The Productivity Hub is now live!

I mentioned this during my session at ILTA this week, and the response has been overwhelming.  Suzanne has provided more information below, as well as a link for downloading.

What is the Productivity Hub?

The Productivity Hub is a SharePoint Server 2007 site collection. It comes packed with over 300 pieces of content, including videos, documents and PowerPoint slides. Customers may then create a learning community within their firewall.

The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking features to engage end users. It also offers training for “coaches”, or power users internal to each customer. Coaches reduce the burden on training and helpdesk staff by adding another level of support. 

The Productivity blog is another strategy to build a daily customer connection. Blog posts from the Crabby Office Lady, product managers, the field, and our learning partners feeds directly into the customer’s Hub through the included RSS feed. 

The Hub pilot has reached over 100 customers around the world.  During the pilot, one customer remarked, “We owe you a debt of gratitude,” and another said they weren’t allowed to move forward with deployment until they installed the Hub.

Customer benefits:

•Helps reduce costs: Streamlines training and helps reduce training overhead. Acts as a tool for training departments and IT.

•Multiple learning paths: Includes learning roadmaps, coaches, forums, searchable content and more.

•Helps increase productivity:  Accelerates 2007 Office system adoption through a learning community.

•Drives adoption: Ongoing access to training enables deeper use and helps create new power users.

•Ignites collaboration:  Creates customer evangelists through the coach program. 

•Proof of concept: Provides a vision for collaborative learning – leading to collaborative work.

Hub Download link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=277fefca-d62f-41bc-943d-79002254cfee