Tools for in-house documentation
If you care about mastering your CRM and other systems, you’ll want to start building a library of documentation for yourself and your staff.
But where to start?
Google Docs (or something similar) is a fine start, but it probably won’t long until you notice its biggest limitation: because it’s so flexible, it provides very little structure for building an organized library of content.
As a result, you can quickly find yoruself with a lot of documentation that’s just hard to use.
Here are some alternatives that will provide that structure and allow you to easily organize all of your in-house documentation:
Use your CMS:
If you’re running CiviCRM under Drupal or WordPress, then keeping your documentation there can make a lot of sense.
Your staff already have a password, and you can protect your in-house documentation behind that CMS login.
Your CMS probabl already has a dedicated module or plugin for structuring this kind of content.
Under Drupal, the Book module is a great option. It’s part of Drupal core, so you only need to enable it if it’s not already enabled.
From drupal.org:
A book is a set of nodes tied together in a hierarchical structure, with chapters, sections, and subsections. You can use books for manuals, site resource guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), novel, or curricula. …
Users who have the right permission can create a book and write, review, modify, or rearrange the nodes that are part of a book. Many users can work together on a book; you can allow or disallow collaboration, to whatever extent you want. …
It also provides smooth navigation up and down the heirarchical structure (chapters and section), and to “previous” and “next” pages in each section.
If you’re running WordPress, you’ll probably want to try the PublishPress Series plugin (though there are many other options, as with almost everything in WordPress).
From publishpress.com:
PublishPress Series is a publishing plugin that allows you to organize posts into issues or series. This is ideal for magazines, newspapers, short-story writers, teachers, comic artists, or anyone who writes multiple posts on the same topic.
… You can organize chapters into an overall story.
Like many WordPress plugins, this one does offer a “pro” upgrade option with additional features, but you’ll probably be quite content with the free version.
Use a dedicated documentation wiki:
Maybe you’d rather have a separate dedicated site for your documentation.
Check out DocuWiki. It will run alongside your Drupal or WordPress site (or on any hosting platform that supports PHP — which is essentially “everyewhere”), and offers some advantages over using Drupal or WordPress:
Wiki-like editing (a la Wikipedia) keeps track of previous versions, provides heirarchical navigation, search, and more.
Dedicated interface that’s completely separate from your CMS — could be attractive if you’re not yet confident about adding plugins and managing permissions on your own live WordPress or Drupal site.
Narrow set of formatting options — you can’t just “format content any way you wish,” which is actually an advantage because it tends to enforce a common structure on all of your pages.
Summary:
Google Docs is great to start, but its lack of structure can create challenges as you grow.
A dedicated documentation wiki, or a set of structured content in your Drupal or WordPress site, can make it all much easier for you to manage — and for your staff to use.
All the best,
A.