writing effective documentation google it support

Writing Effective Documentation

Writing effective documentation >> technical support fundamentals.

1. Overview : Documentation is an important part of an IT Support Specialist role. It’s vital to document processes and policies not only for yourself but for your teammates that may encounter the same issue. This writing assessment will help you get in the habit of writing good documentation.

What You’ll Do : For this writing project, you will write documentation to explain the process of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to someone who has never seen one before. You’ll want to be detailed yet concise. Specifically, the documentation should have:

A description of the problem.
A description of the end result.
The solution detailed in a step-by-step manner.

Reference: https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Peanut-Butter-and-Jelly-Sandwich-4/

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Technical Documentation: What It Is and How to Do It Well

Published on Mar 18, 2024 in writing by Kumar Harsh 9 minute read

Have you ever felt puzzled by a confusing error message, found yourself navigating a new software program with difficulty, or wished for a simple guide to understand the instructions for your latest gadget? If you have, then you’ve experienced the world of technical documentation, and it can be frustrating.

Technical documentation refers to comprehensive written guides and materials that explain the design, development, and usage of a system, software, or product, facilitating understanding, troubleshooting, and maintenance for users, developers, and other stakeholders.

Why is this important? Whether you’re someone who knows your way around technology, a homeowner figuring things out, or someone who is just trying to keep up with the digital world, clear technical documentation is crucial for your success. It gives you the tools to understand new technologies, solve issues with confidence, and make the most out of the products and processes you encounter.

In this article, you will explore the various types of technical documentation, delve into their diverse applications, and learn some essential tips for crafting your own clear and user-friendly technical guides.

What Is Technical Documentation

Technical documentation serves as the bridge between complex systems and the people who interact with them. It’s a vast umbrella term that covers any written material that explains the functionality, use, and inner workings of a product, service, or process. Technical documentation is written by technical writers in collaboration with subject matter experts (SMEs), and it comes in various forms:

Project documentation: This type of documentation consists of plans, specifications, and reports that track a project’s development, like software development lifecycle documents or engineering blueprints. It is usually meant for internal use of an organization’s teams.
Product documentation: This type of documentation is aimed at the end user, offering guides, tutorials, and FAQs that explain how to operate and troubleshoot a product, such as user manuals for smartphones or software help files.
Process documentation: This type of documentation outlines standardized procedures for internal operations, like quality control checklists or training materials for new employees.

The quality of technical documentation can greatly affect the user experience and productivity, irrespective of whether these users are your external customers or internal employees. Here are a few other reasons why you should focus on creating good technical documentation:

Empowers users and developers: Clear instructions enable users to maximize product potential and equip developers with the knowledge to maintain and improve it.
Boosts efficiency and collaboration: Easily accessible documentation reduces time spent on explanations and enables seamless teamwork.
Documents internal knowledge: Documented decisions and processes build a historical record that is valuable for future reference and training.

How to Write Good Technical Documentation

Now that you understand what technical documentation is and why it’s important, it is time to learn some of the ways in which you can improve the quality of your technical documentation. This section will not go into the basics of how to write technical documentation but rather focus on some key tips you can use to improve the quality of your technical documentation.

Create an Easily Navigable Structure

The first thing any reader would notice when they come across your technical documentation is its structure. It is usually not possible for a reader to go through the entire documentation for a product or service to find what they are looking for, so having a structure that is easy to navigate and allows convenient searching of commonly used concepts or pages becomes very vital.

There are other benefits of keeping a simple, easily navigable structure for your technical documentation:

Reduced cognitive load: A well-organized document minimizes the mental effort users have to apply to search for information.
Improved findability: Clear headings, subheadings, and navigation elements direct users to specific sections quickly.
Enhanced scannability: Readers can easily skim the document to grasp its overall flow and identify relevant sections.
Increased engagement: Users are more likely to persist and complete tasks when they can find what they need easily.

Some changes you can make to your document’s structure to improve it include the following:

Clear table of contents: Provide a comprehensive overview of the document’s content and hierarchy.
Informative headings and subheadings: These act as anchors, guiding users to relevant sections.
Logical hierarchy: Information should be organized progressively, from general concepts to specific details.
Strategic use of formatting: Set in boldface key terms, use bullet points for lists, and use white space strategically to improve readability.
Integrated navigation elements: Use breadcrumbs, sidebars, and internal links to allow users to jump to different sections easily.

The Firebase documentation is a great example of a good structure that makes it possible to navigate through a huge knowledge base easily. The entire documentation for all products is first categorized based on the purpose of the services ( ie app development, release and monitor, or engagement):

Highest-level divisions in the Firebase documentation

Then as you go into each category, you find detailed docs arranged based on the individual services and the platforms that they work on:

Lower-level divisions in the Firebase documentation

Without such a hierarchy, it is very difficult to find what you’re looking for when you’re working with one of the many Firebase services.

Make Sure It’s Accessible, Jargon-Free, and Easy to Understand

Technical documentation usually consists of information that is entirely new to its target audience. In such a case, it becomes all the more important to present the information in a way that allows readers to understand it easily. Excessive use of technical jargon and complex language can make it difficult for new readers to quickly read and grasp the concepts. Simple language can also assist experienced users in quickly finding information, and your team members have to answer fewer questions from the users.

Here are a few key points you can keep in mind to make your technical documentation simpler:

Use plain language: Avoid overly technical terms and opt for everyday equivalents. For example, replace utilize with use and parameterize with set .
Embrace active voice: It makes your writing more engaging and easier to follow. For example, instead of saying “The button is to be clicked,” say “Click the button.”
Define key terms: Introduce and explain technical terms the first time they appear. Consider using a glossary for quick reference.
Write concisely: Focus on essential information and avoid unnecessary details. Remember, less is often more.
Collect feedback from real users: Get feedback from people who represent your target audience. Their perspective highlights areas needing simplification.

Know Your Audience and Ensure the Documentation Has the Correct Level of Depth

Imagine explaining intricate financial strategies to someone unfamiliar with finance—it can be overwhelming. Similarly, in technical documentation, understanding your audience is essential. Customizing your content to your audience’s specific needs and knowledge level is crucial for creating clear and impactful documents. This approach enhances the quality and effectiveness of your writing, ensuring it resonates with the audience and serves its purpose effectively.

Tailoring the writing style and depth to your audience’s understanding prevents confusion and frustration. Beginners require more explanation and context, while experts appreciate conciseness and technical details. Providing the right level of detail saves users time and effort, allowing them to quickly find and apply relevant information.

To do this, you need to first know your audience. Start by defining user personas and creating profiles representing different user types. Then conduct surveys, interviews, or usability tests to understand their needs, expectations, and technical knowledge. You could also look at user support tickets, forum discussions, and app analytics for insights into the user challenges and information needs.

Once you have a clear idea of who your audience is, customize your technical documentation to their technical understanding. Here’s a quick list of tips to help you get started:

Beginners: For beginners, focus on basic principles, provide step-by-step instructions, and clearly define technical terms. Be generous with visuals like screenshots and diagrams to enhance understanding.
Intermediate users: For a more experienced audience, offer more detailed explanations, introduce relevant technical vocabulary, and provide troubleshooting guides for common issues.
Advanced users: If you’re aiming for an advanced user base, you can assume prior knowledge, delve into complex technical details, and offer reference materials for further exploration.

In some cases, it might be hard to put your audience in just one of these categories. The Twilio documentation is a great example of this case. Twilio’s users encompass all technical levels, so Twilio provides a detailed glossary of concepts while offering interactive tutorials and guides to help everyone get started at their preferred pace:

The key is to know your users.

Include Examples, Visuals, and Interactive Elements

Technical documentation can often feel like a text-heavy slog, stranding readers in a sea of words. That’s where visuals, examples, and interactive elements become crucial. They aren’t just there for decoration; they’re powerful tools that can turn your documentation from boring to interesting, making it easier for readers to understand and remember the information.

