggling with a lab, or experiencing technical difficulties, let us know right away. Please don’t wait until the end of week evaluations to let us know about any concerns. Most of these problems have an easy fix, the sooner we know the sooner we can get you back on track.

Connect with your Classmates and Instructors.

You can find most of our trainers and staff on LinkedIn or Facebook! We love to connect with our students and see how things go after training. If you had a great trainer, post your reviews or comments on our community to let other people know. On QuickLearn’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages, we share industry news, technical expertise, as well as special deals and events. We also encourage you to connect with your peers. You never know when those networks will come in handy!

Have Fun!

The most important thing is to relax and have fun. Our instructors are so passionate about technology and want to share that excitement with you. Encourage them by laughing at their jokes and throwing out a few of your own.

The QuickLearn team looks forward to having you in class. If there is anything that we can do to make your experience more enjoyable, please let us know!

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QuickLearn’s SharePoint 2010 Training

by Monique Bulette 5. January 2012 17:25

You will not run into your typical Hello World walkthrough with QuickLearn’s new SharePoint 2010 courseware. QuickLearn’s SharePoint 2010 curriculum are scenario-driven classes in which we set out to create real-life SharePoint solutions, dissect them and provide best practice solutions to real problems developers face. Our classes have greater focus on interesting issues such as:

  • Developing solutions that can be easily migrated into different environments and packaged for automatic deployment
  • Creating code in a secure fashion while working within the limitations of SharePoint’s sandbox solution model, writing client-side object model code that reduces external calls, batches operations, and attempts to reduce request size
  • Accessing custom external data sources that aren’t readily accessible with out of the box tooling

Our courses cover each topic in a broader way by providing more in depth labs. Rather than dozens of 10-15 minute labs our 45-60 minute labs provide a more complete picture of each topic.

We show you how to exercise SharePoint’s strengths, as well as work through some of its more challenging areas. Our classes won’t give you a simplified sales pitch that leaves you wanting more, but instead will provide real guidance, for real solutions.

For 20% off register before January 20th with the promotion code: NEWSP.

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Anthony Borton Awarded 6th ALM MVP

by Monique Bulette 4. January 2012 14:58

2012 is off to a great start for QuickLearn’s lead ALM instructor, Anthony Borton. Anthony has beenMVP_FullColor_ForScreen awarded the Microsoft® MVP Award for Visual Studio ALM for the 6th consecutive year. This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others.

Anthony has developed our leading ALM curriculum that focuses on everything connected to Microsoft Team Foundation Server. He is a popular and highly regarded instructor and international presenter. If you’re eager to learn how to developer software better, please check out our upcoming TFS ALM courses starting again in February.

For those of you eagerly awaiting the upcoming BETA release of the next version of Visual Studio and TFS, make sure you keep an eye out for news of our upcoming early-adopter courses which Anthony is putting the finishing touches on right now. Why not follow us on Facebook or LinkedIn to make sure you don’t miss our announcement.

Happy New Year to all our readers and I hope you’re year has started with some great news as well.

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BizTalk is Dead? Long Live BizTalk!

by John Callaway 9. December 2011 10:59

The BizTalk Server team blog sneaked out an announcement yesterday that you might have missed. I caught it due to an RSS feed. BizTalk Server 2010 R2 is coming. Now the question is when, and a better question will they change the name, as they should to BizTalk 2011?

We have a while to wait, no firm dates yet, but since it adds support for Windows Server 8 and SQL Server 2010 (codename Denali) which don’t have announced release dates yet either, that isn’t too much of a surprise. They are saying about six months after those products release. Support for Visual Studio 11 was also part of the announcement.

It doesn’t sound at all earth shattering, more just a bit of a jiggle. It may calm some of the fears as they are frequently bandied about from the title of the article, that BizTalk is a dying breed. Rest assured that QuickLearn will be on the forefront of training for this new product as soon as a beta is available.

In addition to support for the new platforms another point of interest is a change to licensing making it possible to provide BizTalk as a hosted service , and to transfer a license to a hosting provider. This is obviously a step in moving BizTalk into the cloud, a change that has long been planned. We’ll have to see what that means as to whether Microsoft will be a possible provider themselves (a la Office 365 and SharePoint online).

That’s about it for what’s new unless you are interested in IBM host integration there are some adapter improvements that way. For the whole article check out the BizTalk Team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2011/12/08/biztalk-server-2010-r2.aspx

Until next time, see you in the funny papers.

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Announcement | BizTalk | News

Implementing TFS 2010 Team Solutions

by Monique Bulette 1. December 2011 11:05

On December 12th, QuickLearn is running a 5-day Visual Studio TFS 2010 course to quickly get development teams up and running.

This class is designed for individuals or complete development teams who need to learn how to use Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and TFS 2010 for agile software development. This course is broken up into five units: project management, agile team development, test management strategies, and TFS systems administration.

Visit our website for more details and to register.

At course completion, students will be able to:

  • Install & configure TFS 2010 and its prerequisite components
  • Create, configure and manage Team Projects
  • Create and customise Work Item Queries to find and organise work
  • Use the version control system effectively including branching
  • Install and configure a build environment including build controllers and agents
  • Create and manage test plans, test suites and test configurations
  • Create and maintain coded UI tests
  • View the built-in reports available in TFS 2010

The class is taught by ALM MVP Anthony Borton in Redmond, WA and is available remotely from your home or office. Anthony Borton is a Microsoft Visual Studio ALM MVP and is QuickLearn's Visual Studio ALM technologist and trainer. Has has been an MCP and MCT for more than 15 years and has completed over 50 exams including MS exam 001. He is a Professional Scrum Developer Trainer and has been a Certified ScrumMaster for a number of years.

Quotes from recent Visual Studio TFS students:

“My entire training experience was wonderful and unforgettable. Thank you QuickLearn!!” – Alan H.

“Of all the in-house courses and instructors we have had, Mr. Anthony Borton is the best instructor we have had. He was very knowledgeable on the subject matter.” – David B.

“It was a great class with a large amount of information that was covered in a very effectively manner. It surpassed my expectations!” – Christopher M.

Visit our website for more details and to register.

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