Planning User State Migration Using USMT

Thoughtful planning is a critical factor in the success of any user state migration project. By identifying the scope of the migration, you can plan storage space requirements, labor, and development time required to successfully implement the migration solution. This section describes user state migration planning topics such as using subject matter experts (SMEs), identifying and prioritizing user state data, storing user state data, and testing the effort.

Note The team responsible for planning and developing user state migration must work hand-in-hand with the team responsible for application deployment. Both teams will share a lab environment, application portfolio, SMEs, and so on. In some cases, the same IT professionals responsible for application deployment are also responsible for user state migration.

Planning

About user state migration is that very few companies actually know which files they need to migrate. Even fewer have an idea about settings. The largest concern is, of course, lost data-the settings matter less.

Customers who use IntelliMirror features such as folder redirection and offline folders are the easiest to deal with; however, these customers are the minority. There are really only two ways to get user data and files. Asking the client which files they use never works and just drags out the process. You're left with another way that drives user feedback: to do full backups on your proof-of-concept and pilot groups and run standard USMT without any custom settings. When users ask for files to be recovered from the backup, you add them to the custom settings to be retained.

The second way takes a little bit longer and is what I call intern-ware: If you have an intern, you can give him or her this busy work. Figure out which applications are critical to you, search the registry for "open with," and cross-reference the file extensions to the program.