How We Document Procedures at IT Glue
BY IT GLUE | February 14, 2017
At IT Glue, we are committed to making sure that your company gets the most out of our documentation app. Everything we do is about enhancing efficiency and productivity, whether that’s through our various integrations, open API, or our suite of business process features. But using IT Glue to its fullest capabilities includes documenting non-IT assets, too.
At IT Glue, we use our own app every day to document non-IT assets, and this documentation is what makes doing our job a whole lot easier, regardless of what our title is. If you’re not leveraging IT Glue beyond what your technical staff need, you’re missing out on a key source of value. To give you an idea, we’ll show you how we do it ourselves.
The Why
The non-IT assets represent a fairly large category of assets, SOPs, and information that your business needs to run effectively. Documenting these assets still fits with the core purpose of documentation, which is to take individual knowledge locked in people’s heads, or known to only a few, and make it institutional knowledge. Once documented, this information can be passed onto new people, or within the organization, with almost no barriers. In other words, when someone leaves the organization or is promoted into a new role, they don’t take everything they know with them.
The Where
Your own company needs to be created as an Organization, if you haven’t done so already. The most important Core Assets for non-IT purposes are Documents, Contacts, Locations, and Passwords. Under Locations, you can keep track of your offices and any common remote locations you use, recording all details pertaining to leases, title, and specs. Under Contacts, you would document your internal contacts. Passwords is rather self-explanatory.
The How
Documents should end up being the largest folder. We recommend dividing these up by department, because these are going to be used for SOPs and other information that is probably department-specific. You can also set controls so that, for example, only people in HR can see what’s in the HR folder. Each department can then track its own SOPs to standardize how different tasks should be performed. If your Service Desk hasn’t already done this, then their SOPs should be priority number one. IT Glue has a Word doc importer for uploading SOPs into IT Glue, alongside a variety of exciting new features like Flags and Checklists, that make documenting and managing that documentation more simple than ever.
The What
In addition to using the Core Assets folder to document internal information, make sure to utilize the Apps & Services section to document your vendors and external contacts. Whether it’s something as minor as getting hold of someone you met at a conference six months ago, or something as mission critical as fixing the coffee machine, getting your external contacts organized saves a lot of time.
The Who
Every department will eventually be fully documented. There is no conceivable reason why the entire company cannot be involved in this process. Documenting is easier than you think and our suite of business process features will make it easy for both techs and non-techs alike to get the most out of their documentation.
The When
Documenting an entire business will not happen overnight. Depending on how much legacy paperwork you have, it can take months. Our advice for SOPs is to document mainly the ones that you are going to use frequently, or that cause a lot of pain if the task is done incorrectly. This is why for SOPs the Service Desk is the natural place to start, because there are a lot of repetitive tasks with specific workflows that can be optimized. For less common or critical processes, it might make more sense just to use downtime, like over the holidays, to record some of those processes.
The thing about documentation is that it can seem daunting at first. But by prioritizing the most important information and SOPs, you can get a good start on producing documentation to save yourself time. And over time, the more you use IT Glue for this type of information, it will become a valuable reference for your team, and you will build a documentation culture.
Interested in taking a deeper dive into what IT Glue can do for you? Sign up for a demo below.
What thousands of MSPs have come to discover is that IT Glue can act as a central hub for all of the information they need in order to better serve their clients and staff. IT Glue also allows businesses to get the information out of their team’s heads and store it in a place where everyone in the organization can easily access it. We are a proven, best practices-driven IT documentation platform packed with features designed to help you maximize efficiency.