Visuals and interactivity in technical documentation can help in catering to different lifestyles. As not everyone learns best by reading, visuals, like diagrams, screenshots, and videos, can explain complex concepts more intuitively, appealing to visual learners. More often than not, a wall of text can be intimidating.

Integrating visuals creates interesting breaks, making the document more scannable and engaging. Interactive elements like quizzes, simulations, and clickable tutorials allow readers to experiment and learn by doing, solidifying their understanding. Therefore, you should consider using visuals, examples, and interactive elements in your technical documents.

However, you must also remember not to overdo it. Always make sure that your visuals and interactive elements directly relate to the content and enhance understanding. Invest in high-resolution images and clear diagrams. Blurry or poorly designed visuals can hinder comprehension. When working with visuals, ensure all of them have alt text for screen readers and consider color contrast for visual impairments. Remember, interactive elements should engage, not overwhelm. Always balance their complexity with the target audience’s skills.

The Stripe documentation is one of the best examples of using interactive and visual elements to the fullest while not overdoing it. For instance, their Quickstart page on Stripe-hosted payments features a follow-along tutorial with interactive code blocks and preview windows to help you visualize what your integration’s final result will look like right on the documentation page itself:

Building such documentation requires great effort, but it pays as well. The key is to understand how your document can benefit from visual and interactive elements and make use of them effectively.

Periodically Update the Documentation

Creating technical documentation isn’t a write-it-once-and-forget-it task. The technology landscape, processes, and user expectations change quickly. To keep your documentation valuable and effective, it requires regular updates.

Outdated information in technical documents leads to confusion, frustration, and wasted time for users. Updating ensures that users have the right instructions and procedures at their fingertips. Additionally, new features, bug fixes, and changes in workflows need to be reflected in the documentation for users to stay on top of things. Also, regular updates demonstrate your commitment to maintaining high-quality resources and building trust and credibility with users.

To make sure you’re updating your technical documentation effectively, here are a few tips you can follow:

Establish a schedule: Set a regular review and update cycle based on the pace of change in your product or process.
Use version control: Implement a system to track changes and maintain previous versions for reference.
Seek user feedback: Actively look for feedback from users about outdated information or areas needing clarification.
Apply small, focused updates: Break down updates into manageable chunks, addressing specific changes rather than rewriting the entire document.

Clear technical documentation gives your users the tools to understand your technology, solve issues with confidence, and make the most out of the products and processes they encounter.

This article covered what technical documentation is, its various types, and its practical use cases. You also learned handy tips on how to create effective technical documentation.

If you want to dive deeper into this topic, check out websites like the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and the Microsoft Writing Style Guide for detailed guidelines and best practices around technical documentation and communication. Books such as The Art of Technical Documentation by Katherine Haramundanis l and Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry by Sun Technical Publications offer more in-depth insights. These resources can help you continue to refine your skills in creating user-friendly and effective technical documentation.

By Kumar Harsh

Kumar Harsh is an indie software developer and devrel enthusiast. He is a spirited writer who puts together content around popular web technologies like Serverless and JavaScript.

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writing effective documentation google it support

Creating effective technical documentation

Effective feature documentation is important in enhancing a user's experience with the feature. Good documentation is like a piece of the puzzle that makes everything click — the key for encouraging feature adoption.

To support you in creating effective technical documentation, this article provides an overview of the core principles of technical writing. It also highlights the best practices for creating clear and accessible documentation. Applying these technical writing principles helps us maintain the high quality of content on MDN. Whether you're documenting your own project or product or contributing to technical content in various settings, you can improve the quality of your work by following these best practices.

Adopt clarity, conciseness, and consistency

These three Cs form the core principles of technical writing. They can take you a long way in producing quality documentation.

For achieving clarity in your writing, apply the following guidelines:

Use simple words and clear language. Keep in mind the audience, especially if it includes non-native English speakers.
Be clear about who needs to perform the action. Writing in active voice is not strictly required. However, you should use it when you want to be clear about who needs to perform the action. For example, clarify whether a function is triggered by an event or if the user needs to explicitly call the function.
Clearly introduce and explain new terms. This helps to lay the foundation for concepts that are covered later in the documentation.

Replace "it", "this", and "these" with proper nouns if they can refer to more than one thing in the given context.

Aim for one idea per sentence to improve readability.
Stick to one main idea per paragraph. Each sentence in a paragraph should logically connect to the one before it. Imagine if each sentence in a paragraph was a link in a chain. If you pick up the first link, the other links in the chain should follow, forming a continuous sequence. This is how the sentences should connect to each other, ensuring a seamless flow of a single idea.

Conciseness

Keep sentences short. This automatically increases the readability and clarity of your document. It also helps in quick comprehension. Long sentences can be more challenging to understand quickly due to their complex structures.

Based on common readability standards, aim for 15-20 words per sentence.

For additional insights on sentence length and readability strategies, see Simple sentences (on https://readabilityguidelines.co.uk ) and Popular readability formulas , including the Flesch-Kincaid index, on Wikipedia.

Consistency

Use the same terminology throughout your documentation to ensure a seamless reader experience. For example, if you start referring to "user agents" as browsers, stick with that term consistently. This avoids confusion that can arise from using words interchangeably, even when they share the same meaning.

Additionally, maintain consistent word casing and follow a uniform formatting style throughout your documentation. These practices not only enhance readability but also contribute to a professional presentation of your documentation.

Organize your content for maximum impact

Apply the same principles for organizing your content as you would for organizing your code: spend some time setting a clear goal and thinking about the desired structure for your documentation. Ensure that each subsection contributes to this goal incrementally.

Start with an introduction

In the introduction, first describe the feature you're documenting. Next, set the context by explaining why learning about the feature would be beneficial to the readers. This can include describing real-life scenarios where the feature can be useful. The more relevance you add to the topic, the easier it will be for readers to understand and engage with the content.

Progress logically

The following questions can help you ensure that your content is progressing logically:

Is your document structured to guide readers from foundational concepts to more advanced ones? Are there sections to introduce the " what " to establish a base before delving into the " why " and " how "? Consider whether the document structure mirrors the natural learning path for the topic. Aligning the document's structure with the natural progression of learning helps readers build their knowledge step-by-step and also enhances the overall learning experience.
Are there sufficient how-to guides or examples following the conceptual sections?
Consider the flow of the content. Is it following a logical sequence — from one sentence to the next, from one paragraph to the next, and from one section to the next? Does each section logically build on the information presented previously, avoiding abrupt jumps or gaps in the content?

Additionally, as you work on the draft, always ask yourself:

What reader questions am I addressing with this sentence?
Can I add a simplistic or real-life use case to explain this concept?

Include examples

Imagine sitting next to someone as you explain the concepts to them. Preempt their questions and address them in your writing. Use this approach to add as many relevant examples as possible.

When adding examples, don't restrict yourself to only code; include non-code scenarios to demonstrate a feature's utility. This helps readers understand the concepts better and also caters to different learning styles. Consider providing real-world scenarios or use cases to illustrate how the feature or concept applies in practical situations.

Optimize the document structure and length

Evaluate your documentation's structure to ensure it maintains a logical and balanced hierarchy.

Ensure that each section and subsection has a clear purpose and sufficient content.
Look for instances where a main section contains only one subsection (orphan), such as a single H3 section under an H2 section. This indicates that you need to reorganize your content or make some additions.
Check if there are lower-level headings such as H4 . Too many subsections can be overwhelming for readers, making it difficult for them to grasp the information. In such cases, consider presenting the content as a bulleted list instead to help readers retain the key points more effectively. This approach helps to simplify the hierarchy and also contributes to easier navigation.
While there should be sufficient content for each section, pay attention to the overall length. If any section becomes too extensive, it can be overwhelming for readers. Split large sections into multiple logical subsections or restructure the content into new sections and subsections. Grouping content into digestible pieces helps maintain focus and improve navigation for readers.

Proofread your writing

One aspect that cannot be stressed enough is the importance of self-reviewing and proofreading what you've written. Whether you're creating a large document or a short paragraph, this step is crucial.

