Personal Mentoring


Personal Mentoring offers intensive, individualized or small group instruction, along with on-the-job coaching to help you quickly and effectively apply new skills to the workplace. Our clients often request instructor mentoring as a follow-up to classroom training or as a stand alone solution to teach a specific skill. 

Designed for Quick Results 
With Personal Mentoring, you get an instructor at your site to help you apply skills to the project you are working on. You'll get fast, targeted results—the kind of edge you can only get from expert personal support.

  • Use it for a single day or multiple days
  • Customize it for an individual employee's needs or structure it as small-group support
  • Schedule it before or after on-site training, or to support independent off-site training  
Choose from our current offerings listed below or contact us today to build a customized solution.

System Center


Deploying Applications with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Now that you have your ConfigManager environment running it's time to put it to use. You understand the concepts around deploying applications but could use some help in creating query-based collections to fine-tune your application deployments. Your responsibilities include tracking and troubleshooting those deployments. With a mentoring session, you can have one of our instructors come to your location and help you better understand how to target the right machines, leverage the capabilities of software distribution, and use available tools for resolving issues.
Personal mentor: Lu Patrick


Deploying Operating Systems with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
It all seemed so easy in class but now you're faced with creating image files, adding customizations and targeting the right configuration to the right machine! You know OSD can do a lot more than drop an image on a system and want to explore the additional capabilities. With one of our instructors by your side, helping you work through an operating system deployment in your environment, we can help tie the theory to practical application. 
Personal mentor: Lu Patrick


Automating Processes with SMS or SCCM
Do you work with SMS or SCCM? Do you want to learn how to automate some of the processes? How about extending the console with custom actions? If you know VBScript then this mentoring solution is for you. In this solution you will be guided through using VBScript to leverage WMI actions. You will then learn how to create your own custom actions and add them to the SMS or SCCM console. But wait...there's more. How about using PowerShell instead of VBScript?
Personal mentor: Matthew Obert


Creating Custom Web Reports for SMS or SCCM
Are you tasked with getting information out of the SMS or SCCM database? Do you want to create custom web reports to display custom inventory information? If so, then this mentoring solution is for you. In this session you will learn how to create custom SQL Views in the SMS or SCCM database. You will then learn how to leverage those views in the SMS or SCCM web reporting feature. How about linking this new report to other reports (custom or pre-built) or even creating graphs and charts?
Personal mentor: Matthew Obert


PowerShell


Leveraging PowerShell with Your Current VBScripts
Have you heard of PowerShell? Did you take the exclusive New Horizons of Minnesota PowerShell class and are now back at work wondering "now what?" Well, how about taking this custom mentoring solution where you and the instructor can look at your existing VBScirpts and leverage PowerShell to make the scripts easier to work with and much more efficient. You will also learn how to convert your existing batch file or Perl Scripts. Existing VBScript and PowerShell knowledge are required.
Personal mentor: Matthew Obert


SharePoint


Automating InfoPath Forms with SharePoint Designer and SharePoint
Do you have a need to automate your InfoPath forms with SharePoint? Workflows are the rage so how can you make the most of your SharePoint site to minimize administration? With mentoring on InfoPath, SharePoint Designer and SharePoint, we can help you create your InfoPath forms and automate them from within InfoPath. We can assist you with creating connections to your databases and document libraries and then deploy them using SharePoint. We'll help you build workflows to have them approved or moved to the appropriate locations. Unlike class, where you have limited opportunities to ask specific questions about your site or process, this is a one on one session to help with your project.
Personal mentor: Don Donais


.NET


.NET Cafeteria
You are a .NET developer with a range of skills, but you also have some gaps in your knowledge. You don’t have time for a full five-day class, and even if you did, you find that a good deal of the content covers topics in which you are already skilled. Why can’t you just put together a training session on specifics? Well, actually you can. We can work with you to pick and choose content from any and all of our current offerings to create a one or two-day custom solution. Typically, a .NET class covers three chapters of material each day. You can design your training to go deeper into a few specific areas or to move at a faster pace and cover more content—content to meet your needs.
Personal mentors: Ron Hovland, Brian Lockwood, Jim Ferguson


