Migrating to Office 365 requires a lot of preparation and configuration to have a smooth transition. All of this should equate to having a great user experience for your company. That’s why development a Pilot phase is so crucial. It simulates the end goal, but at a smaller scale. It’s hard to know for sure if you don’t let employees start using the software, but you don’t want to overwhelm your team with resolving issues. Here are a few tips to consider when starting a pilot phase for your Office 365 migrations.

Do Your Prep Work

There’s a lot to this process on the back end you need to consider. You can use certain tools like IdFix make sure attributes and values of users in Active Directory. The tool can help remediate issues it notices so you’re better prepared for migration There’s also the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer to help troubleshoot various issues. You also can see if you’re eligible for the Microsoft’s Fast Track program for assistance on this transition. Having tools at your disposal and making necessary changes from the beginning can be the difference on how the user’s initial impression of the migration goes.

Pilot Roster

It is the best interest to select a good quality group of users to participate in the pilot. A good size would be between 5 – 10% of your employee staff. When choosing individuals, there are some key things to consider. It will best to pick full time employees that have been in the company for some time. This is because they will be using the product more and have more experience with operations and workflow with productivity software (less training overall). It was also be good to try to have diversity amongst the group. This diversity can range from technical experience, departments, etc.

Feedback

During this whole process, you want to be able to provide as much support as possible. Many of these users may never have used this software before. Users might be running into technical issues that could have been a result of a misconfiguration. Giving great support will ease the transition for the employees as well as the IT team since you’ll know how to prevent the issues in the future.