Taking the time to fully review your work will help you identify sections that don't flow well or can be improved for clarity. During self-review, aim to spot and remove redundancy (repetition of ideas without adding value) and repetitiveness (overuse of words or phrases). These refinements will ensure your documentation is clear and coherent and conveys your ideas as intended.

Proofread and then take a break before you review again. Only then submit your work. While spell checkers can flag spelling errors, they might not flag incorrect use of words, such as an unintended use of "he" instead of "the". It's best to take a break and return with fresh eyes to catch any errors you might have missed. Pay close attention to identify inconsistencies in tone, style, tense, or formatting and make the necessary adjustments.

Additional tips

To improve the clarity and accessibility of your documentation, also keep the following guidelines and tips in mind. To go in-depth into any of the topics, feel free to consult our Writing style guide .

Bulleted vs numbered lists : Lists, in general, make documentation easier to scan. Use bulleted lists when there is no specific order of the items. Use numbered lists when the steps need to be followed in the specific order. Always include a lead-sentence before beginning a list to provide context.
Commas : Use a comma after an introductory clause to improve readability and to clarify the sentence structure. Use a comma to separate items in a list to ensure clarity.
Alt text : Always provide an alternative text for the images you add to content. This makes your documentation accessible to people using screen readers. In addition to images, ensure that video and audio files have accompanying descriptive texts.
Descriptive link text : Make sure each link text is clear even out of context and clearly indicates where the link leads. Descriptive link texts also help people using screen readers understand the destination of links. For example, use "Read our writing style guide to learn more" instead of "Click here to learn more".
Inclusive language : Make your documentation welcoming to everyone. Strive to use words that respect and acknowledge the diversity of your audience.

That's it for this article. I hope you found these tips helpful as a quick refresher on technical writing best practices. Remember that learning how to create effective and easy-to-use documentation is an ongoing process. It starts with understanding your audience and the goals of your documentation. By applying these technical writing principles and tips, you'll certainly be able to enhance the clarity and overall quality of your documentation.

Let me know if you learned something new or if there's any idea that resonated with you. I'd also like to hear if there are any best practices you use in your technical documentation workflow. Share with us on Mastodon or Discord .

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How to write good documentation: home, documentation.

Why to Write Documentation

Documentation effectively connects humans and machines.

Why writing documentation is important:

You will be using your code in 6 months
You want people to use your code and give you credit
You want to learn self-determination
Others would be encouraged to contribute to your code
Others can easily use your code and build upon it
Advance the science
Encourage open science
Allow reproducibility and transparency

What should you document about your research? Everything! All the data, notes, code, and materials someone else would need to reproduce your work.

Consider the following questions:

How is your data gathered?
What variables did you use?
Did you use any code to clean/analyze your data?

Best Practices for Documenting Your Project

Best Practices for Writing Documentation:

A brief description of the project
Installation instructions
A short example/tutorial
Allow issue tracker for others
What a function does
What are the function's parameters or arguments are
What a function returns
Document your code
Apply coding conventions, such as file organization, comments, naming conventions, programming practices, etc.
Include information for contributors
Include citation information
Include licensing information
Link to your e-mail address at the end
List all the versions of the files along with the major edits you did in each version

An important tip: Naming files should be descriptive and consistent!

Date format (ISO 8601 Standard): YYYYMMDDThhmmss
Project or experiment name
Researcher name/initials
Date or date range of collection version

An example for README file.

An example of code documentation.

Tools for Documentation

Tools for Documentation:

Doctest
R Markdown
Doxygen - Doxygen can be used for C, C#, PHP, Java, Python, and Fortran.
BoostBook

Software Documentation Hosting Options:

Read The Docs
18 Software Documentation Tools
BIDS Docathon Kickoff - A Video
Docathon at BIDS
Documenting Your Code
First Steps with Sphinx
Google Style Guides
How to maintain an open source project
A Quick Guide to Software Licensing for the Scientist-Programmer

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Last Updated: Nov 6, 2023 2:10 PM
URL: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/how-to-write-good-documentation

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The Essential Guide to Effective Technical Documentation

Barb Mosher Zinck

Technical documentation is a critical part of any organization’s success. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone who needs to understand how products, services, and processes work. From software development teams to customer experience departments to customers, effective technical documentation improves productivity and efficiency and can decrease customer support costs.

This essential guide looks at why technical documentation is important and best practices for writing and managing it effectively. With these best practices, you’ll be well-equipped to create a technical documentation strategy to serve your business needs.

What is Technical Documentation?

Technical documentation provides detailed information, instructions, and reference materials, such as diagrams, schematics, and other visuals that help users understand and use an application, product, or service correctly. Examples include user manuals, product guides, knowledge bases, policies and procedures, online help, and product catalogs. Technical content can also be surfaced in chatbots, portals, and websites.

The best technical documentation is comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date. It’s written in easy-to-understand language, with clear explanations of technical concepts. And it’s easy to navigate and find information. Creating technical documentation requires an organized approach that considers audience needs as well as best practices for writing, formatting, storing, and publishing.

Why is Technical Documentation Important?

Technical documentation is an invaluable part of any product, enabling stakeholders to gain access to information on how the product works and how to implement and use it. Having effective technical documentation is essential for many reasons. It:

Helps ensure accuracy when using products or services.
Standardizes operating procedures and policies.
Streamlines development by providing developers with details on what has been built.
Speeds up user adoption by providing straightforward instructions.
Reduces customer support costs by providing information to both support agents and customer self-service quickly.
Increases customer satisfaction by providing clear guidance on how to use a product.
Helps train new employees.

For developers, administrators, and end users, it provides a comprehensive reference that enables them to learn how to work with a product or application. For example, a company that develops a payment processing API would produce documentation for developers on how the API works and how to implement it in their ecommerce application . The company also uses documentation to train its new developers and help them quickly identify and document bug fixes.

A global shipping software company provides technical documentation to developers on integrating its software with an ERP or CRM solution. The same vendor would also create documentation on configuring the software, creating frequently asked questions, and providing help and how-to articles for a knowledge base.

But developers or application administrators aren’t the only ones benefitting from technical documentation. Customers who work with the product or application on the front end also need well-written technical documentation for two reasons.

First, it helps them learn how to use the product and gives them a resource to look to when they have issues or questions. This content might be surfaced in a set of downable PDFs, through a customer portal knowledge base, in context-sensitive help in the product, or some other channel. Second, prospective customers researching a product to purchase are looking at technical documentation to help them understand if the product fits their requirements. In this case, a product vendor might make their documentation available in a section on their website or create downloadable product guides.

Technical documentation fosters continuity within organizations by giving everyone access to the same information at all times. It ensures a clear understanding of how a product or application works and should be used. And it eliminates the need for developers and end users to create their own documentation, which could be inaccurate or become outdated with changes.

Best Practices for Writing Effective Technical Documentation

To ensure that ‌technical documentation meets developer and customer needs, it’s important to follow best practices when writing and maintaining it. Let’s have a look at a few of the most important ones.

Know Your Audience(s)

Understand who will be reading the documentation and tailor your writing style and level of technicality accordingly. Consider their knowledge, experience, and expectations. For example, a developer’s guide would be highly technical and include coding examples, but a user guide would use a more simple language with a lot of screenshots and bulleted steps.

Outline a Structured Authoring Strategy

The best way to create technical documentation is to follow a structured authoring model and single-sourcing strategy. This approach enables you to create content once and reuse it in multiple content assets and across multiple channels.

Structured authoring requires breaking down your content into reusable components or topics. You can create reusable content such as paragraphs, sentences, variables, and images. For example, you could create a component that includes a set of steps to do something. Or you could create a variable that is the name of your product.

You also do not apply formatting to the content ; the formatting happens when the content is published and depends on where it is published.

The topic of structured authoring is too big to get into here, but this is a great guide to help you understand how to design your structured content strategy: Information Architecture 101 for Technical Writers .

