When Does The Tf2 Update Go Live

Written by Erica Niesse

This is the last installment in a 5 part series that will take you through everything you demand to know when you're implementing a workforce management system.

You've been through discovery, requirements gathering, configuration, and testing. Now, it is finally time to make the software you have spent months testing and critiquing available to your finish users. The go live process is the terminal stretch of your marathon implementation, and although your implementation partner will be leading the mode, your team volition be an integral part of deploying the organisation and assisting with end user adoption. Presently after this phase, your implementation partner volition have a stride dorsum and your back up transition will occur. To make this whole process smoother, it is helpful to understand how long your implementation partner will be engaged afterward the go live. We likewise recommend thinking about the transition to support months before the go live date, including creating a transition plan.

Hither are a few key items to review when determining that you are ready to go alive:

Become Alive Readiness Programme:

Your project team will not wait until the go alive phase of the project to offset thinking about deploying the system. Go alive considerations start weeks, if not months, before the actual go live. There are a number of items on your go alive readiness plan to consider when determining if you are gear up to become live. Most importantly, you lot will want to start by making sure that all User Acceptance Testing (UAT) items accept been closed or addressed. This includes making sure that all defects that accept been logged have been updated in the exam environment and at that place is a migration programme to product. Prior to get alive you will besides want to prep your production data. This data should exist sent to the test environment start to make sure the files are clean and set for a production state.

This includes:

All inbound files
All outbound files
All integrations with 3^rd political party systems

Your implementation partner volition review these files and make certain that they are not causing any operation issues. If at that place are no problems, yous tin can proceed moving forrard.

Go Live Checklist:

A go live checklist is a central component to a successful go live! The checklist should break downwards each of the steps that the customer and partner will go through in the deployment process. Reviewing this checklist ahead of time helps ensure y'all and your team understand what to look during the go live phase.

The go live checklist should starting time with a Go-No Go determination. This typically takes the form of a meeting all that is setup between the implementation partner and the client (y'all!) to confirm that all issues were addressed in UAT and there are no concerns before beginning deployment to the product surroundings. The Get-No Go decision meeting should include stakeholders including:

Projection sponsors
Project managers
Bailiwick matter experts

After the project squad is given the become alee to motility forward, the go alive checklist should be reviewed and remaining action items should be assigned to the team members, according to projection roles. Across the Get-No Become determination, the checklist should include items such as:

Preparation of the information files and enabling of the file paths
Verification of email notifications
Verification of user ability to log in
Confirmation that all the policies take been migrated from the test environment to the production environment

Before your get alive, don't forget to set upwards a contact list, and so that if there is an issue escalation, or an action that needs to be addressed urgently, it is clear who to get in touch with to address these projection needs. The contact list is peculiarly important if a go live is occurring over the weekend, which is fairly common, since that timeline is less probable to be confusing to normal concern operations. If you are going live over a weekend, members from your squad and your implementation partner'southward team will need to be available over the weekend in the event that issues arise that need to exist resolved urgently.

At present that you accept the "go" decision approval, it is fourth dimension to walk through the go alive steps. The go live steps volition typically occur a few days or weeks before the system go live to make sure that if any problems arise, the system deployment is not impacted.

When yous start walking through the steps of a go alive checklist, it helps to assign one person as the person who is responsible for updating the checklist on an ongoing basis. It is too helpful to have an email chain with all projection team members where each member sends an e-mail via that chain when their assigned steps/activities are completed. In one case all the steps on the go alive checklist are successfully completed, the production system is prepare, which means cease users can begin using the new system!

Prepare for Stop User Questions and Support:

Prior to the deployment of your new system, your end users should have received grooming on the functions they will employ in the system. For case, the employees using a new Fourth dimension & Attendance system volition be clocking in/out, entering time off requests and submitting their time. Meanwhile, managers and organization administrators volition use the organization to review those employee timesheets and paying employees based on time worked. Additionally, these managers and administrators also might be entering their own time and submitting their own time off requests. Depending on the role each person has inside your company, they will have dissimilar admission levels inside the system and will come across different features.

Regardless of user part, it is of import that all cease users have access to quick tips on how to assess dissimilar exceptions or functions of the system, similar how to punch in/out for work as well equally meals and transferring to other jobs. A 1-page user guide detailing the basic processes relevant to large populations of end users would be benign to distribute. The more resources you take bachelor to end users, the more yous'll cut downwardly on volume of basic questions beingness sent to your internal team members at go alive. Fewer questions leaves the team with more than bandwidth to address other change direction strategies, which positively impacts user adoption.

In lieu of distributing printed training materials, you lot could besides setup a link on your internal SharePoint/file sharing site, giving access to the grooming guides and quick user guides.

Ultimately, there volition be questions that the quick guides don't answer, and then it is important to set up a hotline or electronic mail address for end users to transport questions to. The goal of the whole implementation project is to come away with a properly configured organisation with high finish user adoption, setting your end users upwards for success. And so, making these tools available for end users to answer their ain questions, and an easy manner to go admission to whatever lingering questions volition better set you up for smoothen sailing mail service-implementation.

Transition to Vendor or Partner Back up:

At present that you have set up a programme for your end users, yous likewise need to identify where your administrators will get if they have questions or need organisation updates down the line. Your software vendor will set up a meeting well-nigh transitioning to back up during which you'll exist presented with different support package options. The back up package overview meeting will also cover where to become if you have operation issues, if the system is down, or if you demand updates to your surround. Your company volition need to identify the team members internally who will handle submitting support tickets and handling whatsoever escalations to the vendor and support network that you lot set in identify. We recommend limiting the number of people designated equally vendor liaisons to three or fewer people. This way the hazard of multiple tickets being entered for the same consequence is minimized, and the team of 3 liaisons is pocket-size enough that each member can be notified of ticket updates.

Whether HRchitect has handled your implementation from start to terminate, or y'all are looking for a support network after go live, nosotros are your 'get to' partner for managing your workforce management system for the long term. All of our clients are assigned a defended support specialist who volition know the ins and outs of your configuration, and volition be your go to person for all problems or updates you lot need handled. HRchitect offer multiple levels of ongoing support. Each level comes with access to our expert consulting squad and our deep HCM technology systems knowledge.

* To learn more about other phases in a WFM implementation, encounter these boosted blogs by Erica:

Discovery Phase – the start of a successful Workforce Management (WFM) implementation
Requirements Stage – The key in a successful WFM Implementation
HCM Implementation Configuration Phase – Time to Build
Testing phase- The Client's part in an Implementation

Erica Niesse is the Director of Workforce Management Consulting Services at HRchitect. Erica has over 10 years of feel guiding clients through successful Workforce Management system implementations.