Rolling Out Your AppStore

After this article...

You'll know how to roll out the AppStore to your company and ensure great adoption! 💪

Background

It’s easy to build out your AppStore -- in less than an hour, you can automate a lot of apps. See📄 Adding Apps To Your AppStore

But how do you make sure that everyone starts using it and doesn’t go back to creating tickets?

It’s all about having the right rollout strategy.

This article outlines the key phases of a successful AppStore rollout. If you stick to them, your coworkers will be begging you to add more apps to your AppStore.

Phase 1: Build an 80/20 AppStore 🤓

Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? We live by it at Lumos.

It means that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.

Listen, it's great to want every single company app in the AppStore. But unless you know who the approvers and admins should be for every app, trying to chase this down could seriously hold up your rollout.

Don't get stuck on obscure apps -- follow our guide for building out your AppStore and you can get the configuration done in a few hours:📄 Adding Apps To Your AppStore

When you finish, review our rollout setup checklist so that your AppStore is ready for primetime! 📄 AppStore Rollout Setup Checklist

Phase 2: Enable Your IT Team 💪

You want your team to be confident that they can find the answer when your employees have a question about the AppStore.

Make sure to share our📄 AppStore Guide for IT Adminswith your IT service desk team and have them review the content. It should take less than 10 minutes and will be a great reference if your team has questions down the road!

Of course, reach out to us via email or Slack if there are any questions.

Phase 3: Add An AppStore Page To Your Docs 📕

We get it — your employees are busy. That’s why we created a simple knowledge base template that you can send them so that they know how and why to use the AppStore! This should also be part of your new hire documentation and orientation so that people build good habits.

Feel free to repurpose this content for your knowledge base!

📄 AppStore Knowledge Base Template

Phase 4: (Optional) Test With A Control Group 🧪

If you want to test out the AppStore with a smaller group of employees for a week before rolling it out to everyone, there are a few ways you can do it.

Feel free to use the template below to announce it to the group that you choose.

📄 AppStore Rollout Communication Templates

Test With A New Hire Cohort

What better time for people to test out Lumos than when they’re first joining the company? Give them a tool that makes it fast for them to get software!

If you have a new hire cohort coming in, let them know they can use Lumos to request access to software.

Test With A Department

If there are departments that are “friendly” to new tech, give them access to Lumos and let them know they can use it to request new software!

You’ll be surprised by how many requests you get!

Phase 4.5 (Pre-Rollout): Add Lumos Into Your ITSM 📨

To ensure great adoption, we suggest taking the following steps to encourage great AppStore adoption right before your rollout.

• Put Lumos In Your ITSM Auto-Responder

  Create an auto-responder for access request tickets and include a link to your AppStore in it. Our 📄 AppStore Rollout Communication Templatesarticle has a great sample.

• Link To The AppStore In Your ITSM

  When people choose an option to request software in your ITSM, show them a clickable link to the AppStore instead of a request form. https://app.lumosidentity.com/app_store

• Enable Ticket Interception

  If your ITSM supports it, enable ticket interception in Lumos so that Lumos can automatically redirect new tickets back to the AppStore. See📄 Enabling Ticket Interception
  Let us do the work of encouraging the right behavior for you!

Phase 5: Announce It! 📣

The big moment! Let your whole company know that this amazing new resource will make it blazing fast for them to get access to the software they need. 🔥

Don't overlook this step! Make it a BIG THING so that people don't quickly forget!

Again, we have some communication templates that you can use when you’re ready to announce your AppStore to the whole company.

📄 AppStore Rollout Communication Templates

We can also send Slack messages to your employees to remind them to use Lumos, which is a great way to increase engagement!

Bonus: If your company has an all hands meeting coming up, drop a slide in there about the AppStore!

Post-Rollout: Work Lumos Into Your Processes 🔄

People don't usually change their behavior overnight. To ensure great adoption, we suggest taking the following steps to encourage great AppStore usage on an ongoing basis.

• Use The AppStore For Tickets

  When people create tickets instead of using the AppStore, use the AppStore to complete their request! People are more inclined to use the AppStore if they see it helps them self-service.

• Keep Adding Apps!

  Set aside some regular time every week or two to review access requests and add new apps to the AppStore. If people see the AppStore growing, they'll be encouraged to use it more often!