As an applicant whose AOR e-mail from the CIO got lost and who learned about the AOR 9 days before the end of the deadline by sheer dumb luck, here's my 2 cents:
After your cheque has been cashed, start gathering the required documents, especially the ones that may take some time to obtain (police certificates etc.), even if you haven't received the AOR yet. Take the necessary language exams if you haven't already. If your documents are neither in English or French, also find yourself an affordable certified translator and talk to him about how long it will take to translate and notarize all the required documents once you receive your AOR. However, try to be patient and refrain from contacting the CIO until about 3 months have passed from the time your cheque was cashed and you still haven't received your AOR yet. Unnecessary enquiries will just occupy resources at the CIO which will delay processing of applications for everyone including yourself. If you still haven't heard from them after 3 months, call the CIC hotline 1-888-242‑2100. This number can be called from inside Canada only. So either have a friend in Canada do it for you or get yourself a Canadian phone line over the Internet (a Canadian Voice over IP provider should do the trick). Make sure you or the person calling has a copy of the entire application you sent to the CIO as the call centre agent will ask some questions in order to confirm your identity. You'll get an immediate answer on the status of your application, your application's file number and the exact deadline by which your full documents have to be sent to your local visa office. There should still be at least a month left at this point. If you have prepared everything the way I've described, there should be more than enough time for the document translation job and for sending the final documents to the local visa office.
Some people also suggested to contact the local visa office and ask them about the status of the application. I've tried that as well but unfortunately received incorrect information from them. If I had followed their advice, my deadline would have passed and the application most likely be returned to me without further processing. So getting the information from your local visa office seems to be somewhat unreliable.