Usage guide: Windows 11 - Readiness and migration

Introduction

This library pack will help you gain the actionable visibility you need to speed up your Windows 11 migration and ensure users can use their upgraded devices without frustration. This page will guide you through the structure of the content and how it can be used.

Please keep in mind this is a guide and represents just some of the potential insight and actions you can take. There are many use cases and specific troubleshooting scenarios that you might uncover in your environment.

Ensure your library pack is properly configured by following the steps highlighted in its configuration guide:

Configuration guide: Windows 11 - Readiness and migration

Pack structure

Visibility

The "Windows 11 - Readiness and migration" live dashboard acts as the starting point of this library pack. This dashboard provides capabilities to assess device readiness for migration, track migration progress, compare pre-Windows 11 data with post-migration data on Digital Experience Score, and device and application stability data.

Advanced troubleshooting and remediation

For more in-depth investigations, you can rely on the results of specific data-gathering remote actions.

Get Windows 11 readiness: Gets all the necessary information to check if a device is compatible with Windows 11.
Get OneDrive sync status: Gathers OneDrive sync status from the business accounts SyncDiagnostics.log.

Note

Some of these data-gathering remote actions are used to populate the live dashboard and should already be scheduled. You can query the results by investigating KPIs from the Live dashboard or from your own investigations.

To resolve some of the detected issues, the following remote actions can be triggered when required:

System Cleanup: This remote action remotely cleans up unused files in several Windows system folders.

Use cases

Identify areas of improvement

From the dashboard's summary tab, you can access an overview of your organization’s migration to Windows 11: a summary of hardware readiness and migration progress, key information about the Digital Experience score, and device stability. Based on this information, you can navigate to the appropriate tab for more detailed troubleshooting.

Filters above the dashboard help you focus on a specific area, device, or platform type. The time picker can also be used to view data on a more granular or long-term time scale.

Understand device readiness status for Windows 11

The Readiness tab of the dashboard provides a detailed overview of your device's hardware and software compatibility with Windows 11 according to the compatibility criteria defined by Microsoft.

This tab follows the following logic: All Windows devices running versions older than Windows 11 are assessed for readiness to upgrade to Windows 11 according to criteria defined by Microsoft. Based on the results of this assessment, the devices are divided into four groups:

Devices with hardware ready to upgrade to Windows 11: These devices have hardware that is compatible with Windows 11 according to Microsoft criteria;
Devices that require a hardware upgrade to upgrade to Windows 11: Critical hardware components of these devices are compatible with Windows 11, but some components require an update. The following hardware components and options are considered upgradable: system disk, RAM, video card/DirextX v12/Windows display driver model support v2, SecureBoot status;
Devices that require replacement to upgrade to Windows 11: Critical hardware components of these devices have been determined to be incompatible and require replacement of the entire device. The following hardware components are considered critical and cannot be upgraded: CPU and TPM;
Devices that require a software update to upgrade to Windows 11: Based on Microsoft's Windows 11 compatibility criteria, eligible Windows 10 devices must be version 2004 or later and have the September 14, 2021, or later security update installed to upgrade directly to Windows 11.

With multiple breakdowns of devices by hardware component, entity, model, and OS version, this tab helps you plan further steps to make devices compatible with Windows 11.

Note

It is necessary to review each device model to check if the hardware upgrade is technically possible, as some device models have soldered components and do not support upgrades.

Track the progress of Windows 11 adoption

The Adoption tab of the dashboard displays detailed information about Windows 11 adoption in your environment.

With a cross-device breakdown by entity, model, and Windows 11 adoption trendline, you can track the progress of your Windows 11 migration project and understand its gaps and bottlenecks.

Compare experience before and after migration

The Migration - DEX tab displays comparison data for DEX scores between devices running Windows 11 and devices running older versions of Windows.

Monitoring the DEX scores of Windows 11 devices and comparing them to the DEX scores of devices running earlier versions of Windows is critical to ensuring that users participating in the migration do not experience a worse experience on their upgraded devices.
If a decrease in experience is detected, this becomes an area for improvement that needs to be further explored using DEX recommendations.

Monitor stability during a migration

The Migration - Stability tab displays comparative device and app stability data between devices running Windows 11 and devices running older versions of Windows.

Monitoring this data from Windows 11 devices and comparing it to data from devices running earlier versions of Windows is critical to ensuring that devices and applications on those devices do not experience unstable behavior after upgrading to Windows 11.

The tab contains multiple breakdowns by issue type, operating system name, and device name. The goal of this is to use these breakdowns in conjunction with the dashboard's global filters, investigation and drill-down features to narrow down each instability issue to the specific device or operating system version or application version that is affected by the issue. These issues can then be resolved by updating the application version or installing operating system patches that improve stability.

Monitor compliance of key applications on Windows 11 devices

The Migration - Key applications tab displays stability information for a predefined set of the most popular communication and collaboration applications running on Windows 11 devices. This information helps you monitor the presence of these applications on Windows 11 devices and identify issues affecting users of these applications on Windows 11.

For example, with this information, you can determine the most stable version of each of these applications and track its deployment and presence across all Windows 11 devices.

The following applications have been selected for inclusion in this tab:

Microsoft OneDrive
Microsoft Teams (classic and modern clients)
Zoom