Provide an Overview and Background Information

Always start your documentation off with a high-level summary of what the content covers, its purpose, and if there are prerequisites the reader needs to read or learn. This will help the reader quickly grasp the content and determine if it’s relevant to them.

For more extensive documentation, like a developer or user guide, you can also provide a section on the product’s background, such as its history, goals, and the problems it helps to solve. Keep in mind this type of content can be reused across multiple documentation types and is an excellent example of content reuse.

Follow a Consistent Style and Format

When writing technical documentation, it’s essential to use a consistent style and formatting. This makes it easier for readers to understand the content quickly. Adopt a logical structure that ensures all information is presented in the most clear and concise way possible. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to create a hierarchy of information. Consider using tables, diagrams, and examples to enhance understanding. One idea is to create icons that you can use next to paragraphs to highlight an important tip or warning.

It’s also important to avoid jargon or overly complex language, as this can make the content difficult to read. Of course, technical information can be complex, so break it down into smaller chunks of information for better readability and use plain language whenever possible. Use step-by-step instructions, code snippets, and visual content to help explain processes and concepts. Also, a glossary or set of definitions can help when technical terms are needed.

And don’t forget to proofread your documentation for grammar, spelling, and formatting errors.

Use Relevant Examples

One of the best ways to help an end user or developer understand a product or technology is to show them. So include real-world examples where possible, such as code snippets, screenshots, use cases, user stories, or something else. Examples make it easier for the reader to understand and apply information. It’s also very helpful to link to related topics or resources that can provide additional information for readers.

Perform Regular Reviews and Updates When Necessary

Technical documentation is not static; it’s constantly changing to reflect updates in the product, new features, bug fixes, and even new use cases. You may need to update visuals to reflect new user interfaces or revise code snippets. So, it’s important to regularly review and update your technical documentation.

Another thing to consider is to test your documentation’s readability and usability. Ask an end-user to read through your content and identify areas that are confusing or could use examples or visuals to help explain things better. You can also ask end users for feedback as they use the documentation by providing a form or email where they can submit issues or questions they have. This is a great way to identify areas for improvement and address gaps.

Best Practices for Managing Technical Documentation

We’ve talked about best practices for writing technical documentation. Now, let’s talk about some best practices to effectively manage it.

Establish a Clear Documentation Strategy

First, define a clear documentation strategy that outlines goals, tasks, roles, responsibilities, and expectations for all stakeholders involved in the process. Establishing this strategy will help align your team’s efforts toward creating comprehensive documentation that meets user needs. Create a style guide that defines how documents should be formatted, including fonts, text size/color/style/alignment options, illustrations, links, media embedding options, etc., and standards regarding language choice (formal vs informal) and tone (conversational vs instructional). Consistency in writing and formatting enhances readability and reduces confusion.

Define a Collaboration and Review Process

A single person rarely writes technical documentation. It’s more likely that a team works collaboratively to create, edit, review, and publish content. For each documentation asset you create, define the process to create and review the content. Be sure to include a formal review process before any documentation is published or updated. This helps ensure content accuracy and clarity while identifying potential issues early in the process.

You should also implement a schedule to regularly update and retire outdated content. We talked about this in the writing section above, but it’s also important to discuss as part of the management of technical documentation.

Technical documentation should be kept up to date to reflect changes in the technology or product it describes. Establish a maintenance schedule to review and update documentation periodically. Retire or archive outdated content to avoid confusion and maintain relevance.

Encourage Knowledge Sharing

Documentation teams are often small and overwhelmed with the content they need to create. One suggestion to help is to prioritize work and maintain a documentation backlog. Keep track of ideas, suggestions, or improvements that arise during the documentation process. You may identify new knowledge base articles to create or new sections to add to a user guide. Create a backlog of documentation tasks to prioritize and address in future updates or releases.

Also, consider fostering regular knowledge sharing by establishing an internal location, such as a slack channel, forum, or a shared workspace where technical writers, developers, and subject matter experts can come together to share insights, best practices, and updates related to documentation. This is an informal space to share ideas and information before it’s included in the official documentation creation and editing process.

Implement Version Control

As documentation changes, you’ll need to implement version control to keep track of changes made to the content over time. Version control allows you to store different versions of your documentation in one place so you can quickly review previous versions or revert to an older version if needed.

For example, you have created a product overview that you use in multiple content assets. You decide to update that overview, but it needs to go through a review process and get translated before it can go live. To get started, you create a version of the overview and work on that version. Once it’s been updated, reviewed, and approved, you send it for translation and automatically update all versions currently in production.

Versioning also supports development phases. Software and other products are typically built in phases or iterations, so your documentation will match each phase. As a new phase starts, technical writers can create a version of the documentation to start making changes without impacting the current production version.

The same holds true for updating policies and procedures. You have one version of a policy that reflects current regulations, but you know new regulations are coming. In this case, you would create a version of the policy and add the new rules and regulations. This new version won’t go live until it is reviewed, approved, and the new regulations are enforced.

Map Out Publishing Formats and Channels

Technical documentation is published in multiple formats and channels. As part of the management process, you must document each channel the content is published to and in what format (HTML, PDF, etc). You should design templates so the content keeps a consistent look and feel and structure.

If your documentation is for a global audience, you’ll also need to document translation requirements and implement a translation management process.

Notifications and Monitoring Usage

These last two recommendations for managing technical documentation are related to its usage by your development teams and customers. Even the best technical documentation is a waste of effort if no one uses it. So the first thing you need to do is monitor and track usage.

Leverage analytics tools to gain insights into user behavior and usage patterns. Track metrics such as page views, search queries, and bounce rates to understand how users engage with your documentation. If the documentation is published through another platform, request regular reports to gather this data. Additionally, encourage users to provide feedback, comments, or suggestions to identify areas for improvement.

Finally, you should identify a process to alert users when new or updated documentation is available. For customers, it might be a regular email to alert them of new content they might find helpful or to inform them of product updates. For internal users, it might be a Slack message or email linking to documentation on a bug fix, a change to a policy, or a new language version of a content asset. The important thing is to make sure everyone knows when the content has changed so they are aware and can act accordingly.

Tools for Writing Effective Technical Documentation

Creating effective technical documentation requires the right tools. With so many options available, choosing the right one for your needs can be difficult. The key is to find a tool that meets all your requirements and makes writing and managing technical documents easier.

When selecting a tool for writing technical documentation, consider features such as automation, collaboration capabilities, and integration with other software. Automation will help save time by streamlining processes like document versioning and content distribution. Collaborative features will allow multiple users to work on a piece of content simultaneously and provide feedback in real-time. Integration with other software can facilitate data and content transfers between systems, making it easier to keep documentation up-to-date with minimal effort.

Some might recommend tools like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Confluence, or Notion. While these are great tools for creating a single version of a document, they don’t offer all the features and capabilities you need to manage your documentation.

A component content management system (CCMS) like the Paligo CCMS is the best tool for creating and managing technical documentation.

A CCMS provides a structured authoring model that enables you to create your content in reusable components (or topics) that can be used in multiple documentation types. So the product overview is created once and then reused in all documentation related to that product (the developer guide, use guide, admin guide, etc.). The warning message or code snippets can be reused in multiple sections or documentation types. But that’s only one reason to choose a CCMS.

If you want versioning, collaborative workflow, translation management, and the ability to publish to multiple channels and in multiple formats, then you will need a CCMS. We could go on and on about the value a CCMS like Paligo brings to your documentation team, but I think an actual end user could say it much better.

PointClickCare is an innovative, cloud-based technology advancing the senior care industry. They provide information to healthcare providers worldwide, and that information must be accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. They needed a streamlined content creation workflow with a clear-cut review process so authors and contributors would have defined standards and guidelines. They also wanted to reuse content to ensure consistency and reduce time and costs. Everything published had to be up to strict standards and approved by content experts.

“One of the things that excited us most about using Paligo was the ability to structure and reuse content. It was so much more efficient to be able to reuse fragments in multiple topics and then reuse those topics multiple times in PDFs and help files. We could also reuse topics within other publications going out to other markets. Now, we can make the most of our time, and we know that the information we deliver is up-to-date.” Emma Pindera, Content Strategist, PointClickcare .

