Hi everyone,
Not sure how many of you this falls under here in the Technical forum, but I have some questions in regards to KB’s and documentation.
How do you go about maintaining and creating documentation around your specific Tess business practices for your user base? We currently take advantage of the Tess Help System and webinars etc. but need a more robust way of communicating, creating, and maintaining our own internal standards.
By biggest question is, what software do you use for this?
Word documents just don’t seem to cut it and can get messy pretty fast once you start hyperlinking to other documents. I also find people are very unlikely to use them and are often confused by which doc they need and how to find it. I tried placing some stuff the (?) in the client which I thought was a genius move but didn't really help as much as I would have hoped.
I experimented with MediWiki a little while ago which was great, but a bit labor intensive and not that user friendly for the non-techy when trying to maintain articles (the idea being that departments maintain their own stuff for the most part once it’s up and running).
Then there is SpiceWorks, which we use for our IT Help Desk. It has a KB function but I don’t find the layout all that appealing.
I guess in a perfect world I want something that is laid out like a wiki, possibly has a collaboration space, and is as easy to use as a word doc in regards to creating content.
Tell me Tessiturians….does anyone know if this magical product exist? Am I asking for too much?
Tash
At the AT&T Center we use a private Tessitura Group website for some of this. It has the advantage of being a resource many users are familiar with and forcing users to create an account on the website, which is a bonus.
That said, the wiki functionality is not as robust as many other solutions you will find out there. I am a fan of using whatever is incorporated into your local helpdesk software (I am huge fan of ZenDesk for this).
I think you will find that any solution you come across will have some limitations that are frustrating. Having toyed with 3 or 4 different wiki packages, there is always something about them that I find off putting. I think the biggest key is that you have to put serious planning into how you will use it. I used to think of wiki's as these marvelous free-form tools that could grow organically. But that way lies madness, as they say. Having a well thought out structure and starting out with a limited set of folks who can edit content will save a lot of headaches later.
My best advice is one of my favorite axioms: "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good". Find something that does most of what you want and get started. Get the users used to accessing a knowledge base. If you choose a product that has solid tools for exporting your data you can always migrate to a new tool later.