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Documentation Tips
Just like almost everything else we've talked about in this series, when it comes to Knowledge Bases (KBs) and Processes, there are many ways to structure your documentation. We get asked a lot of questions around best practices for KBs and Processes (too many to cover here), and these are some of the ones we'll cover in this blog:
- Where do I store KBs for my own company and when do I use client vs global KBs?
- What are templates and how do I effectively utilize them?
- What do you use the onboarding process for?
Just like with other items in Hudu, the flexibility of the tool provides you multiple ways in which you can do this and this blog post will go through a few strategies we have seen work well for our customers.
Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll focus on providing information that you can choose to implement within your organization to assist with building your documentation structure. The strategies we’ve outlined below are collected directly from all of our clients and are proven ways that they improved their structure with Hudu.
Client KB vs Global KB vs Internal KBs
Having a strong set of knowledge base articles is only useful if all of your employees know where those articles live. Hudu gives you the ability to store these knowledge base articles in multiple different ways. Sometimes, a KB may be useful only for one company you manage, sometimes it may be applicable to all managed companies, and other times, a KB might only apply to your own internal company.Success Strategies
1. Use the client specific KB section for all articles that serve as direct reference documentation for that company. If you have an article that is only applicable to a few companies, you could also use client specific KBs for these, but most clients would use Global KBs for any article applicable to more than one company.
2. Add all articles that could be applicable to any company at the Global KB level. As stated in number 1 above, you may chose to add articles to the global KB that are only applicable to a few companies as well, or you could put those in the client specific KB.
3. A question we get asked by many customers is where to store internal KB's. Should I store them in the Global KB section or in my own internal company created in Hudu? Just like other things we've talked about, neither is wrong. The main thing you should be thinking about is where your technicians would look first for these. If you have an internal company for some information, but then are storing your documents in the global KB, it's not as intuitive for your techs. Vice versa would also apply. Creating your own internal company in Hudu gives your techs a better idea that they are internal documents only - adding to the company can serve as a 'tag' for 'internal only'.
KB Templates
There are many different areas in Hudu where you can create templates for re-use to help organize and structure your documentation. One of those areas in which templates can be created is the KB section. Create KB templates to standardize the way your articles are written. Once an article is created (at either the global OR client level), you have the ability to designate the article as a template. Doing so allows you to create articles, starting from an exact copy of an existing template article.
Success Strategies
Success Strategy: Create standarized templates in the formatting you want your team to use. Ideally, create several templates for every type of document and every scenario you can think of. Review these periodically to ensure your templates are working to create the KB articles you want.
Global Process Templates
Just like KB's, you can also create templates for your processes in Hudu to reuse across multiple clients. Global processes are created and edited in the exact fashion as normal, client-specific processes; but can be accessed and re-used easily across all client spaces.
Success Strategies
Success Strategy: When you are first starting to create processes in Hudu, start at the global level. You may have processes for onboarding, offboarding, new users, new computers, etc. All of these can be standardized to ensure reproducible results from any technician that is going to complete one of your processes.
Onboarding/Offboarding Processes
Having good processes for onboarding and offboarding can be critical for ensuring a seamless transition for employees either joining or leaving a company (and/or clients starting or stopping with your service).
Success Strategies
1. Create process templates in Hudu specifically for your onboarding and offboarding SOP's.
2. For processes in Hudu that directly relate to onboarding, mark them as an "Onboarding Process". This will mark the processes as onboarding processes when activated and automatically add them to the company overview page.
Wrapping it up
As we've said before (because it can't be said enough), there are many different methods to create quality documentation that can be used to save time and increase efficiency when navigating your documentation platform. We highlighted Knowledge Base and Processes in this blog but this concept can be applied across your documentation. As we talked about in this blog, templates can be a great method of standardizing your documentation and we recommend creating personalized templates for processes and KB's that your own organization uses frequently. We hope these strategies and tips useful for your platform and always remember that documentation is fluid and if your way isn't working, you can always try something else.Related Posts
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