Office 365 FastTrack

Deployment Planning Services

Consultant Guide
Software Assurance Planning Services
 Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
About Software Assurance Planning Services................................................................................................................. 2
Plan the Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Engagement ............................................................................... 2
Engagement Descriptions ...................................................................................................................................................... 2
Suggested Engagement Outcomes .................................................................................................................................... 4
Required Engagement Outcomes ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Engagement Delivery Outline ............................................................................................................................................... 5
Partner/Consultant Requirements .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Business Objectives................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Partner Requirements .............................................................................................................................................................. 6
About the Engagement .................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Recommended Pre-Engagement Activities ..................................................................................................................... 7
Conducting the Engagement ....................................................................................................................................................... 8
Completion and Results .............................................................................................................................................................. 12
Required Deliverables ........................................................................................................................................................... 12
Office 365 FastTrack Planning Deliverable Generation ............................................................................................ 12
Next Steps ................................................................................................................................................................................. 12
Program Feedback............................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Resources .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

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Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

Introduction
This delivery guide helps partners and consultants understand and deliver the Office 365 FastTrack planning
engagements, through the Software Assurance Planning Services program. This covers a wide range of aspects
including the engagement process, preparing for delivery, delivery execution guidance, and
recommended/required completion activities.

About Software Assurance Planning Services

Software Assurance offers a range of tools and resources to help Microsoft’s Volume Licensing customers
deploy, manage and maximize their purchases.

Software Assurance Planning Services provide customers planning assistance from qualified partners or
Microsoft Consulting Services. These structured engagements help guide the customer’s IT staff through
implementation planning and help ensure efficient deployments through collaborative planning built on best
practices.

A customer receives an amount of Planning Services days based on the type and number of licenses with
Software Assurance the customer has purchased.

Plan the Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Engagement

Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning engagements are designed to help customers understand Office
365 capabilities and determine customer readiness for migration to Office 365 services. These engagements are
offered to help you, the Office 365 partner, envision and prepare the customer for a successful onboarding
experience. The engagements should be delivered during your sales or planning activities and will provide a
proven and defined method to ease transition, amplify user engagement, reduce project risk, and provide
faster time to value.

The planning engagements, getting started content, and scenarios presented by the delivery partner are a first
step to a great Microsoft service experience. The process is designed to help you answer the customer’s service
deployment and features questions, while addressing and managing both integration and migration
expectations.

Engagement Descriptions
These engagements provide a flexible yet structured methodology to lead the customer’s service experience.
The engagements listed below will enable a partner to:
 Help your customer envision and provide a deployment plan with a consistent experience
 Demonstrate Office 365 domain expertise and differentiate your skillset
 Gain a detailed understanding of the customers’ environment and business priorities
 Highlight next steps and define success criteria for the customer
 Accelerate value and time to market with the service for the customer

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Engagements can be 1, 3, 5, 10 and 15 days in length and customized to the customer’s current environment,
requirements and desired engagement length.

Partners are expected to adjust both the breadth and depth of the topics covered based on direct customer
knowledge and consultant insight. If the customer engagement requires more effort in a specific area, the
focus on the topic should be amended by the delivery team accordingly.

One-day Office 365 Strategy Briefing

A one-day strategy briefing will help the customer understand the current Office 365 solution. The benefit to
the customer is an opportunity to work with an expert discovering how Office 365’s capabilities can help to
achieve their business objectives. The outcome is an understanding of Office 365 and a high-level approach to
deployment with clearly defined next steps.

Suggested activities to undertake in this engagement include:

 Overview of Office 365 customized to the customer’s areas of interest
 High level planning workshop to understand project objectives, challenges and success criteria for Office 365
 Introduction to the Office 365 FastTrack Success Plan

Three-day Office 365 envisioning workshop

A three-day engagement can help customers envision their Office 365 solution. It will build upon what is
provided in a 1-day engagement with additional time spent on technical deep-dives, getting started scenarios
and deployment planning. The outcome is a deeper understanding of the specific Office 365 workloads and a
recommended approach to deployment with clearly defined next steps.

