My First Online Training Event!

As a participant in last month's Online International Virtual Assistant's Convention I realised just how much technology enables us to work virtually. I was able to attend a seminar and mix with other VAs, clients, and associates from around the globe - all from the comfort of my PC.

This led me to come up with an idea for one of my clients! I have been working on a custom-designed Access database for this client for the past couple of months. This database has been designed to track stock inventory and, as a result, is complicated and took many hours of work.

My client wanted me to make the database as user-friendly as possible so that data input, and querying and running reports off the database, was simple and straightforward. I also wrote a training manual to go along with the database.

After attending the online virtual assistant's seminar, and experiencing this technology for myself, this sparked an idea. I thought 'Wouldn't it be great if I could provide my client with an online training session to show her how to use her database.'

I researched this possibility, asked others for advice, and came up with a plan for an online training session - which took place this morning! It was fantastic and went really, really well.

For the training session I used GoToMeeting. When you arrange a meeting through this service you have access to:

- a meeting room
- instant messaging and email facilities within your meeting
- a single number and access code for voice conferencing services, which is great if you have several participants

The really neat thing about this service is that, if you are the meeting moderator, anybody who attends your meeting can see your desktop and any applications that you have running - in this case my database! And you can also hand over control of the mouse and keyboard to your participants.

I conducted an hour-long training session with my client and was able to talk her through her database exactly as if we were in the same room with both of us sat at the PC. In reality, my client was in a different country to me - how cool is that!

I was able to show my client:

- the many different data entry forms
- how to navigate the database
- how to enter data
- how to query and run reports

After the session was complete, I asked my client for her thoughts on how she felt the online training session went. Here's what she had to say:

"Using the virtual meeting room, we could follow along easily as Tracey used the database according to her instructions. We didn't have to worry about going on the wrong screen or adding or deleting things where we shouldn't - Tracey did all the work for us!

We thoroughly enjoyed it and benefited from such super training. I highly recommend this venue (and Tracey!)"