Playbook: Responding to a Critical Meeting Platform Sunset

When a meeting platform disappears: your operational playbook for an emergency migration

Hook: Vendor change is not a theory—it's a cost, a risk, and a calendar headache. If your team depends on a meeting or VR platform that’s being discontinued, you have days or weeks, not months. This playbook gives the exact, prioritized steps operations leaders need to preserve meeting continuity, export and secure data, and execute a clean cutover with minimal disruption.

Quick summary (what to do first)

• Lock decisions in the first 72 hours: inventory users, critical meeting types, and legal/data obligations.
• Start exports immediately: recordings, calendars, participant lists, chat logs, and any shared assets.
• Communicate a contingency plan: tell stakeholders the timeline and expected interruption window.
• Stand up a cutover zone: a staging environment and a dedicated “war room” channel for rapid escalation.

Why this matters now (2025–2026 context)

Late 2025 and early 2026 have been a turning point: large vendors have consolidated roadmaps, and several major product lines—especially in immersive workspaces—were cut. A notable example: Meta announced in January 2026 it is discontinuing Horizon Workrooms and stopping commercial sales of headsets and managed services. The announcement left many IT and operations teams scrambling for export paths and continuity strategies.

“Meta has made the decision to discontinue Workrooms as a standalone app, effective February 16, 2026.” — vendor notice (public help pages, Jan 2026)

The lesson: vendor dependency without a migration playbook creates business risk. The market in 2026 favors resilient architectures—open standards, portable data, and contingency-oriented procurement.

The migration playbook: Steps, timelines, and templates

Below is a prioritized, operational playbook you can execute. Each phase lists owners, outputs, and time targets so your team can move fast and stay auditable.

Phase 0 — Emergency standup (0–72 hours)

Goal: stop the bleeding and create a single source of truth. This is triage.

1. Activate the response team — two leaders: an executive sponsor (CIO/COO) and an operations lead (IT/Head of Meetings). Add reps: Legal, Security/Privacy, Procurement, Communications, and a Product/DeskOps owner.
2. Create a war room — Slack/Microsoft Teams channel, shared drive folder, and a single confluence/Google Doc named: "Platform Sunset — [Vendor] Response".
3. Publish an initial stakeholder notice — 24-hour acknowledgment that you’re working a plan and an expected update window (48–72 hours). Use plain language and include a contact.
4. Inventory critical usage — map top 20 meetings by frequency and business impact (all-hands, sales demos, customer sessions, compliance training, VR-specific workflows). Prioritize by risk: customer-facing + compliance first.

Phase 1 — Data & asset preservation (0–7 days, top priority)

Goal: secure all exports before the vendor cuts access. This is non-negotiable.

1. Check vendor exit obligations and timelines — review the vendor announcement, contracts, and SLAs. Document export APIs, file format support, and any “data hold” windows.
2. Start data export tasks immediately — assign IPs for each data type:
   • Recordings & video assets — request highest-fidelity exports available (MP4, WAV, original frame rate).
   • Chat logs and transcripts — JSON or CSV with timestamps and participant IDs.
   • Calendar & scheduling data — .ics exports and participant lists (match to internal directory IDs).
   • Permissions and role mappings — snapshot of admin roles and group memberships.
   • Analytics and usage reports — export historical meeting metrics (attendance, duration, engagement).
   • Device inventories (for VR) — serial numbers, license keys, and warranty/lease data.
3. Use scripted automation where possible — run API exports in parallel; use pagination and rate-limit handling. Export into secure object storage (S3 or equivalent vault) with versioning and retention policies.
4. Validate exports — spot-check files, run automated integrity checks (checksums), and log export completion in the war room doc.

Phase 2 — Continuity & temporary fixes (3–14 days)

Goal: keep meetings running while you evaluate replacements.

1. Define minimum viable continuity (MVC) — what must keep working? (e.g., customer demos, sales calls, board meetings, compliance training). For each MVC meeting, assign a temporary platform and owner.
2. Map integrations — list calendar systems, SSO providers, CRM hooks, transcription services, and conferencing gateways that must stay connected. Prioritize integrations by MVC list.
3. Deploy temporary alternatives — use existing platforms in your stack first (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex). If you lack licenses, request emergency purchase or vendor free tiers for short periods.
4. Set meeting templates — publish interim agenda templates, links, and best practices to ensure consistency across temporary platforms.
5. Communicate changes — calendar owners must send updates with new links, access instructions, and a brief FAQ for attendees (authentication, recording policy, support contacts).

