Research Tools and Services Discovery

What do great companies have in common? Great customer service. Discover how to chart your team on a course that focuses on the customer, with three no-nonsense tips. Jeff Toister discusses how to set a direction, create mile markers, and course correct when things get off track.

Learn how to quit your job—the right way. Although it can be nerve-wracking to hand in your notice, it's important to leave on the best possible terms to keep your reputation and relationships intact. In this short training course, Aimee Bateman shows you how to prepare to resign, how to write a resignation letter, and how to conduct yourself during your last few weeks. She also reviews the dos and don'ts of quitting, and explains what happens during the exit interview. With these tips, you will be able to gracefully leave your current job and embark on the next stage of your career.

Veteran After Effects user Chris Meyer shares real-world production and workflow advice as he demonstrates the newest features in Adobe After Effects CC. Chris reviews the streamlined connection to MAXON CINEMA 4D and the Refine Edge tool for creating mattes around hair and other partially transparent areas, and reveals how to get more accurate tracks and stabilizations with Reverse Stabilization and ground planes. He also reviews the upgraded Warp Stabilizer and 3D Camera Tracker and important new usability features such as layer snapping.

The September 2013 update brought the new Rigid Mask Tracker, as well as additional ways to scale up footage cleanly, while the highlight of the December 2013 update was the ability to convert parametric shape layers to Bézier paths, and Bézier paths into shape layers. The NAB 2014 update shows off important new integration with Adobe Premiere Pro and Typekit, as well major updates to effects. Smaller yet still important new and enhanced features in each release are also touched on throughout. As always, Chris doesn't just show you where these new features are, but how to apply them to your own projects, along with preferred working practices and potential gotchas.

Note: This course was created and produced by Chris and Trish Meyer. We are honored to host this content in our library.

Determine the ROI for learning. Discover how to evaluate whether learning objectives are being met in your organization. In this course, Jeff Toister explores several popular models for determining the effectiveness of a class or training course, and provides a framework for applying these models. This includes creating an evaluation strategy, collecting assessment data, and making recommendations for improvements. The Kirkpatrick Model, the Phillips ROI Methodology, and Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method are discussed in depth, as well as alternative approaches such as predictive analytics. These tools will give you the data to validate your current training strategy or recommend data-driven improvements that are tailored to the way your participants are actually learning.

Check the exercise files for sample evaluation plans, reports, checklists, and worksheets that you can use to evaluate your own employee development program.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Create and share interactive reports and presentations on the fly with Sway, the new Microsoft Office app. Oliver Schinkten provides your first look at Sway. Learn what it is, where to access it, and how to start building your own Sways—presentations, tutorials, newsletters, stories, and more—from content you have stored locally or online. Plus, explore how to use Sway's unique interactive format to collaborate on projects and share them with others.

In this course, author Bill Weinman shows how to architect PostgreSQL databases and integrate them into web applications using PHP. The course covers the basics of creating tables, storing data with data types, and working with expressions, operators, and strings. The course also explores the differences between the PDO and pgsql interfaces and demonstrates managing a database in PHP.

Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) is a globally recognized certification that validates your ability to audit, control, and monitor information systems. In this course, Michael Lester provides a high-level overview of the CISA certification exam. This course kicks off the CISA Cert Prep series, which covers each exam domain in greater detail. Here, Michael introduces you to the exam, provides exam tips and practice questions, and shares what to do after you've taken the test.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is the platform of choice for Windows virtualization. RDS provides secure access to corporate data and applications as well as desktop access from the cloud. It's ideal for remote teams as well as companies that don't need computers on site. This course includes guidance for manually deploying RDS in Azure, the Microsoft cloud computing solution. Instructor Sharon Bennett reviews the deployment options—including session-based and virtual desktop deployments—and then reviews the basics of an RDS template deployment. She shows how to configure an environment complete with servers, users, and security. Finally, discover how to test your solution by creating client session collections to run remote apps or desktops.

Planning projects, assigning tasks, tracking progress, and releasing results can all be managed in Jira, the popular and collaborative software for development teams. In this course, Robert Anthony shares his expertise as he guides you through the fundamentals of using Jira. Robert shows you how to create tickets, locate issues assigned to you and others, use advanced search, customize dashboards, run reports, and set up workflow boards to organize work. In addition, he facilitates several challenges and solutions so you can practice what you learn as you follow along.

Millennials—individuals between the ages of 18–35—are the largest buying segment in the economy. In this course, learn what this generation actually values, and how to leverage proven marketing strategies to effectively target this powerful audience. Millennial marketing expert Chelsea Krost kicks off the course by explaining who millennials are and debunking common millennial stereotypes. Chelsea offers specific tactics that you can use to optimize your organization's digital and social presence, and shares strategies for upping your content marketing efforts to inspire and engage consumers. To wrap up, she covers influencer marketing—including how to find the right influencer for your business—and goes over fundamental social media marketing concepts.

Learn to create content that is expandable with a single click. This technique is very popular for providing more on-demand information, such as FAQs, biographies, or additional product information. In this course, Chris Converse shows how to create the HTML, CSS, and jQuery code needed for an expandable content panel that hides and shows content at the user's request. Learn how to inject additional markup, style the different panel elements, set trigger states, and animate the panel to reveal the hidden content.

