Guest Post from Delaware Art Museum's Claudia Gomez: 5 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Jing.

It's no secret that Claudia has been our Jing champion.



David had the idea to let the Altru community know about Jing, a service that allows you to record your screen. If you missed that blog, check it out here.

Well, Claudia ran with it. She entered our Most Valuable Query contest, included videos in her case notes, and began creating a training manual with Jing videos for her staff. We decided to get a little more detail from her on why she was so gung-ho about Jing.

Claudia's Top 5 Reasons You Should be Using Jing

I love instructions. I love instructions with giant pictures and easy steps. I have to love instructions because Altru is used Museum wide. So when I was introduced to Jing, I was excited. Was this a way for me to visually and effectively show people how to do something with less effort from me? Could there be anything better for creating instructions?

For me, not yet. Here’s why.

1. Time

I used to spend lots of time taking screen shots, cropping them, pasting them into a word document and then trying to express what I was doing in a clear, simple manner so that I could document all steps. “Oh wait, oops I forgot a step. Let me go back. Oh, yup. There we go. “

Jing came along and I downloaded it (it was an easy process), set it up, and began to play. I created my first video in only three takes. The video was three minutes long so let’s say I spent about 10 minutes on it. Ten minutes.  I watched the video and it was perfect. If I would have created these instructions the old fashioned way, it would have taken me 30-45 minutes.

2. Oh, this is why we do that.

What I also realized was that I could explain things. I could explain the thought process behind why we do something without having to crowd the instructions with excess language and text boxes. I could also mention some key features in Altru (like short cutting a page). I could explain what they were looking at. If I needed to add an individual, I didn't have to refer to another document; I just did it and explained our requirements for how the data should look. This makes our Jing instruction videos so much more valuable than the old fashioned, typed ones.

3. OMG. I don’t have to schedule a meeting.

I remember when I had this revelation. I had been going back and forth with a coworker about a time to do some Altru training on a particular task. I realized that I could just make her a video, send it to her, and there was no reason for us to meet. I let her know she could ask me whatever questions she had but this system allowed her, in her own time, to learn what she was needed to. It also gave her the flexibility of replaying the video if what she was doing was not something she did everyday. It saves her from having to take notes on the process and also saves me the time of repeating a training session.

4. I work at an ART Museum.

My coworkers seem to have a preference towards learning things visually. I now have the curators asking for videos. That means they will use the system!

5. No more Case Central notes.

I really don’t like starting cases on Case Central. I don’t like explaining what I was doing when the problem happened and frankly, I am really not good at it. With Jing, I don’t have to. I give a brief sentence describing what the problem is and then I take a screen cast of what I am doing to get the issue. I forward the link and send it off. I don’t have to spend the rest of my afternoon email back and forth with Altru support.

That is why I love Jing. You should try it.

Final Tip: Have your IT person create an intranet page with a library of videos so anyone can access them anywhere. Ours did and it is awesome!