Phase 3 — Evaluate replacements (7–30 days)

Goal: select a long-term replacement with clear integration and risk profile.

1. Create a decision matrix — evaluate against criteria: security & compliance, integration depth, data portability, cost of migration, vendor stability, and device support (for VR: headset compatibility, managed services availability).
2. Run proof-of-concept (PoC) — pick 2–3 finalists and test real workflows: schedule 7–10 pilot meetings that mirror MVC cases. Record metrics: setup time, attendance friction, recording quality, analytics availability.
3. Check legal & procurement — run quick vendor risk assessments (security certifications, privacy policies, contractual exit terms). Negotiate contractual clauses for data portability and reasonable notice windows.
4. Plan integrations — document required connectors: calendars, SSO, CRM, LMS, transcription, and reporting endpoints. Estimate engineering effort and acceptance tests.

Phase 4 — Plan the cutover (30–90 days depending on scale)

Goal: execute a controlled migration with rollback options and clear owner responsibilities.

1. Define the cutover window — choose low-activity hours; align with critical stakeholders and global teams.
2. Build a cutover checklist — an operational runbook for the cutover day that includes pre-flight checks, migration tasks, verification steps, and rollback triggers.
3. Sample cutover checklist items:
   • Confirm final exports and backups completed and checksums match.
   • Deactivate auto-provisioning in the retiring platform at T-minus 2 hours.
   • Migrate calendar invites and meeting links in batches (by team or meeting type).
   • Update SSO and OAuth app registrations, rotate secrets if needed.
   • Run acceptance tests for recordings, analytics ingestion, and CRM integration.
   • Publish support channels and escalate criteria.
4. Pre-authorize rollbacks — define exact rollback steps and decision criteria (e.g., >10% failed meetings or critical integration failures). Only the executive sponsor can call a rollback.
5. Train and certify hosts — short instructor-led sessions and recorded micro-training for hosts and admins. Provide “host checklists” for the first two weeks post-cutover.

Phase 5 — Post-cutover operations and measurement (Day 1–90)

Goal: stabilize operations, reconcile data, and capture lessons learned.

1. Monitor KPIs weekly — meeting uptime, failed joins, recording completion rate, average setup time, and user satisfaction (pulse survey after meeting).
2. Reconcile exports — ensure historical records were successfully re-linked or archived. For customer-facing recordings, confirm availability in long-term storage or in the new platform.
3. Document playbooks — update internal runbooks with vendor lessons, new templates, and the final cutover report.
4. Conduct a post-mortem — 30–60 days after cutover, run a formal retrospective with stakeholders and publish the 10-minute executive summary and a risk register update.

Operational templates & quick-copy communication samples

Use these templates to speed execution. Drop them into your war room doc and tailor as needed.

Initial stakeholder notice (24 hours)

Subject: Vendor platform sunset — our immediate plan and contact

We have received vendor’s notice that [Platform] will be discontinued on [date]. Our team is executing a migration playbook to secure data and maintain meeting continuity. Expect an update by [48–72 hrs]. For urgent issues, contact [name/email].

MVC meeting owner checklist (for temporary continuity)

• Confirm new meeting link (platform) created
• Update invite and test with 2 pilot attendees
• Verify recording/transcript policy and storage location
• Share host checklist and support contact

Cutover runbook snippet (abridged)

1. T-minus 24h: final export confirmation
2. T-minus 2h: disable new meeting creations in retiring platform
3. T-minus 1h: provision new platform SSO & calendar integration
4. T0: migrate a 5% pilot set and validate
5. T+2h: migrate remaining batches in 30–60 min windows
6. T+24h: full monitoring report and post-cutover FAQ

Risk register (top risks and mitigations)

• Loss of recordings: Mitigate by immediate exports to immutable storage and redundant copies.
• Auth/SSO mismatch: Mitigate with staged SSO rollouts and pre-cutover testing accounts.
• CRM/link breakage: Use middleware or mapping scripts to transfer meeting IDs and metadata.
• Device orphaning (VR headsets): Track serials, warranty and lease details; evaluate resale vs. repurpose vs. disposal policies.
• User confusion: Mitigate with daily status updates, clear FAQs, and dedicated support hours for two weeks.

