A lot of stuff goes on in one year.
In September 2014, I blogged on the new approach to training that had been launched by the Learning Hub. I dubbed it "MOOC", even though of course it has never been a true Massive Open Online Course - simply because its access is limited to paying subscribers - partners, customers or private folks. You can see my original post here: Certification is going MOOC.
Since the launch of the Learning Hub, many questions have been clarified, and being a user of the Hub certainly helps understanding how it works and how it can be best leveraged to learn - I love that the materials are there at my fingertips when I need them for a refresher or a verification - too much stuff to remember. Even if the User Experience is still not ideal - multiple scrolling windows, difficult to keep track of what versions are becoming obsolete, a good search function but too many documents with similar names are my personal pet peeves - it is certainly a precious tool for every day access.
BUT - my questions got answered because I became a user; so I came to realize that many details aren't that obvious BEFORE one becomes a subscriber. As much as the Learning Hub is a fantastic source of information
- The Training and Certification Shop and the Learning Hub are not the same thing. Or they are, but it depends.
- In the Training Shop, you will see both the instructor-led trainings (either virtual or in classroom) and E-Courses, usually available for a (hefty) fee;
- accessing the learning hub in Discovery edition (free) can be very disappointing if you are looking for SuccessFactors materials
- in your own Learning Hub paid subscription, you will be able to access materials to all the trainings currently available for the SuccessFactors modules, plus of course the Team Overview materials and lots more.
- It is important to note that subscription to the Learning Hub does not provide access to the virtual class for any of the courses , but rather to the materials to be used in a self-paced approach. Access to the virtual class must still be paid separately.
- The paid Learning Hub provides access to both content and Learning Rooms, these being information repositories and forums used by all students of the topic (including Virtual Classroom learners) - based on SuccessFactors' JAM technology.
- As a student, you will need to secure provisioning and access to a demo system, knowing that data may/will be different than what is available in the training instances; so he/she will need to adapt the exercises accordingly - it may be a good idea to extract a list of users, and select what should be used for the different steps. It may also be a good idea to remind a student to NOT use the same demo instance to prepare for demos and to train - or there may be unpleasant surprises when delivering a demo. Do take note that access to demo systems is available through the SuccessFactors Partner portal only. I suggest you first request the provisioning access, supported by the SuccessFactors foundation course (you will need it, if anything to know what to do with that - but I believe it is still a pre-requisite), and only once you have that, proceed to request a demo system. Allow time for this process - don't start Friday if you want to start using it Monday... a couple of weeks should be a good lead time.
- the Certification subscription allows you to take certification exams, proctored from your own home. Watch out that the exam time is set in GMT - so make sure to take note of the correct time frame.
I hope this helps some. It does take some trial and error... that is called experience, right?