Effective Technical Documentation is Essential For All Businesses

Creating comprehensive technical documentation is essential to any successful product or service. It is a worthwhile effort that pays off for both customers and businesses. By following the best practices outlined, businesses can provide their developers, end users, and customers with easy-to-understand guides to using their products and services. They will also help save time and reduce the costs of developing documentation and customer support interactions.

We hope this guide has provided valuable insight into creating effective technical documents for your business. If you’d like to understand more about how the Paligo CCMS can help you create your technical documentation, request a demo , and we’ll show you how.

Barb Mosher Zinck is a senior content marketer and marketing technology analyst. She works with a range of clients in the tech market and actively tracks and writes about digital marketing, customer experience and enterprise content management. Barb understands the value of technology and works hard to inform and encourage greater understanding of its role in the enterprise

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Technical Writing
Português – Brasil
For Students

Overview of technical writing courses

The following table summarizes the technical writing courses:

The pre-class components introduce topics; the in-class components help students integrate and practice those topics. That said, the pre-class work, by itself, provides significant educational value.

Google provides all the materials needed to run the in-class sessions at your own organization. If you'd like to facilitate the in-class sessions for your organization, please see Facilitating Technical Writing Courses .

We've aimed Technical Writing One and Technical Writing Two at the following audiences:

software engineers
software engineering or computer science students

Additionally, many people in engineering-adjacent roles (such as product managers) have also benefited from these courses.

We've aimed Tech Writing for Accessibility at anyone who writes technical documents or creates technical websites, including:

engineering managers
product managers
technical writers

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies . Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2024-04-18 UTC.

Español – América Latina
Português – Brasil
Customer Care
Documentation

Best practices for working with Customer Care

This guide provides you with best practices for writing an effective support case. Following these best practices helps us to resolve your technical support case faster.

Creating a support case

Before you create a support case, review known issues to see if a case has already been filed.

To avoid confusion and so that we can track your request in a single point, create one support case per issue. Any duplicate cases that are created are closed.

Describing your issue

Writing a detailed support case makes it easier for the Customer Care team to respond to you quickly and efficiently. When your support case is missing critical details, we need to ask for more information, which takes additional time.

The best support cases are both detailed and specific. They tell us what happened and what you expected to happen. When you describe your issue in your support case, include the following details:

Time: The specific timestamp when the issue began.
Product: The products and features associated with the issue.
Location: The zones where you're seeing the issue.
Identifiers: The project ID or the application ID and other concrete identifiers that help us research the issue.
Useful artifacts: Any details you can provide to help us diagnose the issue.
Problem type: Is the problem intermittent, transient, or consistent.

The following sections describe these concepts in greater detail.

Using the ISO 8601 format for the date and timestamp, tell us when you first noticed this issue and how long it lasted.

Starting at 2017-09-08T15:13:06+00:00 and ending 5 minutes later, we observed...
Observed intermittently, starting no earlier than 2017-09-10 and observed 2-5 times...
Ongoing since 2017-09-08T15:13:06+00:00...
From 2017-09-08T15:13:06+00:00 to 2017-09-08T15:18:16+00:00...

The Customer Care specialist resolving the issue is very likely not in your time zone, so relative statements like the following make the problem harder to diagnose:

"This started sometime yesterday..." (Forces us to infer the implied date.)
"We noticed the issue on 9/8..." (Ambiguous, as some might interpret this date as September 8, and others might interpret it as August 9.)

Although the basic case form asks you to specify a product name, we need specific information about which feature in that product is having the issue. Ideally, your report will refer to specific APIs or Google Cloud console URLs (or screenshots). For APIs, you can link to the documentation page, which contains the product name in the URL.

Also tell us about the mechanism that you're using to initiate the request (for example, REST API, Google Cloud CLI, Google Cloud console, or perhaps a tool like Cloud Deployment Manager. If multiple products are involved, give us each name specifically.

"Compute Engine REST API returned the following errors..."
"The BigQuery query interface in console.cloud.google.com is hanging..."

The following statements are not specific enough to know where to look when diagnosing the issue:

"Can't create instances..." (We need to know the method you are using to create instances.)
"The gcloud compute create instances command is giving an error..."(The command syntax is incorrect, so we can't run it ourselves to reproduce the error. Also, we don't know which error you actually saw.)

We need to know your data center region and zone because we often roll out changes to one region or zone at a time. The region and zone are a proxy for the version number of the underlying software. This information helps us to know if breaking changes in a particular version of our software are affecting your systems.

"In us-east1-a ..."
"I tried regions us-east1 and us-central1..."

Identifiers

Specific identifiers help us identify which of your Cloud projects is experiencing the issue. We always need to know the alphanumeric project or application ID. Project names are not helpful. If the issue is affecting multiple projects, include every affected ID.

In addition to project or application IDs, several other identifiers help us diagnose your case:

Instance IDs.
BigQuery job IDs or table names.
IP addresses.

When specifying an IP address, also tell us the context in which it is used. For example, specify if the IP is connected to a Compute instance, a load balancer, a custom route, or an API endpoint. Also tell us if the IP address is not related to Google's systems (for example, if the IP address is for your home internet, a VPN endpoint, or an external monitoring system).

"In project robot-name-165473 or my-project-id..."
"Across multiple projects (including my-project-id)..."
"Connecting to Google Cloud external IP 218.239.8.9 from our corporate gateway 56.56.56.56..."

General statements like the following are too general to help diagnose the issue:

"One of our instances is unreachable..."
"We can't connect from the internet..."

Useful artifacts

Providing us with artifacts related to the issue will speed up troubleshooting by helping us see exactly what you are seeing.

For example:

Use a screenshot to show exactly what you see.
For Web-based Interfaces, provide a .HAR ( H ttp AR chive) file. The HAR analyzer has instructions for three major browsers.
Attach tcpdump output, logs snippets, example stack traces.

Problem type

Intermittent : Intermittent problems occur randomly with no regular patterns of failure. Intermittent problems are difficult to troubleshoot because their irregularity makes it hard to gather data during the failure. In this case, you should try to identify bottlenecks in architecture and check whether your resources are hitting their maximum threshold usages. You can also run frequent checks in a scheduled job using automation, and if the check fails, collect debug information during the failure. Examples of this type of failure are DNS resolution failures and packet loss.

Transient : Transient problems are momentary or exist only for a short period of time. If you have problems that happen only for a second or a few microseconds, you can check for micro bursts of traffic or resource peak utilizations. In most cases, transient problems can be ignored if they don't recur often and if your service is designed to be tolerant of transient failures. Examples of this type of failure are network latency spikes that occur only for a few microseconds, and small packet losses that cause timeouts. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is designed for failures such as small packet loss and latency spikes, and it can handle these problems effectively, unless your application is sensitive to latency.

Consistent : Consistent problems are problems that fail completely, such as when your website is down. Consistent problems are relatively straightforward to troubleshoot because they can be reproduced. In this case, tell us the steps to reproduce the problem so that our Customer Care specialists can replicate the environment and troubleshoot the problem for you.

Example descriptions

Example one, example two, setting the priority and escalating.

Priority helps us understand the impact this issue is having on your business, and affects how quickly we respond to resolve the issue. Priorities are defined in the following table. You can find more information at Support case priority .

When to set the highest priority

If you have an issue that is affecting business critical services and needs immediate attention from Google, choose "P1" as the priority. Explain to us in detail why you selected P1. Include a brief description of the impact this issue is having on your business. For example, you might consider a problem with a dev version to be P1, even if no end users are directly impacted, if it is blocking a critical security fix.

When a case is set as P1, an on duty Support team member will be immediately alerted to find the right expert to exclusively work on the issue. You will receive a quick initial response. After that, you will receive regular updates.

We appreciate detailed comments supporting the chosen prioritization level because it helps us respond appropriately.

