Sessions need a laptop or desktop.
If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer.
Notion · Foundations
Turn a raw export into a service desk anyone can read.
What you’ll end up with
One finished Notion workspace. A few hundred jobs with every property the right type, four formula properties, a table and a board that answer named questions, a chart, a technicians database with a rollup, a form, a template, and a published web address.
11½
hours in all — about 7½ guided, 4 on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Notion. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Notion. There’s no payment and no card required.
From two raw files to a finished workspace
0165 min
Get in, and get the data in
Notion open in your browser with a page of your own, Marchwood's service jobs in it as a database, and you can say what the software decided about every column before you touched any of it.
02125 min
A database you can trust
Every column of Marchwood's jobs is the type it ought to be, the note row is gone, the fees add up, and you have a board that shows the work by its state — which is the first thing on the page that looks like the answer the owner asked for.
03120 min
Views that answer a question
The category codes read as words, you have a second way of looking at the same jobs that shows only the open ones oldest first, you know how many jobs nobody owns, and there is a chart on the page.
04140 min
Formulas that repair what remains
Four columns that Notion works out for itself: the customer names with the stray spaces gone, the channels written one way, and two columns that sort every job into a band you can group and count by.
05120 min
Two databases that know about each other
A second database of technicians, linked to the jobs so that a technician's own page shows the work they are chasing, with two figures Notion works out through the link — and a template so that the next job arrives with the link already asked for.
06110 min
Collect it, publish it, defend it
A form that adds the next job without anybody opening the database, a page assembled so a stranger can read it, a sentence saying what the data showed, and a web address you can send to anyone — with the consequences of that address understood before it exists.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Notion runs in the browser, on Windows or a Mac.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside Notion.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
None. Everything this course uses is on Notion's free plan, and a free plan workspace with one owner has no block ceiling. There is no card and no trial clock.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course, and the files are deliberately messy, the way real business data is. Cleaning them is part of the work.
Before you start
The course covers Notion, in your browser.
- A computer with a current browser — Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox or Safari — and an internet connection. Nothing is installed.
- A free Notion account, made at notion.com with an email address, and a workspace of your own where you are the only person. That last part matters: Notion gives a free workspace with one owner no block ceiling, and a free workspace with two owners a thousand blocks. If your account already belongs to a workspace somebody else set up, session one's first step makes you one of your own rather than working in theirs.
- The course's data download, unzipped. The panel gives you the link when the session starts, and unzipping it leaves two folders side by side: a Marchwood folder holding service-jobs.csv and technicians.csv, and a Ravensworth folder holding its own two files of the same names.
- Somewhere you can find that download again. Both folders are needed from session one onwards, and both companies' files are named identically, so keeping the two folders apart is the whole of how you tell them apart.
- One thing to know before session one, not after it: this course ends by publishing your work at a web address anybody who has the link can open, and Notion says plainly that hiding a published page does not stop somebody who knows its address. Both companies here are invented and so is every job in them. Never put a real customer, a real fee or a real name into the pages you build in this course.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Start with two raw exports nobody trusts and finish with a working service desk in Notion — one database you can defend column by column, views that answer the questions people actually ask, a form that collects the next job, and a published page you can send to anyone.
A Notion page holding a service-job database of a few hundred jobs, every property the type it should be, four formula properties — two repairing defects you found yourself and two banding a number into labels you can group by — a table view and a board view that answer named questions, a chart, a second database of technicians related to the first with a rollup that counts their work, a form that adds a new job, a reusable job template, and the whole thing published at a web address you can hand to a stranger.
How a session works
- Open Notion
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Notion and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 11½ hours in all·about 7½ guided·about 4 on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Notion Foundations — turn a raw export into a service desk anyone can read
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The workspace you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Bringing an exported file into Notion as a database, and reading what the software decided about every column before trusting any of it · Choosing a property type for a reason, and knowing what a wrong type stops you doing · Repairing the defects an export arrives with — a note row, a name written several ways, a stray space, a word where a number belongs, a code no reader knows, an empty cell a count depends on · Building views that each answer one named question, and knowing that a view's settings are its own · Reading a count and a total off a database, and checking either against something derived another way · Writing a formula property that repairs a column, and explaining it a piece at a time · Relating two databases so that one can count the other, without duplicating either · Collecting new records through a form, and knowing where the answers land · Publishing a page to the web, saying exactly who can then see it, and taking it down again
What was built
A Notion page holding a service-job database of a few hundred jobs, every property the type it should be, four formula properties — two repairing defects you found yourself and two banding a number into labels you can group by — a table view and a board view that answer named questions, a chart, a second database of technicians related to the first with a rollup that counts their work, a form that adds a new job, a reusable job template, and the whole thing published at a web address you can hand to a stranger.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Notion Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the workspace you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Notion when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Notion?
Notion is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Marchwood Instruments services laboratory equipment — balances, centrifuges, microscopes, spectrometers, pipettes and drying ovens — for schools, colleges and small testing labs. Six technicians, two sites, and a few hundred jobs a year.
The jobs are tracked in a spreadsheet that four people edit and nobody trusts. A customer rings to ask where their centrifuge is and it takes twenty minutes to find out. The office manager has been exporting the spreadsheet to a file every Friday and mailing it round, which has produced a folder of exports and no answers.
The owner wants three things she cannot currently get: what is still open and who has it, how much work each technician is carrying, and a page she can open on her phone in front of a customer.
There is no budget for software. There is an export, a second export of the technician list, and a promise that if this works the Friday email stops.
Your job is to build the workspace that answers it.
Do I need to know Notion already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 11½ hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 7½ hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Notion runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Notion Foundations is Foundations in Notion. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Notion. All the courses →