You’ve picked your authoring tool and the seats are assigned. Now comes the part that decides whether the investment pays off: getting your team to use it and, more importantly, use it well. This is where a lot of rollouts wobble, and first impressions count.
As Rob Mynett, OL’s Product Enablement Specialist, put it in our recent expert Q&A on getting more from your authoring tools, “Every technology investment needs its own adoption strategy. That’s what turns a licence into value.”
That’s why we’ve put together this 30-day adoption plan for those first steps of rolling out a new authoring tool. You can download the checklist to work through here.
This post walks through the thinking behind each stage, with tips to set you up for success, right from day one.
A quick word on platform migration
This plan is designed to work whether you’re using an authoring tool for the first time or switching over from an existing one. If you are replacing a platform, migration is something to add into your own adoption plan (adapt ours to fit), and it’s something you’ve probably been thinking about since those very first demos.
How laborious the process is will depend on the tools you’re moving between and your bank of content. But where assets need rebuilding, there is an upside: it gives your team hands-on practice with material that’s familiar.
First off, start with an audit of what content you really need. It’s a good chance to trim the fat and streamline your library. Then sort what’s left in two ways:
- By priority: Rank content as high, medium, or low. Anything business critical goes to the top of the pile, while nice-to-haves sit in the low bucket.
- By effort: Sort into quick wins, middle ground, and heavier work. Simple courses move over fast, while complex branching and interactivity take longer to rebuild and test.
We’d always start with high-priority work, but whether you tackle quick wins first or get stuck into the more challenging courses will depend on your organisation’s needs.
Then migrate in waves, working through batches until everything is done. Depending on how much content you’re moving, this may run past the first 30 days while your team gets to grips with the new tool. And remember, business as usual won’t pause in the meantime, so protect some time for migration each week and revisit your list as new requests crop up.
👉 Read next: How to conduct an effective learning needs analysis
Days 1–7: Get set up
Resist the urge to start building straight away. Excitement is a good thing, but a strong first week is about making sure everything is set up and communications are clear.
- Name your owners: Appoint a project lead and a few internal champions. They’re your go-to people for questions and your early advocates.
- Sort access and permissions: Make sure everyone has the right licence and permissions assigned from day one. Nothing kills momentum like “I can’t log in.”
- Agree your governance basics: Decide on naming conventions, folder structure, review and sign-off steps, and where final files live. It may feel dull when your team are itching to build, but it’ll save hours and plenty of confusion later.
- Define success: Pick two or three measurable goals, such as author confidence, time to build, or first courses published.
- Set up a launch calendar: Put key dates, tasks, and milestones in a shared project plan (Asana, for example) so everyone knows who’s doing what and when. If you’re migrating, add your content waves in here too.
👉 More from OL: How to create an upskilling strategy
Days 8–14: Get people building
Now it’s time to get hands on. The aim this week is confidence, not perfection.
- Book expert-led training: Bring in someone who knows the tool inside out, and look for training with plenty of hands-on practice, so your team learns by doing. An expert will share shortcuts and best practice that take a long time to find alone, and even experienced authors can pick up tips they never knew about.
- Share starter templates: Brand-approved template packs take decisions off people’s plates and keep output consistent. Start with the formats your team uses most.
- Build a resource hub: Put guides, how-to videos, FAQs, and vendor support in one easy-to-find place, so help is never more than a click away.
- Open champion office hours: A regular drop-in slot gives people a safe space to ask the “silly” questions. (There aren’t any, but people don’t always believe that.)
👇 Explore our expert-led tool training
Days 15–21: Build confidence and consistency
By week three, confidence is building, so give your team the chance to put it to use.
- Get something live: Aim for every author to publish at least one piece of content in the new tool.
- Hold a show-and-tell: Short peer sessions spread good practice and spark ideas, while celebrating people’s early wins.
- Check governance in practice: Are naming conventions being followed? Is everyone clear on the sign-off process? Adjust now, while it’s easy to change.
- Support learning in the flow of work: Training works best when it’s reinforced over time. Put help where your team already works, such as short how-to clips in Teams or Slack, and encourage use of AI assistants like Copilot for quick “how do I…?” questions. You might also set up a dedicated channel for questions, so everyone can see the answers and nobody has to solve the same problem twice.
Days 22–30: Review and refine
Time to take stock and decide what happens next.
- Gather feedback: A short pulse survey and a few conversations will tell you more than usage data alone. Ask what’s working, what’s not, and what people wish they’d known on day one.
- Check against your goals: Compare where you are with your week-one success measures, then share the results with stakeholders and the team, including the wins.
- Look ahead: Use what you’ve learned to shape your next 90 days.
👉 Related reading: Professional development goal examples – 10 to inspire you
Beyond the rollout
Your first 30 days may be up, but the work of embedding the tool should continue, along with any migration still in progress. The initial rollout is just the start of how your team learns to use it.
Once your team has mastered the basics, point them towards more advanced skills or training. And keep an eye on product updates, too, so new features don’t pass you by.
Most importantly, keep listening. Regular check-ins tell you what your team is using and where they’re stuck, so you can adapt your support to match. Encourage people to share what they learn along the way, whether that’s a shortcut, a template that saved time, or a mistake to avoid. A culture of continuous learning grows when everyone feels able to contribute.
Training that gets your team building
Save your team the trial and error. Our experts run hands-on Articulate 360 AI and Vyond courses where your authors can learn, practise, and get answers in real time.
👉 Read next: Onboarding strategy 101
