What it is
The Implementation Plan is the full-platform rollout checklist: 138 items across 17 phases, ordered so that finishing one phase unlocks the next. It lives at TATER Manage → Implementation Plan.
It is the broader sibling of two narrower things you may already be using:
- The Environment Setup Wizard gets a tenant to the point where TATER works - identity, scanning, the agent, notifications.
- An Implementation Guide walks one specific initiative end to end - "require MFA for all users via Conditional Access", say - with pilot, exclusions and rollout sequence.
- The Implementation Plan is the whole engagement: it contains both of the above as items, plus everything neither of them covers - the GRC program, the Ops queue, federal ATO, MSP multi-org, the ongoing cadence.
Nothing is duplicated between them. An item that another feature already tracks is composed, not re-entered.
Quick Start - the required minimum
The first six phases contain a pinned Quick Start subset: 26 non-optional items that constitute the required minimum for a working, useful tenant. Everything below Quick Start is progressive feature adoption - real value, but not a blocker to going live.
Quick Start is derived, not hand-picked: an item is core when it sits in one of the first six phases and is not marked optional. That means adding an optional item to an early phase cannot silently enlarge the required set, and the Quick Start count moves only when the plan's own shape changes.
Most clients clear Quick Start in two to four weeks. When every Quick Start item is done, the organization earns its plan-completion achievement (see Community & Gamification).
The 17 phases
| # | Phase | Items | In Quick Start |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kickoff & Prerequisites | 6 | 6 |
| 2 | Identity & Access Foundation | 7 | 4 |
| 3 | Compliance Scanning Setup | 6 | 5 |
| 4 | Endpoint Fleet Deployment | 5 | 4 |
| 5 | Communications & Integrations | 7 | 1 |
| 6 | Governance Baseline | 9 | 6 |
| 7 | Security Hardening Initiatives | 10 | - |
| 8 | GRC Program | 19 | - |
| 9 | TATER Ops / ITSM | 24 | - |
| 10 | Endpoint Management & Monitoring | 8 | - |
| 11 | Reporting, Insights & Trust | 5 | - |
| 12 | AI & MCP | 5 | - |
| 13 | End-User Self-Service & Collaboration | 9 | - |
| 14 | Federal / ATO Pipeline | 4 | - |
| 15 | MSP / Multi-Org Management | 3 | - |
| 16 | Data Protection & Security Extras | 5 | - |
| 17 | Ongoing Operations & Cadence | 6 | - |
52 of the 138 items are marked optional - they depend on what the client bought and what they actually run, and leaving one at todo forever is a legitimate outcome rather than an unfinished rollout.
Item status: todo, done, skip, n/a
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
todo | Not started, or in progress. The default for every item. |
done | Completed. Counts toward the phase, Quick Start and overall totals. |
skip | Deliberately not doing this one for this client. Counted separately from done, so a skipped item never inflates the completion figure but also never sits in the remaining pile. |
na | Not applicable to this environment at all. |
Skip is not a quiet form of done, and the distinction is deliberate: the header reports done, skipped and remaining as three separate numbers, so "we are 80% through" and "we decided not to do a fifth of it" never get confused for one another in a status meeting.
Each item also carries a free-text note (up to 4,000 characters) - use it for the decision behind a skip, the ticket number, or who is waiting on whom. Clearing the note text removes it.
Composed items are read-only here
35 of the 138 items are composed - their status is resolved live from the system that already owns them, and cannot be set on this page:
- 27 items are backed by the Setup Wizard. Their state comes from the wizard's own live probes, so "Connect the Entra ID Tenant" reflects a tenant that is genuinely connected rather than a checkbox someone ticked.
- 8 items are backed by an Implementation Guide, and additionally report
in-progress- a guide with some steps done but no completion date shows as partially underway rather than as untouched.
These render read-only, and an attempt to write one through the API is rejected with the name of the tool that does own it, rather than silently ignored. Update the wizard step or the guide and this page reflects it on the next load.
A rollout checklist that keeps its own copy of "is the agent deployed?" drifts from reality the first time someone re-images a fleet. Composing the answer from the feature that can actually measure it means the plan cannot claim something the platform can see is untrue.
Working the plan
- Filter by keyword or by status to work one slice at a time - "everything still todo in the GRC phase" is the common view during a weekly call.
- Staff notes appear on many items: short internal guidance for whoever is running the engagement (what to have ready before the call, which failure mode to expect). They are written for the implementer, not the client.
- Help links on an item point at the guide that explains it, so the plan doubles as a reading order for the documentation.
- Import brings in progress from the standalone offline checklist this feature grew out of. That artifact keys items by position; the import translates those keys to the permanent item identifiers used here. Anything that does not translate - a stale export taken against an older plan version, or hand-edited JSON - is reported back to you by name rather than guessed at, and composed items are rejected exactly as they would be on a normal update.
Read-only share links
Rollout status is usually the thing a client's board or an MSP's prospect most wants to see, and is usually the thing they have no login for. An Admin can mint a read-only share link that exposes the plan's status - and nothing else - to anyone holding the URL, with no TATER account.
- Links carry an expiry and can be given a label so you can tell several apart.
- Any link can be revoked immediately.
- The raw token is shown once, at creation. Listing links afterwards shows only a non-secret handle - the secret is never re-displayed, and never appears in a list response.
- Every failure - malformed, unknown, revoked, expired - returns the same response, so a holder cannot probe the difference between "never existed" and "existed and was revoked".
Treat a share link like the URL it is: anyone who has it can read the plan's status. Set the shortest expiry that covers the conversation, and revoke it when the engagement moves on.
Roles
| Action | Minimum role |
|---|---|
| View the plan and its status | Auditor |
| Set item status / notes, import a snapshot | Admin |
| Mint, list or revoke a share link | Admin |
| Open a share link | Nobody - it is unauthenticated and read-only by design |
Progress updates are written to the activity log, so a status change is attributable after the fact.
MCP tool reference
Both tools call the same code as the page - there is no second implementation to drift, which is the specific failure this feature was built to avoid.
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
get_implementation_plan_status | The whole plan for the active org: every item with its phase, status, optional/core flags and note, plus per-phase, Quick Start and overall totals. Auditor+. |
update_implementation_plan_progress | Partial update - send only the items you are changing. Composed items and unknown item names come back in a rejected list with the reason, rather than failing the whole call. Admin. |
Related
- Environment Setup Wizard - the narrower "get the tenant working" checklist, and the source of 27 composed items
- Implementation Guides - step-by-step initiative walkthroughs, and the source of 8 composed items
- MSP Tenant Setup - the access and prerequisites Phase 1 asks you to gather
- Getting Started - the five-minute orientation Phase 1 recommends
- MCP setup - connecting Claude Desktop / API to TATER