Jul 20, 2026
Work in the office looks different than it did a few years ago. Whether your teams are in every day or spread across locations, people still expect everything they need to be in place when they arrive. That means finding an open desk near the colleagues they came in to work with and knowing the right space is available when they need it.
Microsoft Places can give organisations better visibility into people and spaces and help them coordinate the workplace at scale. But that experience depends on how well the migration is planned and carried out. In this blog, we look at three things to avoid and three must-dos for getting a Microsoft Places migration right from the start.
3 Things to Avoid When Migrating to Microsoft Places
Migrating with Dirty Data
Floor plans rarely become outdated all at once. A team moves to another floor. A 12-person room is reconfigured for eight. Desks disappear during a redesign. A large meeting space starts being divided into smaller rooms depending on how it is used. Each change may seem minor on its own, but over time the source data can stop matching the workplace people actually walk into.
Those inconsistencies can show up across buildings, floors, rooms, desks and room capabilities. Microsoft Places relies on that information to help people understand what is available and find spaces that meet their needs. If the information is out of date when you migrate it, Places can carry the same disconnect into the new experience.
Even something as simple as naming can create problems. If the same building appears under different names or abbreviations in your source data, Microsoft Places can treat those records as separate locations. Consistency across the information you are migrating is just as important as checking it against the physical space.
A less-than-ideal workplace experience is only part of the risk. Problems discovered after migration can also create rework and unplanned project costs. Floor plans in Places are tied to the building hierarchy, so correcting issues later can mean revisiting mapping work and uploading updated information. Before you migrate, compare your source data with the physical workplace it is meant to represent.
Planning Places Without Cross-Functional Input
A Microsoft Places migration requires decisions that no single team can make in isolation. Your technical team may be responsible for configuring the platform, but other parts of the business understand what the workplace needs to support.
HR or People teams may have requirements around flexible working, privacy and accessibility. Facilities knows how the physical estate is being used today, which may look very different from the original design. Individual departments can also have their own requirements for rooms, desks and other spaces based on how their teams work.
Before you begin the migration, identify which teams need to inform workplace decisions and bring that input together into a consistent set of requirements. That puts the right people behind the decisions while giving IT a shared framework to configure in Places.
Without alignment, Places can end up reflecting assumptions rather than how the organisation actually operates, making it harder to apply standards across teams and locations.
Moving Forward Without Microsoft Places Expertise
Even with the right internal teams involved, someone still has to translate those workplace decisions into an actual Places deployment. Seek guidance from people or organisations with hands-on experience across Microsoft Places planning, migration and ongoing operations. A broader perspective can help you make decisions with the full lifecycle in mind, including how Places connects with Microsoft 365. Future scale and support should be considered before launch as well.
3 Must-Dos for Your Microsoft Places Migration
Start with a Workplace Assessment
A strong migration plan starts with a clear picture of where you are today. Understanding your current collaboration setup, where the gaps are and what needs attention first gives you a more informed basis for the decisions that follow. It also helps separate what needs to change before migration from what can be addressed as part of the rollout.
AVI-SPL’s Modern Workplace Assessment brings your IT and business leaders together with our specialists to review your collaboration ecosystem. You receive a future-readiness report identifying strengths, gaps and opportunities, along with a roadmap for what to prioritise next. The assessment includes a Microsoft Places briefing from a London-based Microsoft MVP.
Learn What Microsoft Places Can Do for Your Workplace
Understanding Places on paper is different from seeing how it works in day-to-day use. A practical workshop can help you explore how employees use Places to plan where they work, find and book desks or rooms, and use capabilities connected with Outlook and Copilot. It can also give you a clearer view of licensing, product limitations and other considerations that may affect how Places fits your organisation.
For a closer look, join AVI-SPL’s Rob Watts, Senior UCC Engineer, and Chris Fitzsimmons, Senior Solutions Architect, both Microsoft MVPs, for a Microsoft Places demo at VIBE London on 24 September 2026.
Consider the Scale and Support You Need
Before you move forward, consider how far your Microsoft Places deployment needs to reach and what kind of support model will make sense over time. A single-office rollout has different requirements from a multi-country deployment, particularly when it comes to local knowledge and support after launch.
AVI-SPL combines global delivery with local, in-country support. Organisations can take a coordinated approach to scaling Microsoft Places while keeping support close to the individual locations and physical spaces the platform represents.
Get More From Your Workplace
Microsoft Places can help people make better use of the workplace while giving facilities teams a clearer view of how space is actually being used. Utilisation data can inform decisions about capacity and future space planning.
AVI-SPL brings workplace insight and technical expertise together to guide your planning and migration. Contact AVI-SPL to discuss how Microsoft Places can help your organisation.
