Best Practices and phases of onboarding for amber

A big part of a successful software launch is making early wins visible. The same applies to amber. This guide shows how you can help your team adopt amber successfully and turn the rollout into a lasting success.

1. Why build an internal community?

An internal community helps your team learn faster and use amber more effectively.

Benefits

  • Colleagues can answer company-specific questions together.

  • Employees can find existing answers instead of asking the same questions again.

  • People can exchange ideas in a familiar environment without needing to contact an external support person.

  • Best practices and success stories become visible and encourage wider adoption.

This helps both your team and your amber project become more successful.

2. What are the key success factors?

From our experience, a few measures make a major difference. As a project manager or multiplier, your role is to help users get the most value from amber.

Key success factors

  • Make amber visible in daily work and integrate it into existing systems.

  • Actively engage users and help them discover relevant use cases.

  • Share successes and learnings openly across the organization.

3. How do I build an internal community?

Successful onboarding usually involves the following groups:

  • IT administrators: Handle technical setup and system integration.

  • Project managers: Coordinate the rollout and serve as the first point of contact.

  • Multipliers: Managers or digitally savvy colleagues who promote adoption.

  • Power users: Frequent users who develop deep product knowledge.

  • Normal users: Employees who use amber as part of their regular work.

To build a strong community, it helps to think in onboarding phases.

4. Onboarding phases

Phase 1: Technical setup

After we have first set up amber technically in consultation with the IT administrator and all the desired systems have been integrated into amber, we check how we can integrate amber into the existing IT landscape. This includes, for example, an integration via Iframe into SharePoint or other intranets as well as the activation of TeamsApp.

We have some integration measures that need to be done by the IT administrator as well as some measures that users can use on their own without support from the IT administrator to integrate amber into their daily work.

It also helps to announce the rollout early so users can start thinking about possible use cases.

Recommendation: Place amber in the systems employees use most often.

Checklist

  • amber is integrated into the relevant IT systems

  • Onboarding is announced early by the project manager

  • Managers support communication if needed

Phase 2: Onboarding

During onboarding, users learn the main functions of amber, test it themselves, and ask questions. Afterwards, they should receive a short follow-up email with the most important information.

At this stage, users should learn how to:

  1. Making software visible in their own everyday work and IT set-up

  2. Understanding the different functions

  3. Sharpening the search and applying filtering options

Exchange formats are especially important here so that experiences and learnings become visible.

Recommendation: Create a Teams channel for questions and let colleagues share success stories in regular team meetings.

Checklist

  • Create a Teams channel and invite users

  • Share an onboarding summary with key information

  • Set up a regular jour fixe between the project manager and customer support

  • Encourage multipliers to share successful examples

Phase 3: First experiences

After the rollout, some employees will quickly become power users. Their know-how can help others by answering questions in the team channel and sharing best practices.

This phase is also ideal for collecting product feedback and passing it on to support.

Recommendation: Encourage users to share both challenges and successes internally, and actively strengthen power users.

Checklist

  • Build expertise among power users

  • Encourage users to post questions in the Teams channel

  • Collect and share feedback regularly

Phase 4: Establish amber in daily work

When amber is well integrated into everyday work, it becomes part of regular conversations and meetings. That is a strong sign that adoption is working.

If the rollout starts with only part of the company, other departments may also become interested once they see the value.

5. How can I get the best results with my queries?

amber is based on a RAG system. That means results often improve when queries are made more specific.

Best practices for better results

  • Be precise in your wording

  • Refine your query step by step

  • Add important details if results are missing

  • Rephrase the query if results appear incomplete or duplicated

If you want to learn more about how the RAG system works, you can link to the related blog article here.