Operations Manager 2007


Working with Operations Manager 2007
Operations Manager 2007 provides a robust environment for monitoring your Window environment. But without additional customization after your initial implementation, you can be overwhelmed by the number of alerts that are being generated by the management packs you've implemented. We can help you understand why these alerts are being generated and how to make adjustments to your environment to better tune the management packs for your specific implementation.
Personal mentor: Lu Patrick


Windows Server


Implementing an Active Directory Integrated [Digital] Certificate Infrastructure (Windows 2003 or 2008)
Many Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies are now requiring the use of digital certificates for a product to work. If you are going to implement a public key infrastructure (PKI) inside your organization, there are many gotchas and best practices that need to be considered, especially if you have compliance standards such as PCI, HIPPA or Sarbanes-Oxley. We can have one of our instructors assist you in designing a new PKI environment or help plan a migration to Windows 2008 Active Directory Certificate Services. The following technologies use or require PKI: Encrypted File System, BitLocker, Office Communication Server, Exchange (for secure messaging), SSL, Federated Services, SQL, SCOM, SCCM, Network Access Protection, Terminal Services Gateway Services and many more.
Personal mentor: Bob Krone


SQL Server


Learn SQL Server Performance Measurement, Monitoring and Troubleshooting
Are you experiencing long report rendering times or slowdowns in your OLTP applications? Do you have a plan to monitor and prevent unacceptable response times from your SQL Server? If you want to know what is going on with SQL Server and what you can do to prevent performance issues, then this mentoring solution is for you. At the completion of this mentoring, you will:
  • Learn the tools for troubleshooting SQL Server response times.
  • Develop strategies and techniques to monitor and measure SQL Server performance.
  • Develop a plan to prevent future issues.
Personal mentor: John Thurow


Create SQL Server Maintenance Plans
Are you confident that your SQL Server databases are properly backed up and being maintained for optimum performance? Are you sure that you can restore your databases from existing backups? Do you have the peace of mind that your SQL Server maintenance is being done according to the industry’s best practices? If you answered "no" to any of these questions, then this mentoring is your answer. You will:
  • Use the Maintenance Plan Wizard and Design Surface to create and modify SQL Server maintenance plans.
  • Analyze your needs and determine which database backup/restore strategy is appropriate and then create a corresponding maintenance plan.
  • Create maintenance plans for other purposes such as index rebuilding and statistics updating.
  • Use database restore methods.
Personal mentor: John Thurow


Analyze Your SQL Server Security and Implement Solutions
Are you confident that your SQL Server is configured according to the best security practices? Is your data safe from unwanted access? How do you know who did what with your data? You need to arm yourself with information to combat the unwanted prying eyes and the bad guys. With this mentoring you will learn:
  • The SQL Server security model.
  • SQL Server auditing methods.
  • How to analyze your present SQL Server security configuration. Please note that your application’s security and design may be difficult to reverse engineer.
Personal mentor: John Thurow


Automate Your SQL Server with Jobs and Alerts
Do you want to make your SQL Server administration easier so that you can have a life? Do you want time away from SQL Server to free up extra time for other tasks? Do you know SQL Server is having issues before the end users tell you? Can the SQL Server problems correct themselves? The answers to these concerns involve jobs and alerts. This mentoring helps you with:
  • Identifying the area's jobs and alerts.
  • Creating jobs for specific tasks and automating them.
  • Creating alerts to notify you of SQL issues.
  • Use alerts to take corrective action.
Personal mentor: John Thurow


Implement Database Mirroring for High Availability
Is your data safe from destruction? Would a restore from backup take too long? How long can your organization be without data? To address these losses of service concerns, you may need to implement a SQL Server high availability solution like database mirroring. This mentoring solution addresses the implementation of database mirroring. You will:
  • Learn the three modes of database mirroring and choose the one that best fits your environment and needs.
  • Learn how to implement database mirroring.
  • Learn how to monitor database mirroring.
  • Practice failing over to the database mirror and failing back.
  • Use the database mirror as a source for reporting.
Personal mentor: John Thurow