Documentation...

[Koldov]

I'm not talking about the big things like DR or handover style stuff, but does anybody document the day to day...?

 

I'm terrible at it and finding my advancing years aren't helping my recollection, but when I'm busy I can't seem to find the time (or will) to sit down and type it all out. I know if I don't do it right there and then, I will avoid it and it will get forgotten about (and I'll forget how I fixed it because I tried so many things and searched half the internet). Also that it takes as long (or longer) to record it than it does to fix the problem half the time....

 

But there have been a few occasions where an issue has arisen that really rings a bell, but for the life of me I can't remember the who, why, where, when or what....

 

Obviously there's the internet and in particular EDUGEEK can be great for solving the issue and mostly there is a permanent searchable record of the solution (if there was one), but that all takes time and isn't always fruitful.

 

Does anyone take the time to record the minutiae of things like a small change to a GPO, or actually log if they've changed a port, a firewall rule, or an A/V policy (especially if you're a one man band and don't have to pass the information on to your team).

 

If so, how have you achieved it so that it becomes a coherent/searchable database, easy to do in a timely manner and not a mess of incoherent babbling...?

 

Case in point: I was told to rush out a laptop recently for home use (it's not something we've done before), so I spent a frantic couple of days working out how to achieve it and had to make a lot of changes to various things (as mentioned GPOs, Firewall, A/V). When (and if) I get the laptop back in say a years time and I try to get it back to working onsite, I'm almost certain things will not work and I'll have no clue why (although I would wipe it anyway, it's just an example).

[Oaktech]

If you use a ticketing system, see if there is a knowledgebase extension so you can convert tickets to KB articles quickly as a searchable record of how you did it last time?

[Davit2005]

Day to day rarely unless it is a specific task that only I normally do. If so I jus teams message /email my team and put in our shared area. Prob needs something a bit better though.

 

I've always been quite good at documentation but at the same time always nice to have a colleague run through in anger to make sure not missed anything :-)

[Koldov]

If you use a ticketing system, see if there is a knowledgebase extension so you can convert tickets to KB articles quickly as a searchable record of how you did it last time?

 

We don't use a ticketing system (and I was actually going to mention that) but I thought I'd get too many 'use a ticketing system' posts. The thing is we are quite a small school and mostly things are done ad-hoc, by word of mouth. Not great, but I've been here quite a few years and never had any issues. Also, most of my 'other' jobs are self motivated/necessary by the nature of running a network/server infrastructure and not something requiring a ticket (although I could create one.... and square one).

 

Day to day rarely unless it is a specific task that only I normally do. If so I jus teams message /email my team and put in our shared area. Prob needs something a bit better though.

 

I've always been quite good at documentation but at the same time always nice to have a colleague run through in anger to make sure not missed anything :-)

 

Unfortunately I'm on my own, so rarely need to tell anyone what I've been doing all day (thank $Deity)....

[jemal]

I've lost the habit now as trying to move away from office365, but I used to heavily use OneNote as a journal. Start a page for the day, and then anything I need to write down like tasks I've promised to do over the phone, code snippets, website addresses about odd issues that might be useful later, etc. Normally an unstructured mess that I would often type while talking to people and 99% of it would never be looked at again, but then if trying to remember something several months later, a generic search often shows me my original nonsensical notes to try and interpret back again.

10 years ago the Journal function in Outlook was great, get a phone call, hit something like ctrl+j on outlook, and a blank timestamped notepad entry would instantly come up ready for me to type while I talk... I was gutted when that feature was taken away.

[3s-gtech]

Mine go straight into a Word or .txt document, as soon as I can after whatever emergency has occurred. These then go into an IT folder in a share, with NTFS restrictions on who can see them.

[DrBeaker]

Tickets (incidents) are one thing.

 

Generally it's ... Issue > Fix it > Resolution notes > close ticket.

 

 

Problem tickets (Problems/cause of multple incidents) is another.

 

This could involve regular updates to SLT etc, phone calls with MSPs, vendors etc.

 

 

Projects are another entire different thing. I have some small projects and some very large, expensive, multi-year projects. Some costing under £100 to some costing over £20K or more and multiple people involved.

 

All get documented differently to be honest. I'd love an easier solution.

 

Stuff I need to test/look into as part of one of the above might get documented into a Word doc with running notes etc.

 

I also use a Kanban board daily/weekly which shows where the issues are blocked (and surprise, surprise ... it ain't with IT)

 

 

Mine go straight into a Word or .txt document, as soon as I can after whatever emergency has occurred. These then go into an IT folder in a share, with NTFS restrictions on who can see them.

