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This section summarizes initial steps for training managers and training leads who are supporting the rollout of Lync in their organization. Another valuable resource is the Trainer Checklist, which provides a quick look at steps, a timeline, and supporting resources. For details, see the Trainer Checklist.

Join the Lync 2010 Rollout and Adoption Team

The Lync rollout and adoption team should include a training representative who is responsible for developing a training and adoption plan. For details, see Assembling the Lync Rollout and Adoption Team and the Rollout and Adoption Workbook.

Create a Training and Adoption Plan
Representatives from the IT department, training team, and help desk should work together to develop a Lync training and adoption plan. The training plan should take into account the technologies being rolled out, the core tasks that users need to learn, and the budget available for training. The training plan should also define usage and adoption success metrics and a plan for measuring success. To get started, review the Lync Adoption and Training Kit for training strategies that address different user profiles, Lync Server workloads, and Lync products and also for resources that you can customize for your rollout, based on your adoption goals. For details, see Find a Training Plan and the Lync User Education and Training Package.

Most companies that successfully deploy Lync create an intranet site for hosting training and adoption resources. The Lync intranet site typically includes frequently asked questions (FAQ), links for contacting support, getting-started information, and links to Help and training resources, such as videos and how-to information. For help building your site, see the Lync Custom Intranet Site, which can be easily modified and deployed as your own intranet site, and the Lync How-to tool that you can easily customize and use to provide quick information for users. For details, see the Lync Custom Intranet Site and Lync How-to.

Your Lync pilot program provides a perfect opportunity to test the content and strategies in your Lync training plan. Typically the pilot is conducted with early adopters, the IT team, and the support team, including help desk. The pilot is also a good time to train other trainers on Lync technologies and training strategies. When conducting the pilot, be sure to collect feedback, and measure the results of the training. For more details about the pilot phase, see Pilot Phase Primer. For details about training plans, see Find a Training Plan.

Using the information gathered from the pilot, update the training and adoption resources, develop a FAQ, and use the learnings from the pilot to create a Getting Started package that covers essential information, such as how to set up audio devices, change a picture, or schedule large online meetings. The training and adoption resources should anticipate users' needs during rollout to help ensure that help desk calls don’t increase. For more details, see the Rollout and Adoption Phase Primer and Find a Training Plan.

The training and adoption plan should include training goals and a plan for measuring the effectiveness of the training and adoption program. Success metrics for the Lync rollout and adoption are often reported to executives as a combination of quantitative usage and quality metrics collected from Monitoring Server, help desk ticket trends, and user satisfaction. For details about suggested metrics, see Microsoft IT Reporting Metrics.

Others have found the following best practices useful during Lync rollout and adoption, all of which fit into the eight most effective best practices for a successful Lync rollout. For details, see Top Eight Best Practices.

• Have a dedicated rollout and adoption team. A training manager or training lead should participate on the rollout and adoption team. Training plans should be coordinated with the Lync rollout and deployment plans.
• Have clear goals and measures. The rollout and adoption team, including the training representative, should develop a shared set of success metrics and agree on the method for measuring and reporting the metrics.
• Provide Help and training for devices. Making sure that users get audio devices that meet their needs and know how to set up and use them with Lync is critical to a successful rollout. In some cases, trainers may want to customize or create their own Quick Reference cards or training resources for specific devices.

Microsoft IT recognized a 60 point increase in user satisfaction (from the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 rollout) during its initial internal rollout of Lync. Several factors contributed to this increase in satisfaction. During the pilot phase, users were exposed to scenario spotlights through an email campaign. The emails were signed by a sponsoring executive, indicating executive support for the project. During the pilot, users were also invited to use the Scenario Voting Tool, an internal tool that guided users through core scenarios and allowed them to provide feedback about the product. In addition, Microsoft IT created a Lync intranet site. The site hosted signup information for the pilot, a FAQ, links to support, and extensive Help and training resources that were modified, in some cases, to reflect business policies specific to Microsoft. A dedicated training and adoption team, known as the Street Team, worked closely with the larger rollout and adoption team to create clear goals and metrics that were collectively reported in quarterly executive reports. In addition, the Street Team focused their training efforts on first providing general training on the Lync intranet site for all user profiles and then providing hands-on one-on-one training for administrative assistants and executives.