This case study provides a high-level overview of our Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 migration for a local council.
About
The “client” are a local council in the United Kingdom, and required Windows 11 and Microsoft (Office) 365 migration experts to migrate their estate from Windows 10 and Office 2016 (32-bit) to Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 (64-bit).
The Project
We were responsible for (but not limited to):
- Testing and remediating 80 business applications, ensuring they work on Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 (64-bit).
- Planning the migration in a strategic way, with pilot groups and deployment rings, ensuring business continuity at all times.
- Weekly reports and updates to senior stakeholders.
Challenges
- The client was migrating from an older, 32-bit instance of Microsoft Office to a more modern, 64-bit instance of Microsoft 365. This introduced add-in compatibility issues, macro compatibility issues, and required Microsoft 365 policy remediations to ensure compatibility across all applications.
- The hardware of some devices were incompatible with Windows 11, and other devices had low disk space and were incapable of receiving the Windows 11 upgrade payload.
- All applications we tested needed to be prioritised based on popularity and business impact, tracked efficiently, and a UAT process needed to be in place to engage with application owners.
Solution
- We used Process Monitor to identify Microsoft 365 policy remediations, enabling legacy document formats, COM integration, trusted locations and more.
- We redeveloped macros used by the financial department, to resolve compatibility issues.
- We scheduled device swap-outs for incompatible hardware, and developed a PowerShell tool to free up disk space on endpoints. This included profile management, download folder cleansing, removing redundant files from previous upgrades, temp folder clean-up and much more.
- We developed a free tool to manage the UAT process – utilising Microsoft Bookings, SharePoint application management, and email notifications to application owners.
- We provided weekly real-time progress updates in a tabular and graphical dashboard.
Results
- We successfully migrated circa 3,500 devices to Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 (64-bit), remediating all compatibility issues.
- We used dynamic Configuration Manager collections, meaning that we were able to scale back the rate of the deployment on-demand based on network performance monitoring. This enabled us to maintain a performant network for optimal business continuity.
- Every application was tested successfully with the application owner, with remediations and/or upgrades provided where required. The application estate consisted of local installations (EXE, MSI, scripted) and virtualised applications (App-V).
- We assisted with documentation and “Frequently Asked Questions” to support end-users throughout their Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 journey.