Response times

Issue priority levels have predefined response times defined in the Google Cloud Platform Technical Support Services Guidelines . If you need a response by a specific time, let us know in your report description. If a P1 issue needs to be handled around the clock, you can request "follow the sun" service. These cases are re-assigned several times per day to an active Customer Care specialist.

When circumstances change, you might need to escalate an issue. Good reasons for escalation are:

Increase in business impact.
Breakdown of the resolution process. For example, you haven't received an update in the agreed upon amount of time or your issue is "stuck" without progress after exchanging several messages.

When you're experiencing a high-impact issue, the best solution is to set the case to the appropriate priority for an adequate amount of time, rather than escalating. Escalating doesn't necessarily resolve the case any faster and escalating shortly after priority change might even cause the case resolution to be slower. You can find a more detailed explanation in the When should you escalate video.

For information about how to escalate a case, see Escalate a case .

Route cases to the required time zone

Because of the factors on which Customer Care availability is based, your support case might be assigned to a Customer Care specialist who works outside your hours of operation. It's also possible that you would want to engage with Customer Care during the business days of a specific time zone. In such cases, we recommend that you request Customer Care to route your support case to a time zone that is convenient for your case. You can add this request in your case description or response. For example, Please route this case to the Pacific time zone (GMT-8) . P1 cases are handed down to the next region Customer Care because it follows the sun while other cases would stay with the current case owner to continue working on the case the next day.

Provide feedback with CES survey

When a case is resolved, a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey regarding your opinion on how the process went would be sent over email. We would really appreciate it if you can take a few minutes to fill it out, so we would know what we did well and what were the challenges in order to improve these aspects.

Every feedback form is manually reviewed by the Customer Experience team and results in corresponding actions to improve your future experience. The score will be out of 5. A score of 3 or lower would be considered difficult from the customer side, and we will follow up with you on these responses. On the other side, a score 4 or more means the interaction was not difficult for the customer and considered as a positive experience.

For more information, watch the How to Submit Google Cloud Services Feedback with CES video.

Long-running or difficult issues

Issues that take a long time to resolve can become confusing and stale. The best way to prevent this is to collect information using our Long-running issue template with the latest state summarized at the top.

To use the template, open the preceding link and make a copy. Include links to all relevant cases and internal tracking bugs. Share this document with your account team's group and ask them to share it with specific Customer Care specialists.

This document includes:

A summary of the current state summarized at the top.
A list of the hypotheses that are potentially true.
The tests or tools that you intend to use to test each hypothesis.

Try to keep each case focused on a single issue, and avoid reopening a case to bring up a new issue.

Reporting a production outage

If the issue has caused your application to stop serving traffic to users, or has similar business-critical impact, this might be a production outage. We want to know as soon as possible. Issues that block a small number of developers, by contrast, are not what we think of as production outages.

When we get a report of a production outage, we quickly triage the situation by:

Immediately checking for known issues affecting Google Cloud infrastructure.
Confirming the nature of the issue.
Establishing communication channels.

You can expect a response with a brief message, which contains:

Any related known issues affecting multiple customers.
An acknowledgement that we can observe the issue you've reported, or a request for more details.
How we intend to communicate.

Therefore, it's important to quickly create a case including time, product, identifiers, and location, and then start deeper troubleshooting. Your organization might have a defined incident management process and this step should be executed very near the beginning of it.

Google's incident management process defines a key role: the incident commander. This person gets the right people involved, continually collects the latest status, and periodically summarizes the state of the issue. They delegate to others to troubleshoot and apply changes. This delegation allows us to investigate multiple hypotheses in parallel. We recommend that you establish a similar process within your organization. The person who opened the case is usually the best choice to be the incident commander because they have the most context.

Reporting a networking issue

The size and complexity of Google's network can make it difficult to identify which team owns the problem. To diagnose networking issues, we need to identify very specific root causes. Because networking error messages are often general (like, "Can't connect to server"), we need to gather detailed diagnostic information to narrow down the possible hypotheses.

Packet flow diagrams provide an excellent structure for the issue report. These diagrams describe the important hops that a packet takes along a path from source to destination, along with any significant transformations along the way.

Start by identifying the affected network endpoints by Internet IP address or by RFC 1918 private address plus an identifier for the network. For example, 2.3.4.5 or 10.2.3.4 on the Compute Engine project's default network.

Note anything meaningful about the endpoints, such as:

Who controls them.
Whether they are associated with a DNS hostname.
Any intermediate encapsulation or indirection, or both such as VPN tunneling, proxies, and NAT gateways.
Any intermediate filtering, like firewalls or CDN or WAF.

Many problems that manifest as high latency or intermittent packet loss will require a path analysis or a packet capture, or both for diagnosis.

Path analysis is a list of all hops that packets traverse and is familiar as "traceroute". We often use MTR or tcptraceroute, or both because they have better diagnostic power. We recommend becoming familiar with these tools.
Packet capture (also known as "pcap," from the name of the library "libpcap") is an observation of real network traffic. It's important to take a packet capture for both endpoints, at the same time, which can be tricky. It's a good idea to practice with the necessary tools (for example, tcpdump or Wireshark ) and make sure they are installed before you need them.

Last updated 2024-05-09 UTC.

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5 Steps to Create Technical Documentation That’s (Actually) Helpful

🎁 Bonus Material: Technical Documentation Template

When, why, and how to properly use technical documentation

Technical documentation helps an intended audience use your product, understand your processes, and get unstuck. Whether that audience is end-users, administrators, colleagues, or technicians doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that it’s clear, searchable, and helpful for them .

Great technical documentation empowers your users, not frustrates them. It’s an integral part of not just customer support, but brand building and trust. Users seek it out when they’re most in need. And if it’s not there for them, they’ll start looking for alternatives.

Here are a few examples of where and how you can use technical documentation:

End-user support: This means things like user guides, release notes, online help systems, training programs, or operating procedures—anything that helps users use your product.
Marketing support: Anything that’s product-focused and used to market your company (like explainer videos, presentations , or technical landing pages)
Development support: This could be functional and technical specifications, software development guides, or simply procedures and tools to help your developers do their jobs.
Organization support: Information about your company, structure, procedures, workflows, policies, and anything else teammates need to know to do their jobs.

While back in the day most of these documents would come as physical guides for users, today, most technical documentation should be available on your website or help pages (which is also great for SEO).

How to plan, write, and deliver technical documentation that works

So how do you create these clear, concise, wonderfully useful documents?

First, you need to decide who is going to be responsible for them. Technical documentation is usually either written by a subject matter expert (i.e. someone who knows what they’re talking about), or a technical writer who’s been trained to translate complicated product knowledge into content that’s more easily understood by the end users.

Once you’ve put your team together, writing technical documents comes down to a few simple steps.

Step 1: Do research and create a “Documentation Plan”

As the old saying goes: “Write what you know.”

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11 Google Docs tips I use every day to save time

Jun 21, 2023

[[read-time]] min read

They can help whether you’re using Docs for work, school or play.

I am an avid Google Docs user. On any given day, I may use Docs to write and read work documents, draft emails, take notes, organize my thoughts and even plan vacation itineraries. Given all the time I spend in Docs, I’ve unsurprisingly discovered quite a few features that help make all that writing, drafting, editing, reading, note-taking, organizing and itinerary-planning so much easier. Here are 11 of my best tips for all Google Docs users, whether you’re using Docs for work, school or play.

1. Keep projects on track with smart chips and building blocks

I spend a good chunk of my day collaborating with coworkers, and smart chips and building blocks help make it easy. For example, I’ll use the Google Docs “meeting notes” building block to automatically create meeting notes in preparation for a meeting; it includes the name of the meeting, the date, the attendees and an outline for tracking an agenda and action items.

Once the meeting is over, I use smart chips to add additional context to my notes. For instance, when you type a person's name, file name or location into your document, a smart chip will appear. You can then hover over the chip to see additional information about the person, date, file or location. And for particularly complicated projects, I like to use the “Project roadmap” building block to create a table that lists out all the tasks, who they’re assigned to and the status of everything. These features help me stay organized and help my colleagues stay on track.

