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How to automate onboarding for Office 365 with VisualSP Premium

By Michael Blonder
Updated July 26, 2024

One of the most resource-intensive (and therefore costly) activities triggered by a migration to a web platform like Microsoft Office 365 is onboarding, AKA introducing personnel to a new office automation system. Conventional methods of meeting this requirement include scheduling an event like a “lunch and learn” training session to accomplish this task.

Either a Technical Trainer or a member of the IT Support team needs to lead this session. You can invite employees to attend, or let them know they need to attend the meeting. Invitations represent the kinder approach to getting their attention, but requiring their attendance is a better way to make sure your organization will only need to hold the event one time.

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These sessions can take an hour or longer and usually require the preparation of reference materials to make sure attendees remember the points presented during the event. Corporate Training historical data indicates most attendees forget upwards to 75% or more of the points made during the event within a day or two. Even taking the step to provide them with reference materials doesn’t guarantee they will remember important steps and spare IT support from having to respond, directly, to a request for “how to” information on a point covered during the presentation.

There is a better way to onboard personnel to Office 365. You don’t have to give up on your plan to host in-person training sessions, but with our better way you can have more confidence the important points will be remembered by a high percentage of personnel attending the event. The video embedded in this blog post tells the story.

The better way is to use a system like VisualSP Premium to create a digital guided tour of Office 365 and/or the applications like Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, Power Automate you have targeted for heavy use by your employees. These systems combine a method of publishing information directly within a web platform like Microsoft Office 365, and an editor to create walkthroughs (VisualSP’s name for digital guided tours).

What are the big pluses of using walkthroughs? 1) A person is not required to onboard an employee using one of these digital on-screen guided tours. They play by themselves with simply a click on a hot link. 2) They can be repeated as frequently as required for an employee to master the steps (and, therefore, are a great antidote for the forgetting curve mentioned above. 3) They can be customized to include any branding you have added to Microsoft Office 365 or another web platform.

Have questions, or want to see these guides in action? Schedule a demo for VisualSP

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