Case study: AtlasOps (how a mid-market ops team handled a VR platform sunset)

AtlasOps, a 350-person logistics provider, relied on a VR collaboration platform for daily warehouse walkthroughs and quarterly safety training. When the vendor announced a shutdown with a 30-day exit window, AtlasOps executed the playbook above. Key outcomes:

• Started exports within 24 hours; 98% of recordings recovered in original quality.
• Identified MVC meetings (safety inspections, customer demos) and migrated them to hybrid video calls with shared 360° panoramas stored in object storage.
• Negotiated a 60-day extended access with the vendor for a fee, buying time for a controlled cutover.
• Result: zero missed regulatory training hours and a 12% decrease in meeting setup time after migration due to standardized templates.

AtlasOps’ biggest lesson: people & process beat features. They prioritized continuity and data ownership over feature parity and moved quickly on exports and comms.

Advanced strategies (2026 trends & future-proofing)

As of 2026, organizations should plan vendor-agnostic meeting architectures. Here are advanced tactics to reduce future migration cost and friction.

• Adopt open export standards: require vendors to provide machine-readable metadata, transcripts in standard formats (e.g., WebVTT, SRT, JSON), and raw recording files.
• Layer middleware: use integration platforms (iPaaS) to decouple business logic from meeting vendors. That reduces rework when switching vendors.
• Contract for portability: add clause for export assistance, extended access windows, and escrow for critical meeting assets in commercial agreements.
• Inventory and rationalize the stack yearly: 2025 saw tool sprawl costs grow—prune underused tools and consolidate where possible to reduce future vendor-change surface area.
• Test vendor exits in your tabletop exercises: include platform sunset scenarios in continuity planning and run simulated cutovers annually.

Checklist: Must-do’s before the vendor’s shutdown date

• Export all recordings, transcripts, and chat logs and store in secure object storage (immutable versions).
• Snapshot calendar invites and participant lists; update internal directory mappings.
• Document active integrations and data flows; create at least one mapping script for each.
• Notify external customers with a tailored message for any customer-facing meeting types.
• Confirm legal retention obligations and place holds if required for eDiscovery.
• Run a pilot migration and validate end-to-end workflows.

Measuring success: KPIs to track during and after migration

• Meeting continuity rate: % of scheduled critical meetings executed without interruption.
• Data completeness: % of recordings and transcripts successfully exported and validated.
• User friction score: pulse survey for hosts and attendees (scale 1–5) for the first 30 days.
• Integration fail rate: % of failed CRM/calendar/sso operations post-cutover.
• Time-to-provision: average time for a new meeting to be scheduled and tested on the new platform.

Final play: the contingency & escalation ladder

Even with a perfect plan, expect surprises. Use an escalation ladder with clear tiers and decision rights:

• Tier 1 (Ops): war room handles procedural issues and standard fixes.
• Tier 2 (Security/Legal): invoked for data loss, breach, or compliance exposure.
• Tier 3 (Exec Sponsor): invoked to authorize rollbacks, emergency vendor extensions, or customer notifications.

Takeaways — what to do right now

• Do not assume access will continue. Export now and validate—exports are the single most valuable asset in any sunset.
• Prioritize continuity over feature parity. Move critical meetings to reliable alternatives first, then iterate for parity.
• Use contracts to demand portability in the future. Negotiate exit assistance and export obligations in vendor agreements going forward.
• Document everything and run a post-mortem. Capture lessons learned and update your vendor risk register.

Closing — a practical call to action

Platform sunsets like the one announced in January 2026 are a reminder: meetings are mission-critical infrastructure. If you don’t have a tested migration playbook, build one now—starting with an immediate data export and a 72-hour war room. Need a ready-made cutover checklist, communication templates, or a migration decision matrix tailored to your stack? Contact our meetings.top operations team for a 30-minute audit and a customizable migration kit you can deploy today.

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