Try it yourself: Type “@” in a Doc — this will show you a list of smart chips and building blocks to choose from. To create meeting notes or project trackers, scroll down to the building blocks section, and select “Meeting notes” or ”Project roadmap.” To insert people chips or assign a task to a colleague, scroll to the smart chips section and select your action of choice — you can add people and assign them specific tasks with due dates, as well as insert voting chips, locations or dropdowns.

2. Draft emails and calendar invites in Docs with building blocks

Sometimes when I’m writing an important email or calendar invite, I prefer to get feedback from one or two coworkers before pressing send. I use building blocks for this — the “Email draft” and “Calendar event draft” blocks let me write (and collaborate on) these drafts in Docs. Once I feel confident that my drafts are good to go, I can then export them directly to Gmail or Google Calendar.

Try it yourself: Type “@email draft” or “@calendar event draft” in your Google Doc and write your draft in the spaces provided. You can tag relevant team members, comment and collaborate on the content, just like you would in any Google Doc. Once it’s ready, press the Gmail icon on the left-hand side to export the email to Gmail; press the Calendar icon on the left-hand side to preview the invite in Calendar.

3. Easily insert your bio or signature to Docs with custom building blocks

There are certain pieces of text — like my signature and bio — I find myself copy and pasting to Docs often at work. To save time, I created a custom building block for my bio, so instead of copy and pasting it every time I need it, I can quickly insert it into a Doc just by typing the “@” symbol, then typing the name of the block you saved.

4. Compare two Docs with ease

Occasionally I have to review two versions of a document — and that can be tricky when they both look the same at first glance. Whenever this happens, I use the "Compare documents" feature, which creates a new document that shows you the differences between them.

Try it yourself: Click Tools in the menu of one of the Docs and select "Compare documents.” From there, you can select a Doc in your Google Drive to compare. Google Docs will then create a new document that highlights the differences between the two in red, making it easy to see what’s changed — and catch potential errors.

5. Customize your dictionary in Google Docs

When I’m organizing my personal to-do list or writing for pleasure, I sometimes abbreviate words or use shorthand. “Mtg” instead of “meeting," “cal” instead of “calendar," the list goes on. To save time, I’ve personalized my Google Docs dictionary by adding these custom words so Docs doesn't identify them as misspelled.

Try it yourself: Go to Tools , click "Proofread" and then "Personal dictionary.”

6. Make a Doc more accessible with alternative text

Since it’s important that everyone I share a Doc with can read it, I always add alternative text to images, drawings and other graphics. This provides screen reader users with an audio description of all the visuals I’ve included.

Try it yourself: To add alternative text, right click on an image, drawing or graphic and select “Alt text.”

7. Present in and join Google Meet calls right from Docs

Using the Google Meet feature right in Docs is an easy way I keep browser tabs to a minimum. When I’m collaborating with coworkers in a Doc and want to quickly sync about what we’re working on, we can join a Google Meet call directly in the Doc.

Try it yourself: Click the Google Meet icon next to the Share button at the top right corner of a Doc. From there, you can choose to join an already scheduled meeting that autopopulates from your Google Calendar, start a new meeting or enter a meeting code. Once you’re in the Google Meet call, you can present a Doc while still seeing other participants on the right side of your screen.

8. Create translated versions of Docs in seconds

I work with folks all across the globe who often send me Docs that aren’t in my native language. To save time, I translate the text directly in Docs so that I understand better what I’m reading. This feature lets you choose from many languages and creates a copy of the document in the language you select.

Try it yourself: To create a translated copy of a Doc, go to Tools and click “Translate document.”

9. React quickly with emoji

When I see a comment or suggestion I like in a Doc, I want to express my agreement but don’t necessarily want to add clutter with one-word comments. Instead, I react with emoji . All I have to do is select a comment and click the smile emoji to choose from all my favorite options—my go-to is the party popper emoji (🎉).

Try it yourself: Hover over the comment and click the emoji icon. From there, you can choose the appropriate reaction, like a plus sign (➕) or thumbs up (👍). You can also add an emoji as a comment by highlighting text, right clicking and choosing “insert emoji reaction.”

10. Go hands-free with voice typing

Sometimes I like to talk an idea out as a way to organize my thoughts. The “Voice typing” feature in Google Docs will transcribe what I’m saying word-for-word directly into the Document. I also really like to turn on “Voice typing” during meetings. It lets me stay focused on the conversation, but know that everything is being transcribed into my Doc in case I need to refer back to it later.

Try it yourself: Open the document and click on Tools and then "Voice typing." A microphone icon will appear on the left in the document. When you're ready to start speaking, click on the microphone icon and Google Docs will transcribe your words into the document.

11. Quickly cite your sources

Manually citing sources in a long paper or essay can take me almost as long as writing the assignment itself. That’s where the citation generator in Docs comes in handy; it can quickly add citations to a document using MLA, APA or Chicago style.

Try it yourself: Click Tools, then select "Citations .” From there, you can choose a style and add sources. Then the generator will automatically add citations to your document.

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IT Documentation 101: A Beginner's Guide to Effective Documentation

Belma Vranovic

Last Updated

March 03 2023

Are you tired of spending precious hours sifting through piles of information to get your job done? It's not just you; employees everywhere waste valuable time every day just trying to find the necessary information. With so much information available, getting lost in the noise is easy.

A staggering 49% of employees report spending between 30 minutes and two hours a day searching for information, and IT employees spend an average of 4.2 hours doing the same. This not only impacts productivity but it's also leading to 31% of employees feeling burnt out.

When it comes to running a successful business, adequate IT documentation is essential.

Whether creating user manuals, documenting processes, or creating technical documentation, IT documentation helps ensure everyone involved in your business is on the same page.

But for many businesses, IT documentation can be a daunting task. We’ll cover the basic of IT documentation, the benefits of having effective IT documentation, and how to get started.

What is IT Documentation?

Think of IT documentation as the blueprint of your tech setup. Without it, your IT team might stumble in the dark, struggling to troubleshoot issues, perform maintenance, or implement new technology.

But it's about more than avoiding pitfalls - proper documentation ensures that your organization's technology is consistent and compliant with regulatory requirements. Plus, it enables easy knowledge transfer between team members - meaning that as experienced staff members move on, their invaluable know-how remains with them.

Benefits of IT Documentation

Picture this: Your organization is thriving, projects are completed efficiently, and everyone is on the same page. How is this possible? The answer lies in your IT documentation system. With a comprehensive documentation system, you can streamline your organization's operations, improve productivity, and enable easy knowledge transfer. IT documentation is like a treasure map that leads to a whole bunch of benefits for your organization.

1. Improved Efficiency and Productivity

An effective IT documentation system can significantly enhance an organization's efficiency and productivity.

Organizations can streamline their operations by establishing well-defined processes and procedures and minimizing the time spent on manual tasks such as troubleshooting and problem-solving. This can ultimately free up personnel to focus on more strategic and high-value activities, leading to improved outcomes for the organization.

2. Easier Knowledge Transfer

IT documentation can also facilitate easier knowledge transfer . By having a comprehensive system, organizations can ensure that a person knows its functionality and how to use it. This can reduce the time spent on training new personnel and ensure that all personnel is on the same page.

3. Better Collaboration and Communication

A comprehensive IT documentation system can also foster better collaboration and communication among personnel. By clearly understanding the system's operations and procedures, individuals can work together more seamlessly and effectively. This can lead to reduced time spent on troubleshooting and problem-solving and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Ultimately, this promotes a more efficient and productive work environment that benefits the organization.

4. Enhanced Security and Compliance

An effective IT documentation system can also help enhance security and compliance. By clearly understanding the system’s operations and procedures, organizations can ensure that they comply with industry regulations and standards. This can reduce the risk of data breaches and ensure all personnel knows the system's security measures.

IT documentation is a critical component of any organization's technology infrastructure.