 

I do similar with notepad files or Word documents.

[mavhc]

I write instructions for projects, the plan is to make them public at some point, usually I first share them with a friend to see if they're complete and obvious. Then when I need to redo something, I have the instructions

[georgeescott]

I regularly document things in a shared OneNote if I feel they’re harder to find than a quick Google and it’s not a one-off thing.

Or if they’re important steps that team members should probably know if I’m sick/on holiday.

 

Always writing what the fix was in the ticket is helpful when you need to look back at it or have a similar issue.

 

We have a shared teams chat called ‘changelog’ which is an easy way to keep everyone up to date with any changes being made like GPO/Firewall changes etc.

Edited March 23, 2022 by georgeescott

[DrBeaker]

.... Always writing what the fix was in the ticket is helpful when you need to look back at it or have a similar issue.

Always had this debate at other places.

Got told "don't write 'essay's in the resolution notes." by the management.

 

Apparently a really complex issue that we might need to refer back to at some point in the future (GOD FORBID I made life easier for a colleague either) "fixed" was good enough of a resolution.

 

 

Then we actually needed to see what the resolution was for a previous incident or run reports off - guess what they all said?

 

We have a shared teams chat called ‘changelog’ which is an easy way to keep everyone up to date with any changes being made like GPO/Firewall changes etc.

Good idea that.

 

I already talk to myself, so as a team of one I'd be chatting to myself lol

Edited March 24, 2022 by DrBeaker

[georgeescott]

Always had this debate at other places.

Got told "don't write 'essay's in the resolution notes." by the management.

 

Apparently a really complex issue that we might need to refer back to at some point in the future (GOD FORBID I made life easier for a colleague either) "fixed" was good enough of a resolution. [emoji782] [emoji35]

 

Then we actually needed to see what the resolution was for a previous incident or run reports off - guess what they all said?

I can understand them not wanting you to over-explain on every ticket as that time can add up, but surely they can’t argue with something short and to the point listing what you did to fix the issue. Seems a strange stance to take.

 

Especially on the tickets that you spent a while finding a fix for, it’s worth the extra few minutes writing what you did to save yourself (or a colleague) potentially hours in the future!

 

 

Good idea that.

 

I already talk to myself, so as a team of one I'd be chatting to myself lol

Not sure if you can start a chat with yourself on Teams, I’ll have to try it out!

Maybe there’s a bot that saves chat messages to OneNote/Excel that would have a similar effect?

[jmak]

There is a "chat" in each Team. Set up a Team called Helpdesk and send messages to your heart's content. No one need know that you are the Helpdesk Team [emoji6]

[dhicks]

If so, how have you achieved it so that it becomes a coherent/searchable database, easy to do in a timely manner and not a mess of incoherent babbling...?

 

I've not yet used it myself, but a couple of people have recently recommended Obsidian as a note-taking tool:

 

https://obsidian.md/

 

Notes / documentation are stored locally as Markdown files, so you can use a static site generator or other tool to process them into a documentation website.

[penfold]

I tend to use onenote. In past I have used it in a team by creating tabs and pages with the date of the change. If someone then complains something broke last week but didn't tell you it is easy to check if you changed anything at that time. We also referenced any tickets in onenote so they could be matched against ticketing system

 

We created a template to use so each page looked the same and should contain the same information. Made it easier to use and new people knew what type of information we wanted saved. Effectively it was our wiki for keeping changes and how to guides for troubleshooting/daily checks.

 

I've since moved a couple of times and tried to use the same solution. Unfortunately it always fails at the same point, someone doesn't use it, doesn't enter the changes they have made or update the tasks to be done. Then you end up with documentation which is out of date and more of hinderence then a help.

 

For me though, it tends to be what I use to record my work(as in the details of what was done and how things should be set). I still need to improve on how I do that though

[CHiLL]

We use a ticketing system, but I tend to make a distinction between IT support requests/resolutions and IT documentation. The ticketing system is great for going back to look how to resolve an issue, but not good for documenting procedures for configuring system services like Core AD services, VMware, SCCM, VEEAM, etc. For that we use OneNote as much as we can, though I tend to only document big projects or the repair of something that's failed and needs reconfiguring, should it happen again.

 

I tend to find that I'll not make many notes if I'm noodling around on a side project to see if I can get something working or if it'll be useful. Then it ends up working and actually useful, so it becomes a live production service, with little documentation aside from stuff I happen to remember.