An IT checklist for moving into a new office

IT gets remembered last

When a business moves into a new office, the furniture, the signage and the move date all get planned. IT is usually remembered about a fortnight before, and it’s the thing that decides whether anyone can work on the first morning.

Here’s the order we’d tackle it in.

Before you move in

• Order the internet line early. Ask your provider how long installation takes before you fix a move date. It’s rarely something you can speed up at the last minute.
• Do the cabling before the walls and desks are finished. Running cable into a finished office is slower, messier and more expensive to make good afterwards. Work out how many points you need: one per desk, plus printers, phones, cameras and wireless access points, plus a few spares. Our structured cabling page explains how we do it.
• Decide where the equipment lives. Switches, the router and any server need a socket nearby, some ventilation, and room to get at them. A sealed cupboard with no air is a bad place for anything that runs all day.
• Plan the Wi-Fi from the floor plan. One router in the corner rarely covers a whole office. Access points work best when they’re placed to suit the layout, which is easier when you plan them with the cabling.
• Choose your phones. Desk phones, software phones and app phones all exist, on a self-hosted or cloud system. See business phone systems.
• Think about cameras and door access now. They need cabling as well, so it’s much simpler to do it in the same visit as everything else.

In the first week

• Set up accounts and email for everyone. And make sure the admin logins are held by the business, written down somewhere safe, and not just in one person’s head.
• Switch backups on from day one. Then test restoring a file, before you actually need to. There’s a quick way to do this in our backup check.
• Configure the firewall and install updates. New devices are often a few updates behind out of the box.
• Get the printers working from every desk. It’s always the printers.
• Write one page down. What’s installed where, who supplies each service, when it renews and who to call. You’ll be glad of it in a year.

Pick someone to call before something breaks

It’s much easier to choose IT support when everything’s working than when the network has dropped out during a client meeting. We handle cabling, Wi-Fi, firewalls, CCTV and access control, phone systems and servers as one team, on fixed quotes, and the people who set it up are the people who support it. So you’re not explaining your setup to a stranger later.

If you’re planning a move, tell us about the new space and we’ll say what we’d do. Or have a look at IT support to see how that side works.