Lauren Bacon ran a successful web design and development firm for twelve years. Now she is working as a business coach, helping entrepreneurs get their own businesses up and running. In this course, she shares her insights on breaking into the industry: acquiring the right skills, thinking beyond the digital toolset, and specializing in areas that will make your firm in demand. Lauren also answers questions about navigating career transitions, from employee to manager, to freelancer (and maybe even back again), and what the future will look like for new web designers.

From humble beginnings in a small Texas town eight decades ago comes legendary typographer, logotype designer, author, and teacher Doyald Young. As elegant as his script fonts and as wise as his set of Oxford English dictionaries, Young set the standard for his craft. Friend and designer Stefan Bucher describes Young as "someone who could easily have done what he does in the Renaissance, and could easily do it 300 years from now." In this installment of Creative Inspirations, we enjoy a window into the life of this accomplished artisan as he works with joyous focus in his favorite spot, his drawing table. We follow Young to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where he shares his talents with tomorrow's designers. He recalls the hundreds of iterations he went through in creating the logo for Prudential, and he puts pencil to tissue creating the pages for his book about script lettering, Learning Curves. Young's story is compelling, captivating, and most of all, inspiring. lynda.com is honored to host this tribute to his work.

Join us in Bonus Features at a tribute event held at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where Doyald's friends and colleagues speak about their relationship with the gifted designer and Lynda introduces a scholarship fund set up specifically in his memory.

Protect your network from cyber attacks. Malcolm Shore shows how to use the latest tools to discourage and combat hackers, phishers, and snoops attempting to infiltrate your Windows and Linux systems. Learn what forms cyber attacks can take, and the two most common types of protection you can build into your system: antivirus protection and firewalls. Then learn how to scan your network for suspicious files, detect intruders with Netcat, and identify vulnerabilities at the host level with Nessus scans. Malcolm also shows how to avoid common security mistakes and monitor packet-level activity on your network.

Do you excel at bringing people together? Turn your passion for event planning into a career. Event planners are employed in every industry. They bring teams together to achieve goals, celebrate milestones, bond outside the office, and work more productively. This course will give you tips, tricks, and techniques to make your next event a success—whether it's your first or fifty-first. Valerie Berry covers topics such as understanding your client's objectives, selecting a venue, getting the right technology in place, negotiating a budget, and building menus. Plus, learn how to manage the thousands of details that occur in the two weeks leading to an event, and follow up afterwards to make sure your clients and your vendors are satisfied.

Take a tour of the latest features and capabilities of the FileMaker 14 platform, a business solution environment for iPad, iPhone, Windows, Mac, and the web. Author Cris Ippolite covers the new Launch Center, the new security interface, new layout and design tools, the Script workspace, Calculation dialog enhancements, and improvements to FileMaker Server, WebDirect, and FileMaker Go.

Get more out of Google's popular cloud-based file sharing and word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, Google Drive. Jess Stratton shows how to optimize Drive for the desktop and improve efficiency and productivity with shortcuts and other techniques, like stars and color coding. The course includes advanced tips for Google Docs, Sheets, and Drawings, as well as best practices for getting the most out of Drive when using it with other Google products such as Chrome, Gmail, and Search.

Retail success starts and ends with your sales team. A consistent and positive sales approach keeps the business steady and customers happy. This course is all about building the foundations for success. Instructor Noah Fleming looks at how to deliver and maintain a powerful customer experience, mitigate the factors that impact retail sales, and adopt selling strategies used by the best companies in the world. Find out to increase the average order size with bundling and options, and dive deep into customer loyalty: understanding the true value of a customer. Noah also helps you understand when and when not to discount—and how to avoid the number one retail sales mistake.

Great songs often come to us in bits and pieces. A perfect verse pops into our head like a gift, but we struggle to come up with a chorus or second verse that feels right. In this course, learn practical songwriting techniques that can help you look at your tune through a different lens—and, in turn, take your song to unexpected new places. Professional musician Julian Velard shows how to play with melody, form, and chords to gain a fresh perspective when a tune has you stuck. Along the way, Julian demonstrates each technique by playing musical examples.

Part of virtual reality is generating real-time 3D graphics. This can be done with JavaFX. This course discusses the benefits of JavaFX and then gets you started using it to create graphics. First, learn how to create charts and UI elements. Then, discover how 3D shapes can be defined and generated. Once you have your 3D graphics, you're ready for controlling the camera and lighting. Last, find out how to apply shape materials and then interact with 3D scenes.

Learn how to animate infographics with Adobe After Effects! Many infographic elements begin life in applications like Illustrator, Photoshop, or PowerPoint. But these assets can be flat and boring; animation is what brings them to life. In this course, After Effects guru Ian Robinson covers animating charts and graphs with shape layers, layer masks, and stroke and text animators. He also shows how to use expressions to link animation between different graphic elements, build dynamic camera moves, and create some animated 3D infographics with CINEMA 4D Lite. To finish things off, he'll look at some third-party tools such as Cinema Spice Charts & Graphs for After Effects and aescripts, which help speed up some of the techniques you learned earlier in the course.

In this course, search engine optimization (SEO) expert Peter Kent walks step-by-step through the process of reviewing the content and markup of an existing web site to improve its ranking in search engine results. This course offers a consultant's take on how to analyze each component—from keywords to content to code—and determine what improvements are necessary to become more visible to search engines like Yahoo!, Bing, and Google.

This course was updated on 10/12/2012.