First of all, a quick overview of the structure of the report. The tabs are made in sections. I’ll go into more detail for some of the below, but overall it looks like this.

Let’s say you’re launching an onboarding campaign to get more of your users to use Skype for Business. We ignore why you want to accomplish this right now and just suppose you have good reasons.
It’s relevant to know if your campaign simply makes active users use Skype even more after the campaign or if there are new users who join the service.
On the Adoption Overview tab you can follow the progress visually at the top! (Worth noting is that this is a preview. The figures might not always summed up right now).

Tick Skype in the filter to only view Skype for Business. Here you will first see a turquoise pile showing all users with a license that allows them to use Skype for Business. The black bar shows the total number of active users.
The red bar shows recurring users. Simply those who work with Skype continuously month over month.
Yellow bar indicates the users who use Skype for Business for the first time this month!

When you run your campaign to increase the use of Skype for new users, you simply want to see higher yellow bars as your work progresses.
Of course, you’ll an keep eye on the red and black bar as well, so you’re sure to keep your usage over time.

Below the graph there is a matrix if you would rather look at the numbers than charts.

You can also hover over that matrix (or click on it) and you’ll see three dots in the right-hand corner. Click these to export the data to Excel where you can build own graphs or work with the data itself.

If you scroll right to the bottom of the report tabs, there are those that end with User Activity.
I have described these tabs as just showing utility at the individual level.

Let’s continue the example where we want to increase the use of Skype in your business. Here we can see who’s using Skype today, what features they use and who is not using Skype at all!
This is very relevant! Scary, says some, but keep in mind that we cannot really see who is talking to who or what is written in the chat, for example. We can only see the number of activities.
So, why is that relevant? Several reasons! I list some as own headings below.

Everyone does not have the same basis, everyone does not have the same needs and everyone does not have the same starting point.
A certain type of role in your company does not have the same desktop work on a computer in an office as another might have. Everyone does not participate in as many meetings and everyone does not have the same prerequisites for how, in this case, Skype for Business works.

Based on these numbers, you can help determine who may need a certain type of onboarding to extract maximum value in their daily lives. Who uses Skype very much, but never book any skype meetings? Do you judge that their everyday life should be simplified by booking Skype meetings? Find 10 such individuals and contact them. Suddenly, it does not feel that big and you do not have to take on all of your users and reach out to everyone at the same time. A little step forward is better than waiting for a big step that is never taken.

We often focus on those who do not use the product at all. We chase those who can be considered bad. Those who need to change their behavior.
A Champions is the opposite! A person who fully utilizes the product, who today fully extracts the value of the service and whose working day is probably easier as a result.
You will want to find these people because they can help you! In our example, these people benefit greatly from Skype in their work. They chat, book meetings and attend meetings, they may use Skype to call and share the screen instead of calling on the phone. Things are going faster and they get more time over to do other things than communicating. Above all, they already know about this! They see the benefits and understand why Skype makes their lives easier. That means you do not need to take the dialogue to convince these people about Skype’s excellence, but instead you can focus the dialogue on how to make others come to the same insight.
Your Champions should preferable work at all different locations and levels in the business to provide the best possible spread. Honor your champions, show that you appreciate their dedication and see it as obviously to reward their high usage as it is to support those who have not yet started.

If we leave our example for a second and instead think we have lots of active users already, we can look at how it’s actually used.
Let’s say that 80% of our users use Skype and are active users. We strike our chest and feel a certain pride!
But it turns out that 95% of these active users have never booked a Skype meeting or even called into one. They use the chat function to communicate but nothing more.
Understand me right here, I love the chat feature in Skype, and advocate that it will be used instead of all these short emails you might get: “coffee at 15, are you coming?”, “Can you get over and help me with a thing,” ” I’m in conference room 1, are you coming here? “.

The advantage in this scenario is that many are already comfortable with Skype and its interfaces! It’s easier to show new features in the product that your users may not discover themselves without a little support, than teaching them a product that they have never seen before.
Find your champions, get their help and try to reach those who have already come a long way in their Skype journey. You will see that many will follow on their own will because they also want more time for other things.

Some argue that people are lazy by default. I would rather say that people want to find the way that requires the least amount of effort to achieve the greatest results. This is what you want for your users. A better way then the one they are currently on, so that they will change. Not because you tell them to, but because they want to by themselves.

The User adoption by product tab can be used for more than license optimization, but I’ll try to keep a little focus here.
The reason I love this tab is because of a filter! It’s still not quite correctly named, but again this is a preview.
The filter box at the bottom right shows users active in a certain combination of products. EXO, for example, stands for Exchange Online. Here you can select all users who use only Exchange Online and nothing else.
(Note that the report classifies users based on the previous full month).
Here you have great opportunities for licensing optimization. Users active in Exchange Online and OneDrive for Business may perform full well with the E1 license instead of E3. You can save money by downgrading them and they would never notice any difference.
Or you could use this tab to locate users that really needs onboarding!
Other users use all products or you have users who you think would appreciate the E5 license. Now, you suddenly have the opportunity to issue E5 licenses without increasing the total license cost.

At the bottom of the list is a filter called User inactive in all O365. I recommend that you look at that list once a month to see who used to be completely inactive the previous month to keep the environment clean.

As for the downgrade from E3 to E1, I would also like to remind you that the E3 license includes Office Pro Plus. If it is installed with the user you want to downgrade, you might need to resolve it through an Office Pro Plus add-on license separately.

I myself have done a number of activities to further improve the report. It’s not very difficult and if you’re stuck, we’re just a call or email away. These down here are some examples

No matter how much I endorse the adoption report, even I cannot claim that its dashboard that comes from Microsoft is particularly good. Honestly, a more chaotic report would be hard to find!
Click on “My Workspace” on the right to bring up the top right-hand button called “Create”. Choose to create your own dashboard.
You can name it “My overview” for example.

Here you now have your own area that you can fill with relevant data. The rest of it you’ll just ignore!

Open your new dashboard on the left side. At the top right you can now add your own content to structure your workspace. Choose, for example, an image with a logo or text block to describe the charts you choose to pin.

Go back to the adoption report and select the things that you personally consider relevant. For example, you can enter the adoption overview tab, hover over the box called “Last month active users” and tap the small pin in the upper right corner. A new box pops up and here you choose to attach the information to your new dashboard you created.

That’s really how easy it is! Review the tabs and select the blocks you are interested in following. When viewing anomalies, just tap the box in your dashboard to get directly to the report page where you see al the information. In this way, you can get an overview at first and when you want to analyze the data, touch the chart or number to get to the report where you can really dig down properly.

Do you want to build a similar dashboard as in my demo here I have listed all the blocks I pinned as below.

Villes demo dashboard
Adoption overview – Last month active users
Adoption overview – adoption overview
Product usage – Last mont: % of users active in a product
Communication – Total emails received
Communication – Total emails sent
Collaboration – Total files in OneDrive for Business
Collaboration – Total files in SharePoint Sites
Office Activation – Latest: Enabled/Activated users
Office Activation – Latest: Total Office activations
Skype for Business-User activity – Skype for Business ten most active departments

Your new dashboard is automatically adapted to your mobile at this time. You just need to install the app, log in and there you now have your dashboard “My Overview”.
Now you can easily answer when your colleague asks how the adoption project goes while you wait for coffee or you’ll find out everything is in order when you’re still in the elevator on your way to your office.