Good change management relies on clear and helpful communication about the upcoming changes. To smooth the path of your Microsoft 365 or Intune or Dynamics 365 deployment, your rollout communication plan should include four areas.

1. What information is to be communicated
2. The delivery method used for the communications
3. Who receives the communications
4. The timeline for communications

Let's review each item in detail.

What needs to be communicated? #

Determining what information needs to be communicated depends on when you are communicating in the service rollout process. You might decide to communicate in waves to your organizational groups and users, starting with a service rollout kickoff, followed by pre-enrollment, and follow up with post-enrollment. Let's discuss the type of information that could be communicated in each wave.

Kickoff wave #

Broad communications that introduce the project itself. It should answer questions like what is service being deployed, why the organization is adopting it (benefits to the organization and users), and provide a high-level plan of the deployment and rollout.

Pre-enrollment wave #

Pre-enrollment communications consist of broad communications that include additional information about the service and complementary offerings (for example, Office, Outlook,OneDrive, Intune), user resources, and specific timelines for when organization groups and users are scheduled to receive the service.

Enrollment wave #

During enrollment, communications targeting organization groups and users that are scheduled to receive the service will be needed. These should inform the users that they are ready to receive enrollment and provide enrollment instructions along with contact information for getting assistance or asking questions.

Post enrollment wave #

After enrollment, communications targeting organization groups and users that have enrolled in the service will be necessary. These should provide additional resources that might be helpful to the user, and collect feedback about their experience during and after enrollment.

You may find this end user enrollment guide helpful. You can use it as is or modify it for your organization.

Communication delivery methods #

There are several delivery methods you can use to communicate the service rollout information to your targeted organizational groups and users. The following list shows some examples and the wave you can use the method with:

• Organizational-wide in-person or Microsoft Teams meetings used for kickoff wave
• Email used for pre-enrollment, enrollment, and post-enrollment waves
• Organization websites used for all waves
• Yammer, posters, and flyers used for kickoff and pre-enrollment waves

Communications timeline #

After determining what you need to communicate and the methods you will use, determine the timeline for your communications that includes when and who would receive the communications.

For example, the initial project kickoff communications can target the entire organization or just a subset, and take place over several weeks before the service rollout begins. After that, the information could be communicated in waves to organizational groups and users, aligned with their service rollout schedule. The following example is a sample high-level Intune rollout communications plan.

IT Partner responsibilities #

1. Determine deadlines, user groups, and services involved in the project
2. Determine the impact of planned changes on users and services
3. Provide informational letters for users
4. Prepare documentation for users describing the services involved, changes, and their impact on users
5. Provide presentations, screenshots, and other media materials that may be necessary for this project

Client responsibilities #

1. Coordinate Client resources and staff schedules
2. Provide a dedicated point of contact responsible for working with IT Partner
3. Coordinate any outside vendor resources and schedules
4. Configure all network equipment, such as load balancers, routers, firewalls, and switches
5. Review and approve engagement deliverables in a timely manner

Additional cost items not provided by the project #

1. Initial setup and configuration of any Microsoft 365 services
2. Gathering any data located outside of Microsoft 365 tenant (desktop computers, servers, active network equipment is out of scope)

Prerequisites #

You have purchased one of our services.

Plan #

The plan may vary depending on your needs.

1. Kickoff meeting
2. Identify security objectives
3. Assess your current security state and identify security gaps
4. Provide recommendations and best practices
5. Create an actionable security road map
6. Meeting to review the deliverables

Success Criteria #

1. The project implementation plan is prepared
2. The necessary documents and media materials are prepared and sent to users on time