Training Material Best Practices
Guidelines for launch teams on creating, organizing, and delivering effective training materials as you approach go-live.
Training Material Best Practices
This guide is intended for launch teams preparing training materials and onboarding plans as you approach go-live. The goal is to keep training lightweight, role-targeted, and self-service wherever possible.
Core Principles
- Little and often beats long and comprehensive. Short, focused materials have far higher adoption than lengthy documentation.
- Separate onboarding from training. Onboarding gets users into the system. Training teaches them what to do once they're in.
- Use real content. All training materials should use your actual live environment, real media, and real folder structure — not placeholders.
Video Library
The primary training format is a small library of short, persona-based screen-recording videos.
Guidelines
- Target 6–8 videos to start; expand the library over time.
- Keep each video under 5 minutes. Two to three minutes is ideal.
- Design each video for a specific user role (e.g. contributor, media editor, rights manager).
- Focus on your org's nuances, not general UI walkthroughs. Cover things users can't figure out on their own — required metadata fields, naming conventions, folder placement rules.
- Record in your live environment with real, pre-staged content. Stage files at each step of the workflow beforehand so there is no dead time waiting for uploads or processing mid-recording.
Suggested Starting Topics
| Topic | Audience |
|---|---|
| How to upload content and complete required metadata | Contributors |
| How search works and why metadata matters | All users |
| Rights Management — what the indicators mean and what you can't do | All users |
| Role overview — what your role lets you do | Per role |
| How to use the training folder and find help | All users |
Production Tips
- Screen recording with voiceover narration is the standard format and is sufficient.
- Add subtitles to every video at minimum. Consider AI dubbing for regional language variants.
- Use a consistent branded intro and outro (4 seconds each) if you want the library to feel cohesive.
- Decide early whether Nomad or your internal team records the videos — plan to own this capability long-term.
Hosting
Host the video library inside Nomad in a dedicated training folder at the top of the content hierarchy. This keeps everything in one place and lets users self-serve on demand. The help link in the Nomad UI (top-right) can point to a self-service landing page (e.g. an intranet page or Jira) that links to these videos and FAQs.
Onboarding Sessions
Onboarding is a separate activity from training. Its goal is simply: every user is logged in, knows the URL, and can navigate the system.
Guidelines
- Keep groups to 10 people or fewer.
- Have a power user or team lead run each session — someone who is already trained and can answer questions live.
- Make it interactive. Ask every participant to log in during the session. Confirm they can see the system before ending the call.
- Have representative content pre-loaded. Users should see example assets in pristine condition — correct metadata, correct folder placement — so they have a reference to follow.
- Let participants bring their own content to the session to make it hands-on.
- Keep the session under 30 minutes. Onboarding is a starting block, not a deep dive.
- Communicate the escalation path. Before the session ends, every participant should know who to contact if they have a problem.
Admin Runbook
Admin users and help desk staff need a different kind of resource — a runbook rather than videos.
What to Include
Start the runbook early and add to it as questions surface. Seed it with:
- How to provision a new user account (SSO/access process)
- What to do when a user gets "access denied"
- How to clear browser cache and handle login issues
- How security permissions are assigned and troubleshot
- Escalation contacts and who owns what
Guidelines
- Start it now, finish it later. Capture questions and answers as they come up during the rollout — don't wait until go-live to write it all.
- Keep a shared collaboration space (e.g. a shared doc or Confluence page) where the team can log questions and draft answers together.
- Runbook entries are org-specific. Generic documentation won't cover your SSO setup, your help desk routing, or your permission model. Write it for your environment.
Pre-Launch Checklist
- Identify user roles and group users into sessions of 10 or fewer
- Select and brief power users / session leads for each group
- Pre-load representative content into Nomad with correct metadata and folder structure
- Define the 6–8 initial video topics based on daily workflows per role
- Draft scripts (talking points and key highlights) for each video
- Decide who records the videos and in which language(s)
- Decide on branding (intro/outro), subtitles, and any dubbing requirements
- Set up the training folder in Nomad and configure the help link destination
- Seed the admin runbook with onboarding, SSO, access-denied, and permissions entries
- Define and communicate the escalation path to all session leads
What to Avoid
❌ Don't mix onboarding with training — they are separate activities with different goals
❌ Don't record videos without staging content first — dead time in a video kills engagement
❌ Don't write long documentation for end users — most people won't read it; a short video is almost always more effective
❌ Don't run sessions larger than 10 people — you lose the ability to ensure everyone is actually set up
❌ Don't wait until go-live to start the runbook — capture questions as they arise throughout the rollout