Suggested additional activities to undertake in this engagement include:

 Detailed planning workshops by workload to understand project objectives, challenges and success criteria of Office 365
 Setup of a Getting Started environment to help end-users familiarize themselves with the Office 365 environment
 Technical workshops to address specific customer concerns
 Completion of the Office 365 FastTrack Success Plan

Five-day Office 365 deployment planning

A five-day engagement builds upon the 1 and 3-day engagements with additional time available for
architecture design, environment assessments and detailed planning. The outcome is a recommended
approach to deployment with clearly defined next steps.

Suggested additional activities to undertake in this engagement include:

 Solution envisioning and architecture design
 Configuration of deployment training labs
 Deployment and adoption planning for specific scenarios outlined in the Success Plan

Ten-day and Fifteen-day Office 365 planning and assessment engagement

The ten and fifteen-day engagement includes the outcomes of the previous engagements and helps customers
go even further to envision, plan and get started with Office 365. The benefit to the customer is a deeper
understanding of how Office 365 maps to their business priorities, access to technical expertise, and

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recommended guidance. The result is easier transition, amplified user engagement, reduced project risk and
faster time to value.

Additional suggested activities to undertake in this engagement include:

 Technical assessment of current environment using planning tools and remediation checks
 Technical workshops to address specific customer concerns
 Detailed deployment, remediation and adoption planning

At the end of each engagement, customers will be provided a detailed Office 365 success plan and readiness
checklist.

Suggested Engagement Outcomes

The engagement’s primary intent is to help the partner gain a better understanding of the customer’s goals
and/or understand the current state of their IT assets.

When you deliver an engagement, regardless of the length, the following activities are recommended.
However, you may design the engagement to fit your customer’s needs, so long as the outcomes outlined in
the Required Outcomes section are completed and submitted. Suggested engagement track:
 If the customer isn’t in FastTrack already, invite them through your partner dashboard.
 Help them set up an Office 365 trial tenant.
 Spend time understanding customer business objectives.
 Clearly define criteria for success of Office 365 project.
 Technical validation of service integration in customers’ landscape.
 Deliver Success Plan and review findings.

Required Engagement Outcomes

The following are the required outcomes for Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning:
 Success Plan (Word document)
o Once the engagement has commenced, the Partner must work with the customer to create
an Office 365 FastTrack Success Plan. The Success Plan will act as the final deliverable that
will be presented to the customer upon completion of the engagement. It will also serve as
the required deliverable that the Partner must attach as proof of execution when redeeming
the Planning Services voucher for payment and completing the Planning Services
Completion Report.
o For detailed instructions on creating a Success Plan for your customer, review the
instructions included in the FastTrack Site Guide.
 Planning Services Completion Report (Web form)
o Once the engagement is complete the partner will fill out and complete the Planning
Services Completion report. For detailed instructions please visit the Partner Planning
Services portal for voucher redemption instructions.

These items must be submitted to Microsoft as proof of payment.

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Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

Engagement Delivery Outline

The Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning engagements deliver a specified set of customer activities to
rapidly and predictably enable the service for the customer. FastTrack planning engagements deliver planning,
envisioning and identification of potential stumbling blocks for onboarding and user adoption.
As mentioned these engagments can be customized to fit the customer’s current environment, areas of
interest, requirements and preferred engagement length. The following is the suggested outline of activities.

These activities are detailed in the Deliver an Engagement section of this document.

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3-5

 Engagement Kickoff  Meet with business users  Start detailed review of

 Define project decision
making process
 Understand Office 365
 Review Business
Requirements/Business
Objectives
 List Criteria for Success
 Introduce Success Plan
identified for project
planning and prioritization
 Review getting started
scenarios and prioritize
business impact
 Begin building solution
strategy and adoption
priority
 Review criteria for success
 Complete Success Plan
customers’ technical
infrastructure
 Run tools and scripts as
needed to get detailed
information about customers’
environment
– Identity
– Active Directory/Identity
usage
– ADFS needs assessment
– Network bandwidth
scenario review
 Review and build current
state architecture for mail
and SharePoint usage
 Define and confirm usage
scenarios

Day 6-9 Day 10 Days 11-15

 Identify onboarding blockers  Facilitate knowledge transfer  Customized based on

and build remediation plan
for each
 Build priority of remediation
items and notate if they
block onboarding to Office
365 or limit user experience
to customer stakeholders customer requirements
 Session output with team
 Define next steps and
confirm customer timelines

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Partner/Consultant Requirements
Partners and consultants delivering these engagements are expected to be familiar with all the materials in this
document, FastTrack Getting Started Scenarios and Content, entire service description, and public roadmap.
This will allow the facilitator of the engagement to make recommendations, build trust in the partner, and
demonstrate the services’ ability to meet the customers’ business objectives. The requirements found below are
provided to outline expectations during an engagement. Partners should ensure they have access to
http://fasttrack.microsoft.com before the engagement begins.

