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One company's R4.6 to 6.x migration experience

December 1, 2003

We were thrilled that our materials were able to be a repeated source of content for the initial training, follow-up
sessions, and for individuals after the training. This customer's careful planning was the real key to success--not just the training plan, but the whole coordinated software upgrade/training effort. The plan to provide pre-training exposure as well as follow-up email is a great example of "how to do it right".

Here is their story:

I just wanted to thank you for your terrific Notes 6 materials and give you an update on our training as I thought this might be helpful to other customers of yours.

Our users went from version 4.6 to 6.01. It went so well and I'm really pleased. One reason it went well was because your materials were so clear and easy to use. I see many people even now going through the exercises in the book on their own at their desks.

You may remember that we purchased your Mail and Calendar manual with about 20 additional pages from the Essentials manual and it was just perfect for our program. Two of us (a Notes Administrator/Programmer and me - Trainer/Help Desk person) upgraded 20 users per week for 8 weeks. It went so well that we have had very few additional support calls as a result of the upgrade! That's simply amazing! With this schedule, we were able to keep our other responsibilities going as well.

Two weeks before classes, we sent an email with a sample Welcome screen with simple explanations to get them aware of the new look.

We gave a one hour demo each Monday to 20 people, showing them the highlights of the upgrade and how to do their basic work. We explained the training program and how the upgrade would proceed. We needed to do this demo, because with just 2 of us, some people were usually upgraded before they could attend classes on Tuesday or Thursday. At the demo, we gave them a CD with the .pdf file for the manual and the Quick Notes for Users which I customized slightly. Plus a 10 page document briefly explaining What's New in Notes 6 that I developed.

So twice a week, I gave a four hour breakout class covering mail and calendar to ten people in our training room. Everyone had a terminal and a pretend database to use (which we would clear after class). Everything was taught interactively in the breakout session. We went through a ton of material in just 4 hours. If users had a laptop, they stayed after for a quick update on replication. Users also received Quick Guide for Mail and Quick Guide for Calendar just for attending class. These were popular and you had to attend class to receive them. While people were in class, the Notes Administrator usually tried to upgrade most of the systems from her desk using Sametime. Sometimes, she needed to go to their desk, but usually was able to upgrade them remotely in about an hour.

After class we sent around a fun followup email, just to check skills. In the coming year, we plan short Lunch and Learn sessions on focus topics to build their skills, like how to customize your Welcome screen (which we disabled for the time being), group calendars, serial memos (which our Notes Administrator put back into action as it's missing from Notes 6).

Now we look forward to upgrading and training our sales staff all over the US, Canada, and Mexico and 20 people at our plant in Tennessee, which we'll be doing over the spring and summer.

Thanks again for your great materials. It would have been quite a task to develop them on my own.