[ms office - 2016] When to upgrade to Office 2016

[kennysarmy]

I could either upgrade at Easter 2016 and thus iron out any issues during the Summer Term so everything is sorted for September.

 

OR

 

I could upgrade everyone during the Summer holidays and then iron out any issues DURING September.

 

 

Obviously I will be under more time pressure to do it at Easter as we (3 man team) might only have 10-15 work days between us to upgrade over 860 devices.

[Sagima]

Easter for the reasons you give. We try and keep summer stuff to things people won't notice as teachers have enough to cope with on day 1 of a new year - they don't really need us adding to it if we can do it another way.

You could update departments during term time though could you?

[3s-gtech]

Summer - mainly because after Easter you will have some seriously stressed year 11s (and maybe sixth formers) who will have to cope with the change of UI and any potential bugs/quirks right at a time when they can do without them. Office 2016 is very good, don't get me wrong, but what with getting the GPOs in and set up properly, tested, plus installing the hundreds of updates that have come out for 2016, you will not be doing anyone any favours at Easter.

[zag]

Other than PDF editing, I've not seen any massive advantages of upgrading so far.

 

Saving documents is far harder too due to the onedrive integration, so i'm not sure its a great idea.

[Sagima]

Other than PDF editing, I've not seen any massive advantages of upgrading so far.

 

Saving documents is far harder too due to the onedrive integration, so i'm not sure its a great idea.

 

Our progession from 2010 to 2013 was driven by people wanting the non-pop up reply in outlook. this time people want the last edited attachment list. MS may as well not bother with updating the other programs

Editing pdfs with word 2013 is done by about 5 people here but oddly they are some of the least technically literate teachers we have - almost everyone who wants to do it just uses acrobat.

[Sylv3r]

We updated ours in the summer from 2013 although nobody has mentioned any changes to us, so I'm not even sure if people have realised !

[mullet_man]

The UI changes are minimal, if you are moving from 2013 obviously.

 

We moved most of the school baring some staff laptops in the summer to 2016 from 2013. I used SCCM and created a task sequence that uninstalled 2013 via the Office Scrub script and then installed 2016. To be honest it wasn't as smooth as I'd have liked, think some devices failed due to them having pending office updates/restarts.

[mrbios]

Personally taking a staggered approach to it.

 

Sorting out our windows 10 image and doing lots of testing with that and office 2016 together, deploying both to test areas such as staffroom and library in Easter, maybe 1 IT suite in the May half term, then deploying fully in the summer.....hopefully with any bugs or hiccups ironed out. I would agree with what 3s-gtech says though, summer term is the worst time for major chances due to the exam period.

[CAWJames]

I only use it for the attachment drop down, its the only stand out feature for me!

[kennysarmy]

Personally taking a staggered approach to it.

 

Sorting out our windows 10 image and doing lots of testing with that and office 2016 together, deploying both to test areas such as staffroom and library in Easter, maybe 1 IT suite in the May half term, then deploying fully in the summer.....hopefully with any bugs or hiccups ironed out. I would agree with what 3s-gtech says though, summer term is the worst time for major chances due to the exam period.

 

I'd thought to do both the office and 7 to 10 migration at the same time, but have instead decided to do the Office move first as this needs to be done on all computers at the same time, I can then concentrate on Windows 10 from September 2017 by which time I may have finally decided whether to go LTSB or not !

[witch]

I have done all the laptops so far and nobody has noticed. I shall roll out the rest when and if I ever get a chance. The only person who needed it was the HT - some function of excel that is on 2016