Business Objectives
During an engagement, a portion of the first day should be determining the customer’s strategic and tactical
business objectives. Obtaining the customer’s success criteria is the recommended way to ensure that the
customer and partner have a mutual and verifiable way to evaluate the planning engagement’s success.

Successful engagements start with the right audience. It is important to ensure that you have key stakeholders
and/or evangelists. Some of the roles most often involved in successful planning are:
 IT Decision Makers
 Business Decision Makers
 Line of Business leads that can articulate the business challenge that they envisage Office 365 can help solve
 Early Adopters

It is recommended that the partner work with the customer several weeks before the engagement to request
the appropriate level of stakeholders be available for the engagement. If high-level decision makers are not
available for the entire engagement, request that they can attend the kickoff session so that at least their
success criteria and business objectives can be discussed.

Partner Requirements
In order to deliver the Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning engagement, partners must have a Silver or
Gold Cloud Productivity competency and fulfill the requirements of the Office 365 FastTrack program. For more
information on the Cloud Productivity competency please visit the competencies pages of the Microsoft
Partner Network portal.
Expertise
The delivery consultant must be fully prepared for the engagement and is expected to be a subject matter
expert in the Office 365 services, public roadmap, cloud adoption and change management. The consultant
must properly prepare for the engagement by gaining a complete understanding of the Office 365 service
description, and it is recommended they review the FastTrack Getting Started content and scenarios. This guide
provides the starting point for consultant readiness and offers best practices in delivery of the Envisioning
Workshop and Office 365 Planning & Assessment Engagement.

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Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

About the Engagement

The Office 365 FastTrack Planning Engagement provides customers structured envisioning, planning and
enablement workshops focused on accelerating their path to Office 365. This guide enables the partner to
deliver the engagements in a managed but flexible way. The partner should strive to gain an understanding of
how the customer plans to use Office 365 and the potential roadblocks, while the customer receives partner
expertise and a deployment document.

The Office 365 FastTrack onboarding approach provides the single recommended path to rapidly allow the
customer to use Office 365 in their own environment. This is designed to expedite access to the service and
provides tangible use cases for the customer to explore. These engagements should be considered a starting
point for a customer’s service adoption path. The service and the work completed as part of the engagement
can be used to directly move from planning to execution of the envisioned Office 365 solution. The partners
delivering a FastTrack planning engagement are key to successful onboarding and adoption of the service.

Recommended Pre-Engagement Activities

Engagement kickoff
This section covers the activities the partner should complete to prepare for an Envisioning Workshop or Office
365 Planning & Assessment Engagement. Below is a pre-engagement list that can help ensure the engagement
is well communicated and expectations are properly set before the consultant engages directly with the
customer.

Pre-engagement tasks
Typically, planning engagements are delivered onsite with a customer during consecutive days in the same
business week. The following checklist can be used to ensure that the engagement gets started on the right
foot and proper expectations are set.
 Conduct a pre-call with the customer to set expectations, communicate the high-level agenda and confirm attendees and
logistics.

 Send a pre-engagement e-mail ahead of the engagement specifying the stakeholders who should be in attendance.

 Request that the customer book conference rooms and space for the partner team to work and ensure AV equipment and
internet access is available.

 Ensure the consultant has a customized kickoff deck and engagement agenda and that both have been shared with the
customer before the engagement.

 Make sure all scripts, content, process and resources are organized and familiar to the consultant before going onsite with the
customer.

 Understand the customer’s purchase status and find out whether they have an Office 365 tenant setup prior to the
engagement. The below information will outline how to find out whether a customer already has an Office 365 tenant or
requires a new tenant setup.

