Prepare to Go Live

Review the documentation plan that you created as part of organizational change management. Gather the final documentation and make these materials available to those who will need them.

Identify and communicate responsibilities for keeping each documentation up to date. If you make changes to the app, be sure to update related documentation so you can continue to successfully support and use the app.

You’ll be communicating with all audiences around the time you go live. Follow your communication plan to create the messaging and choose the channels that best fit each audience.

Communications to end users are particularly important. Make sure users know:

• How the application will affect their job or role
• How to use the application
• What training will be provided
• How to get help from the support team
• Where to access documentation
• When the app will go live
• If any system outages will happen

A few weeks after go-live, follow up with end users and managers to get feedback on how it’s going.

Deliver training before the app goes live. Follow your training plan.

Set up training including any live sessions as well as communications about self-directed learning, documentation, and other resources.

If you have not done so already, assign each user to the appropriate user group by following the plan you created.

For both out-of-the-box (OOTB) and custom apps, the administrator is responsible for maintaining user groups and adding users to them.

Prepare and train the teams who will provide technical support to end users once the app is live. They need to know what the app is supposed to do and how to troubleshoot issues such as data connections and user access.

For a custom app, the support team needs to be familiar with the app documentation and understand how the app was built. Though the support team doesn’t need as much training as end users, you may want to share the user training content with them.