FourSquare Innovations Ltd

2024:

New Power Platform Courses

July: In early July of 2024 we further broadened our Power Platform course offering to bring our clients a complete end-to-end Power BI Masterclass which takes learners from zero-to-hero. This filled a noticeable gap in our suite of courses and previously it was only possible to take the two-day beginners-to-intermediate PBI desktop course, followed by the three-day advanced course to achieve the same learning outcomes.

The launch of our PBI Masterclass was done simultaneously with the release of our three-day Microsoft Dataverse beginners course; an exciting opportunity to help clients to harness Microsoft's database engine capabilities providing an end-to-end standardised data architecture which funnels seamlessly into Power Platform's suite of data driven tools.

April: In April of 2024 we extended our offering of Power Platform courses to include a two-day advanced Power Automate course and a three-day course for advanced Canvas App Design for Power Apps.

January:

Happy Birthday FourSquare Training!

FourSquare Training is turning twenty years old in 2024. We've been around so long that when we started out the Microsoft Office Assistant paperclip was still a thing. So, in the spirit of the times, we thought we'd ressurect the little guy through the magic of AI and Microsoft Designer.

Other New Courses for 2024

This year the new kid on the block is going to be Microsoft Project for the Web. Microsoft announced late last year that Project for the Web will be integrating with Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner to create a project management solution just as comprehensive as desktop versions of Project. Eventually the whole thing will be renamed just as Planner and once it has been rolled out we will be looking at releasing equivalent beginners, intermediate and advanced courses.

For further information you can find the TechCrunch article on Microsoft's announcement here: https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/15/microsoft-combines-microsoft-to-do-planner-and-project-into-a-new-microsoft-planner-in-microsoft-teams/.

In early 2024 our latest new course offering is our two-day Expert Microsoft Teams course which is intended for students who need to take full control of their virtual meeting and collaboration experience, and who want to be able to champion colleagues in their use of Teams.

2023: It is with regret that we are announcing small price increases for all of our Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, Adobe and Desktop Publishing courses in January 2023. These will be modest increases which allow us to pay our trainers in-line with inflation. We will continue to offer great value to all of our customers and this is the first time that we have increased our prices for these course categories since 2008.

2022: This year is very much overshadowed by the tragic invasion of Ukraine and we recall with fondness that now in early March 2022 it is nine years to the week since one of our trainers travelled out to Kiev to deliver Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator courses there where she was given the warmest of welcomes and the kindest hospitality during the week. Our hearts are with you all.

A few new courses have been launched in 2022 including our Excel Power Query course, Design Techniques for PowerPoint Publishers course, our InDesign For Interactive PDFs course and a brand new suite of Google Sheets courses.

All New Adobe Courses

During November 2022, we've been working hard to develop some all new Adobe courses which we have now released. These include our flagship Creative Cloud Essentials course, a two-day event teaching delegates who are new to the CC desktop publishing environment about design workflows across applications for both print and digital multimedia. We have also lanuched a new two-day Adobe Express course for social media design and desktop publishing. And finally, we have released our two-day Adobe Animate course for 2D vector animation design.

2021: In February 2021 Microsoft released Microsoft Viva; it's integrated solution for the development, education, well-being and connectivity of digital workers. This was an unannounced release with no forewarning and we were proud to be first to market in the UK and beyond with our Microsoft Viva training course. Microsoft Viva is a game changer for remote working and provides an Employee Experience Platform (EEXP) which has human benefits as well as business benefits.

2021 also saw the release of our Office Online training course to support small businesses and not-for-profit organisations with their productivity and collaboration.

In response to the increased demand of workforces for remote Online learning and development we have also extended our range of courses that focus upon multimedia eLearning authoring including Adobe Captivate, Articulate 360 and Techsmith Camtasia.

In April we extended our Microsoft 365 courses and launched a suite of security and compliance courses, including Governance and Compliance, Information Protection, Business Premium Security, Identity and Access and Threat Protection courses.

2020: In response to the coronavirus crisis, 2020 saw the rapid rollout of live virtual classroom courses in order to enable us to maintain our capacity to deliver education to our customers.

We also introduced new health and safety policies to allow our trainers to return to on-site training safely where possible and extended our course range to reflect the significant increases in podcasting and vlogging during the lockdown with courses such as Adobe Audition and Premiere Pro.

During the second half of the year we launched a return to work health and safety project to supply the first infection prevention keyboards and mice intended for any workplace.

In 2020 Microsoft also re-positioned its Cloud-based productivity suite Office 365 as Microsoft 365 with a number of changes and additions to the platform. In response to this we introduced new Microsoft 365 user and master class suites of courses as flexible learning events which allow users, administrators and technical staff to focus upon the productivity and collaborative features which matter the most to them.

2019: This year saw us introduce new Office 365 and MS Teams courses as well as a full suite of Power Platform courses in response to Microsoft's rapid rollout of new features and technologies.

2017: A new range of courses for SharePoint Online were released, as well as some new Project Online courses.

2016: This was a very busy year with the release of Office 2016, Project 2016 and SharePoint 2016 courses as well as 2016 courses being released for Windows Server, SQL Server and Exchange Server.

2015: In February we moved premises to Wallasey in Merseyside (Wirral /Cheshire West and a short hop over the water from Liverpool). At the start of the year we also added several new courses and services, including:

• ITIL Consultancy
• An IT Service Management software subscription service
• A five day master class for Adobe Creative Cloud
• A Selection of BCS Business Analysis courses

2013: There have been an awful lot of new software releases over 2012 and 2013, from Microsoft Server products, to Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud and we have been very busy making courses for these available as either public or closed events.

2012: In early 2012 we became FourSquare Innovations Ltd and started to focus more exclusively upon training and move away from providing services such as Internet marketing.

2011: From 2011 we started offering a bespoke courseware writing service.

2010: During early 2010 we added a comprehensive range of on-site Adobe courses to our portfolio including the Big 3 (PhotoShop, InDesign and Illustrator).

We also began to specialise in closed SharePoint courses and extended the availability of our Microsoft Office courses further South in the UK into Birmingham, Bristol, Milton Keynes, Ipswich, Norwich, London, Portsmouth, Southampton and surrounding areas.

2009: By 2009 the training side of the business had grown considerably, covering a much wider area of the UK and an extensive range of courses. At this point we started to concentrate on software training exclusively and many of our customers today know us simply as FourSquare Training. Having originally concentrated our services upon the North with a heavy focus upon Leeds and West Yorkshire, we started to make inroads into areas such as Greater Manchester, Sheffield and South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Hull, Newcastle and the North East.

The Early Days: The company was formed in 2004 as FourSquare Innovations LLP (sometimes shortened to FSI). Originally we offered a range of services locally, including technical support, software development, internet marketing, training and so forth.