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Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

Invite new customers to FastTrack

In engagements where the customer has no existing tenant, partners should invite and add their customers to
FastTrack from the FastTrack Portal directly. FastTrack will send and invitation to the customer that will include
links to login to FastTrack as well as create a trial tenant of Office 365. Partners can also create trial tenants for
the customer through the normal trial creation process.

It is very important for new customers that the tenant name chosen at the time of provisioning is the tenant
name that they will want to move forward with in production. FastTrack’s primary principle and goal is to move
from Getting Started to Onboarding (Production) with no throwaway efforts and work.

For customers new to FastTrack, you will login to the FastTrack Portal and search for the customer name from
the navigation bar in the middle of the screen. If your customer is not already in FastTrack you will be
prompted to “Invite Customer”. Then you will enter in the customer’s information and send the invitation. Once
the initial customer information has been saved and the invitation sent they will be available in the FastTrack
portal and you can begin working on the Success Plan and engagement planning steps.

For detailed instructions please see the FastTrack Site Guide.

Invite existing FastTrack customers

Customers that have already been set up with FastTrack prior to the latest release can be invited to participate
in the FastTrack process and Success Planning. Within the FastTrack portal search for your existing customers
and select from the results. Click “Invite Customer” and enter the primary customer contact information. The
customer will receive an invitation to their personalized FastTrack portal environment and can participate in
completing the Success Plan with the partner.

Planning workshop invitations

Planning is a vital part of any successful Office 365 service implementation. There are factors in the planning
phase that can boost your success rate and the adoption of the service. Ensuring the key stakeholders and
service evangelists are in the room while you are conducting the engagement is the first step. Some
considerations for who should be in the room are IT Decision Makers, Business Decision Makers , Line of
Business (LOB) leads that can articulate a business challenge that Office 365 can help solve, and Early Adopters.

Conducting the Engagement

When delivering an engagement, it is important to construct an agenda ahead of time. Recommended agendas
based on the number of days the customer has available to use are outlined above. It is important to note,
however, that you can customize the agenda to further meet your customer’s needs, etc. Keep in mind that the
more customized the partners makes the offering, the more effort will be required from you to:
 Manage the customer’s expectations.
 Define a scope, agenda and deliverables that can be completed in the allotted time.
 Stay within the overall intent and guidelines of the Envisioning Workshop and the Office 365 Planning & Assessment Engagement
and meet the required outcomes (deliverables).
 Use the sample agenda and delivery outline described in this document as a baseline.

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 The Success Plan is the primary customer deliverable and completion should be a focus of the engagement.
 Use the delivery materials and resources listed in this document and on the Partner Planning Services portal to support the
engagement and build the agenda.

Be aware that the customer will fill out an evaluation form; you must manage expectations and deliver as
promised to have a satisfied client while meeting the required engagement outcomes.

Success Plan
The Success Plan should outline the customer’s current state and planned future state environment and include
a remediation checklist that outlines technical blockers and their order of priority (from service blocking to nice
to have). The Success Plan will also hold detailed information on the tools used during the engagement,
stakeholders, users, and detailed information on any blocking technical issues.

Detailed Success Plan Sections and Topics

Below is a list of required sections you will find in the Success Plan.
Overview  Priority
 Contacts
 Sponsorship
 Stakeholders
 Vision
 Success metrics

Current Environment  Current technology

Office 365 Deployment and
Implementation Plan
Usage and Adoption Plan
Support Plan
 Network environment
 Directory environment
 Readiness
 Security requirements
 Workload requirements
 Change management
 Pre-launch activities
 Launch activities
 Post-launch activities
 Customer support agreements
 Customer support contacts
 Escalation paths

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Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

Readiness checklist example

Deployment Tasks /Events Complete

1. PLAN PHASE

Hold project kickoff meeting

Develop migration strategy

Identify mailbox size and item counts

Plan for mail-enabled applications

Identify options for user identity and account provisioning

Identify Active Directory preparation and remediation requirements

Identify your email coexistence strategy

Identify current network links, user concentration, and current utilization

Identify on-premises infrastructure server requirements

Identify the operating systems and client applications

Identify the mobile platform that your organization will use

Develop an end user and administrator training schedule and delivery mechanism

2. PREPARE PHASE

Add and verify your domain name with Office 365

Prepare your on-premises Active Directory for directory synchronization

Enable single sign-on

Install the Directory Synchronization Tool and perform synchronization

Configure email coexistence

Configure Lync Online

Configure SharePoint Online

Deploy client applications and the Office 365 desktop setup

Perform mailbox size reduction

Prepare customer service desk

Test and validate email migration and coexistence

Complete the migration groups and migration schedule

3. MIGRATION PHASE

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Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

