Change can be daunting, but switching to Convene is easy! Whether your organisation has identified a potential cost saving opportunity or just wants better meetings and security, it is important to know the steps before you switch.

We have a wealth of experience in helping companies, large and small, make the switch to Convene. Beyond our traditional Board Portal product we also now offer Convene fully integrated with Microsoft Teams, so your whole organisation can benefit from our extensive range of meeting features. 

We know that maintaining business continuity and minimising downtime for your organisation can be an important consideration when making a switch of software providers. So, our Customer Success and Support teams have put together this Convene Guide to Switching Board Portal to demonstrate just how quickly your team can be up and running on Convene.

If you want to know why you should switch to Convene read our article on the 7 Reasons benefits of a Board Portal

This guide will highlight the straightforward process, answering any common customer FAQs along the way.

The steps:

  1. Create Migration Plan
  2. Migrate Users - Day 1:
  3. Customise your Convene System - Day 1.5:
  4. Migrate Data - Day 2.5:
  5. Design & Launch Tailored Training Plan Day 3.5:
  6. Deliver Training Sessions Day 4 – Flexible End.
  7. Ongoing Support.

1. Create Migration Plan 

Working alongside our Customer Success team, the main point of contact from your organisation would take part in a brief initial consultation. This would be to identify the future Convene users, agree the scope of content for transfer and agree an outline for future communications & training plans.

1. Migrate Users – Day 1

Working in collaboration with key members of your IT Team, we would agree the user credentials and method of extraction to create new user accounts on Convene. Common credentials are names, job titles and email addresses, or whether that user will be a Convene System Administrator or a General User.

This process can be automated or completed manually, either by us or your IT department, dependent on your own privacy / data regulations.


2. Customise your Convene System – Day 1.5

Next we would work alongside key members of your administrative team to create a set of specific Meeting Types and User Groups to reflect the meeting and staff structure of your organisation.

This will allow your system administrator to hit the ground running, and be able to quickly recreate your existing meeting calendar and notify the relevant people. This in turns ensures smooth business continuity for your organisation and minimises any downtime associated with a switch in board portal providers.


3. Migrate Data – Day 2.5

If your organisation decides they want to migrate past Agenda Packages and other documents to Convene’s Document Library, we would help define your meeting archive rules so that the correct set of users would be able to access past meetings accordingly.

Once the meeting archive rules are defined and the Document Library folders created and labelled logically, the correct access permissions set, then your source documents can be automatically or manually migrated into Convene. The corresponding access permissions will be automatically granted.

If your data is stored locally, migrating it to Convene can be as simple as dragging and dropping the relevant files into their folders.


4. Design & Launch Tailored Training Plan – Day 3.5

Our team has got a wealth of experience in designing and delivering bespoke training sessions to meet the specific needs of your organisation. The first priority is to establish a training plan for Meeting Organisers, followed by the Meeting Participant training.

As the sooner your Meeting Organiser (system administrator) is familiar with our easy to use system, the easier it will be for your meeting calendar and relevant documents to be transferred.

When it comes to training the Meeting Participants, if your organisation has a high degree of technical literacy amongst its staff, a ‘Train the Trainer’ approach can be more suitable. Typically, this is the Meeting Organiser.

Alternatively, we are happy to offer this training for your teams ourselves too. We’ve found it works well as a mixture of both remote training with an FAQ session, plus video tutorials for Meeting Participants to watch at their own convenience.

Given the current social distancing guidelines, we are only offering remote training at the moment.


5. Deliver Training Sessions – Day 4 - Flexible 

Once the timetable has been established, delivering the training sessions should be straightforward. We designed the Convene system to be as intuitive and easy to use as possible, and we find that most users are comfortable using our system very quickly.

The Meeting Organiser training typically lasts 90 minutes including a FAQ session, with links to the relevant training manuals included in the meeting invitation for future reference.

Meeting Participant training is most effective once your already trained Meeting Organiser has published an Agenda Package, or if past meetings have already been migrated (see step 3). It is often shorter than Meeting Organiser training, but we are happy to run repeated sessions until you and your team are comfortable and confident on the Convene system.

6. Ongoing Support

Once you and your team are settled into using the Convene system to streamline your meeting process, the support doesn’t stop there. We offer unlimited training sessions for you and your team. We've found that this is particularly useful for our customers when there are personnel changes within their organisation. 

We have a LinkedIn group for Convene customers to ask any questions and share best practice. Also, with over 150 articles, the Convene Knowledge Base can help you find the answer to your support query immediately.

Our Customer Success team are always just a phone call or email away, and can be in regular contract to fix any issues that arise, provide extra training, respond to feedback for systems development, while highlighting new and exciting use cases or features that are in the pipeline for Convene.

Similarly, if you have a technical issue, our Support team of experts are available 24/7, 365 days a year.


If your organisation is considering changing board portal providers, or you just want some more specific information around pricing and implementation, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Our team of advisors will be more than happy to answer your query as best they can. 

Just simply visit our contact page here, or book a free trial today.

Solomon Rackham

Written by Solomon Rackham

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