It helps IT teams to work more efficiently and effectively, ensures consistency and compliance, and allows for knowledge transfer among team members. While creating and maintaining comprehensive and effective IT documentation can be daunting, the benefits are significant. By following some IT documentation best practices, including using the right IT documentation tools, organizing information effectively, and updating documentation regularly, beginners can start creating effective IT documentation and experience these benefits firsthand.

Types of IT Documentation

From hardware and software inventory to troubleshooting guides and FAQs, there are several types of IT documentation that your organization needs to stay on track. Let's dive into them now.

1. Hardware and Software Inventory

A hardware and software inventory is a document that provides information about the hardware and software used in an organization. This can include the operating system, hardware components, and software applications. An up-to-date inventory is vital for troubleshooting, maintaining, and compliance with industry regulations.

2. Network Topology and Diagrams

Network topology and diagrams provide information about an organization’s network’s physical and logical layout. This can include the physical location of network devices and the logical connections between them. This type of documentation is important for network management and troubleshooting.

3. Infrastructure Documentation

Infrastructure documentation is an essential document that provides a comprehensive overview of an organization's IT systems, including servers, storage, and networks. This type of documentation is crucial for understanding the architecture of the IT environment and facilitating efficient troubleshooting. A clear understanding of the organization's infrastructure enables IT personnel to effectively manage the systems and maintain their smooth operation.

4. System Documentation

System documentation is a crucial document that provides valuable information about a particular system, such as a database or a web application. This type of documentation is essential for understanding the system's functionality and resolving issues efficiently. By providing a comprehensive overview of the system's architecture and processes, system documentation helps IT personnel identify and rectify issues promptly, reducing system downtime and ensuring optimal performance.

5. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Standard operating procedures ( SOP ) provide specific tasks or process instructions. This type of documentation is important for ensuring that tasks are performed consistently and correctly.

6. Process Documentation

Process documentation is a document that provides comprehensive information about a specific process, such as a software development process or an IT system deployment process. This type of documentation is essential for ensuring that the process is carried out consistently and effectively and for facilitating continuous improvement. By documenting the process, organizations can quickly identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to streamline operations and optimize outcomes.

Examples include:

Software development process documentation
IT system deployment process documentation
Change management process documentation

7. User Guides and Manuals

User guides and manuals provide information about using a particular system or application. This type of documentation is important for helping users understand how to use the system or application.

8. Troubleshooting Guides and FAQs

Troubleshooting guides and FAQs are informative documents that assist in troubleshooting a particular system or application. These documents are essential for helping users identify and resolve problems they may encounter while using the system or application. Providing step-by-step instructions and answers to common questions, troubleshooting guides, and FAQs enable users to quickly and efficiently resolve issues, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity.

9. Incident Response Documentation

Incident response documentation is a document that provides information about how to respond to an incident, such as a security breach or system outage. This type of documentation is important for ensuring that the organization is prepared to respond to incidents quickly and effectively.

10. Runbooks

Runbooks are documents that provide instructions for performing specific tasks or processes. This type of documentation is important for ensuring that tasks are performed consistently and correctly.

Disaster recovery runbook
System startup and shutdown runbook
Application deployment runbook

Best Practices for Creating IT Documentation

Creating effective IT documentation requires careful planning, organization, and attention to detail. Implementing best practices for creating IT documentation ensures that it is comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date. This guide will explore the best practices for creating IT documentation and provide tips for implementing them.

1. Establishing a Documentation Strategy and Governance

Before creating IT documentation, it's essential to establish a documentation strategy and governance. This means determining what types of documentation are needed, who will be responsible for creating and maintaining it, and how it will be stored and accessed. By establishing a clear documentation strategy and governance, organizations can ensure that their documentation is comprehensive, consistent, and easy to find.

2. Choosing the Right Tools and Templates

When it comes to choosing the right tools and templates for creating IT documentation, there are a lot of options out there. The key is to find ones that work for your organization's unique needs and processes.

Start by considering the type of documentation you need to create and the level of detail required. Do you need a simple template for user manuals or a more complex tool for infrastructure documentation? Once you've identified your requirements, research different options, and look for tools that are user-friendly, compatible with your existing systems, and have features that can streamline the documentation process.

Don't forget to also consider the cost and any ongoing maintenance requirements. With the right tools and templates in place, you can create IT documentation that is consistent, accurate, and easy to maintain.

3. Assigning Ownership and Responsibilities

Assigning ownership and responsibilities for creating and maintaining IT documentation ensures that documentation is accurate and up-to-date. Organizations should appoint individuals with the necessary expertise and authority to create and maintain documentation. They should also ensure that ownership and responsibilities are clearly defined and that individuals are held accountable for maintaining their assigned documentation.

4. Regularly Reviewing and Updating Documentation

To remain accurate and relevant, IT documentation requires regular review and updates. Organizations should establish a regular review cycle and assign individuals responsible for reviewing and updating documentation. This process should also include version control to ensure that the most up-to-date version of the documentation is being used.

5. Providing Access to Documentation and Ensuring its Security

IT documentation is only useful if it is accessible to those who need it. Establishing a system for storing and accessing easily searchable and user-friendly documentation enables organizations to maintain security. This can include implementing role-based access control, password protection, and encryption. By implementing best practices for creating IT documentation, organizations can ensure that it is comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date. This, in turn, will help IT teams to work more efficiently and effectively, ensures consistency and compliance, and allows for knowledge transfer among team members. Organizations can create a comprehensive and effective IT documentation strategy that meets their needs by following the best practices outlined in this guide.

Tools for IT Documentation

When it comes to IT documentation, the right tools can make all the difference. From wikis and knowledge bases to specialized IT documentation software, a wealth of options are available to help organizations keep their IT infrastructure running smoothly. With the right tools, you can easily manage, organize, and update your IT documentation, ensuring your systems are up-to-date and secure. Get the most out of your IT documentation today with the right tools!

1. Wiki Software

Wiki software can be a useful tool for IT documentation. They allow for quick and easy storage and sharing of information. Additionally, wikis can be used for collaborative work, as multiple users can work on the same page simultaneously and make edits in real time, promoting seamless collaboration among team members. By enabling users to create, share and update information efficiently, wikis enhance productivity, making them an essential part of any IT documentation strategy.

2. Knowledge Base Software

When it comes to managing and organizing IT documentation, knowledge base software can be an incredibly useful tool. Knowledge base software allows IT teams to create a centralized repository of documentation that can be easily accessed and shared by all team members. This type of software often includes features such as version control, search functionality, and user permissions, which can help ensure that documentation is up-to-date and accessible to the right people.

One of the biggest advantages of creating a knowledge base for IT documentation is that it can streamline the process of creating and updating documentation. Rather than relying on disparate documents stored in various locations, knowledge base software provides a centralized platform for creating, organizing, and sharing documentation. This can save IT teams a significant amount of time and effort, as well as reduce the risk of errors or inconsistencies.

Additionally, knowledge base software can help promote knowledge sharing and collaboration among team members. By making documentation easily accessible and searchable, knowledge base software can encourage team members to contribute their own expertise and insights to the documentation. This can lead to a more robust and comprehensive knowledge base, as well as more efficient and effective IT operations overall.

3. IT Documentation Software

With IT documentation software, everything is automated and stored in one convenient location, making finding and sharing information with team members a breeze. It's so easy to use that even the least tech-savvy team members can quickly get on board. The best part? IT personnel can save time and energy by using this software, freeing them up to tackle more pressing tasks.

Wrapping Up

Creating and maintaining IT documentation can seem like a daunting task, but it's crucial for any organization looking to succeed in today's technology-driven world. By following the tips and tricks outlined in this beginner's IT documentation guide, businesses of all sizes can start reaping the benefits of effective IT documentation. The advantages are endless, from cutting down on time spent troubleshooting to improving collaboration and communication among team members. Plus, the process has always been challenging with various tools available - from wikis to knowledge bases to dedicated software. So don't let IT documentation intimidate you! With the right approach, you can set your organization up for success and stay ahead of the ever-changing tech landscape.

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