Deployment Tasks /Events Complete

Assign licenses to users

Issue final communications to end users

Migrate mailbox data

Migrate existing collaboration documents

Change DNS records

Configure mobile phones and devices for Office 365

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Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Planning Services Consultant Guide

Completion and Results

Required Deliverables
To be able to automatically generate the required deliverables at the end of the engagement, you will be
required to have access to the FastTrack Portal (https://fasttrack.microsoft.com).
 Office 365 FastTrack Success Plan. This is a mandatory requirement to secure payment for the engagement.
The partner must complete and publish the success plan and deliver to the customer. See the FastTrack User
Guide for instructions on creating and accessing Success Plans.

 Planning Services Completion Report. This is a mandatory requirement to secure payment for the engagement.
Someone with knowledge of the voucher numbers assigned and voucher submission process should help the
consultant complete this step. Refer to the Planning Services Partner Portal to review the process for payment
redemption.

Office 365 FastTrack Planning Deliverable Generation

The Office 365 FastTrack Planning Engagement will provide the customer an Office 365 Success Plan. This
deliverable recaps the business intent, describes actions taken in the Envisioning Workshop, and outlines the
current state of the environment.

In the Success Plan generation tool, you will cover more technical areas of the planning sessions and have a
much deeper understanding of the remediation that need to take place and the options the client will want to
include in the services.

When inside the FastTrack Portal, the Success Plans tab will enable the partner to select the Success Plan. The
Success Plan is going to cover technical competencies of the partner, as well as go over the customer’s current
environment in detail. Once the partner fills out all of the questions for the Success Plan, the document can be
exported into a Word format. The document will include any obstacles with the current remediation or
requirements that have not met a current standard for the proposed solution.

Next Steps
Once you have completed the engagement and completed the Success Plan and Planning Services Completion
Report, the delivery is complete. However, this is the start of the partner opportunity to engage, expand and
evolve the Getting Started engagement into a full-service deployment.

Obtain an agreement on execution of the Success Plan. Go over next steps to empower the customer to fully
experience the Office 365 service offerings. Build a timeline you and the customer can agree to for each
workload. Make sure each workload is clearly mapped out and follows Office 365 best practices.

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Resources
The following table provides some links to online resources that provide more information about the topics
covered in this document and related information.
Resource
Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Center
(http://fasttrack.microsoft.com)
Office 365 FastTrack User Guide
(http://aka.ms/fasttracksiteguide )
Office Ignite Readiness
(http://ignite.office.com)
Office 365 Public Roadmap
TechNet center for Office 365
TechNet center for the new Office
Office IT Pro Blog
Office 365 Trust Center
Office 365 Service Descriptions
Office 365 Roadmap
Microsoft Planning Services
Description
The FastTrack deployment resource center. Use this to get the customer-
facing deployment content. The most updated content is available on this
site.
This guide contains step by step instructions to help Microsoft and
Microsoft partner users understand the new FastTrack site. This guide
covers site registration, navigation, using the Field dashboard, finding
customers, redeeming offers, and creating success plans and plan
snapshots.
Access to Office technical readiness content, events, and resources.
Access information about Office 365 features and their release timeline.
Get the info IT pros need to deploy, integrate, and manage Office 365
services for enterprises or large organizations.
Get the IT pro resources you need to try the new Office (Office 2016 and
Office 365 ProPlus) including details about activation, compatibility and
deployment.
Provides frequent topics on Office deployment and compatibility issues.
Includes articles about Office Telemetry.
As an Office 365 customer, you have entrusted Microsoft to help protect
your data. Microsoft values the partnerships we have with our customers
and place great emphasis on protecting the privacy and security of
customer data.
The service descriptions provide detailed descriptions of the services and
features that are available with Office 365.
Here you will find information about the latest features and improvements
to Office 365. Note these updates are shown for the current operating
service.
Planning service site for partners. Learn about engagement options.
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