I found just making a series of short videos of how things work was the fastest way for people to spin up quickly.
Do you talk while recording or is it videos without sound? I am planning to start making videos, but I was wondering what the best way would be.
A few things, Matt:
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Wanting to make sure people can hit the ground running is great! But that’s dependent on the fact that 1) they know what they’re doing, and 2) you set things up properly. I’ve been through and seen both. Unfortunately whatever infrastructure you set up, if you aren’t going to be there to keep up with it, just make sure it’s easy to replace. You usually can’t even get people to run unit tests that you so meticulously wrote, unless they’re trained in it. Don’t kill yourself over designing things properly here, people are just going to redo it, probably worse.
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As you’re finding out, one of the problems with MXS is you don’t have hugely useful third party libraries like exist for every major language (such as logging). Rather than invent your own, use what you can from .NET. It will pay off in the long and short run. The same way you can address issues faster by using libraries, the same holds true when you’re developing libraries- libraries on libraries! Even if it takes a bit longer to figure out the shitty way MXS works with .NET, and you need to build a light wrapper over it, it will work much, much better. Don’t bother building a logging, or perforce, or general purpose library for whatever, if it already exists for .NET (which it probably does, internal or external).
Not if you prove them wrong 
Sorry to hear it Matt. It sounds like you’re doing a conscientious job in a tough spot. If you’re bunning about it, you can take comfort in the fact that any company that hires somebody to refactor their code base and then lays them off as soon as it’s done is going to get what they deserve no matter how good a job you’ve done. Seems like a poor use of everbody’s time 
At least you learned a lot, next time you have to do it you’ll have an easier time.
Yasin –
Remember, we’re dealing with people who think that slipped pointers and memory leaks in C++ are a minor annoyance but the speed differential between that C# is of monumental importance in tools. They’re immune to evidence!
Started using Camtasia today to put together demo videos for the tools I’ve written so far. I cannot stress with enough strength how easy it is to quickly put together a series of short videos.
Camtasia does a good job with powerpoint too – it’s a nice way to generate text or diagram style content to support the live action video without having to go in for a full video titling setup.