Lync Training and Adoption Web Site

Back in OCS R2 when Microsoft released adoption material it was a great tool to have in your back pocket to help with rollouts. With the release of Lync it has been taken a step further with a complete web site focused on adoption. The site has a collection of great tools for a Lync rollout including workbooks, tools and apps (which I will talk about later). I have a favorite saying in, “Organizations over estimate the administration involved in Lync and underestimate the effort required for adoption services and end user training.” Its not that you need hundreds of people running around training people but organizations have a tendency to overlook what's required for end user adoption. Not everyone is a super nerd and picks up UC or Lync as fast as us IT pros.

The tools on this site will go a long way in helping organizations get the biggest bang for their buck as they rollout Lync. I really like the workbooks and the table that describes who will be a high and low touch user for training. Although this will vary from organization to organization it’s a great starting point.

See the link below:

http://lync.microsoft.com/Adoption-and-Training-Kit/Pages/default.aspx

I wanted to make special mention of the Tools and Apps section. Each of the Apps adds value and a certain cool factor. Below is the complete list of Apps available. Most of them take advantage of the client API’s in some respect.  One of the applications in particular is the Lync Custom Intranet Site. Although its not really an app as such it is a great adoption tool. It is a prebuilt help site that you can add your own content to and deploy internally at your organization. A great way to get end users the training they need to make a rollout go smoothly.

• IM an Expert
• Conversations Analyzer
• Conversation Translator
• Information Dashboard
• Tabbed Conversations
• Group Chat Stress
• Lync Custom Intranet Site
• Lync How-to

I will be going through some of the apps  in more detail over the next couple of weeks.

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