KB for IT SOP's

tstrip007

We're a small IT shop and one problem that many probably have is when one takes a vacation we get in situations where we need that person and they are scuba diving.

Im wanting to create an internal IT knowledge base that each IT team member can contribute so that if fit hits the shan and we need Steve and Steves under water, we can turn to his KB for procedures.

Im thinking of using Sharepoint wiki's broken out into multiple wikis by team member.

Anyone else have this problem? what do you do about it? Any ideas?

santaowns

Our Company is putting in a big effort this year to do just this sort of thing. we are using a knowledgebase that we can put specific solutions to known issues in using Remedy. Very good idea on your end, I would also ensure that more than one person has the correct login credentials lol

tstrip007

nobody likes getting blown up on vacation. I'm hoping that will motivate my team to document some of the solutions to common issues.

DevilWAH

Personal I would suggest a single database, rather than separate it in to team members. and instead use tags and category to split it in to technologies rather than people.

If exchange admin guy goes on holiday, meets the love of his life and never returns, you dont want to have the new exchange admin taking over there personal share point or starting fresh.

So yes force a standard to you KB and make people stick to it! And secondly keep it in order where its easy to find information. Not for the guy the entered it, but for any one needing to find and retirve it who might not know exactly where to look or all the right key words to search.

an unused KB is no more use than not having one at all. It should be part of daily life at work, not to pull out when things go wrong.

CodeBlox

We use sharepoint wiki for this very reason.

petedude

DevilWAH wrote: »

Personal I would suggest a single database, rather than separate it in to team members. and instead use tags and category to split it in to technologies rather than people. . . .

I second this. As much as it's nice to have an excuse to deploy something fancy like Sharepoint. . . don't. Resist the urge. It's a small shop, keep things simple and sweet. Build a database with Access or OOB (oh, heck, even Paradox) and stash it on a share.

If you're really drooling over the Sharepoint thingy, do it as "ver 2.0" somewhere down the line. (And who's to say you'd have to use Sharepoint anyway? You could almost get as much resume mileage nowadays out of setting up a FOSS solution.)

The Technomancer

MediaWiki on a pizza box or VM with a LAMP stack. If the techs don't fill it out, they don't get to piss and moan when their phone blows up during their honeymoon.

About7Narwhal

I am facing a similar issue at my place. If Bob is out, the work Bob did cannot be done. I am hoping to find a good template to use for KB articles but have had no luck so far. I figure once I find an easy to use template (easy to use = less resistance) I will create a few examples, then pitch the idea to the top brass. Once that is done, and assuming all goes well, I too will have to think of the best way to serve this information up.

tstrip007

I created sharepoint at my company years ago and all the other departments heavily utilize it. Especially the wiki and team discussion. I have an IT site built, will just get the ball rolling by wiki'ing all my stuff, which I document everything in text files so it will be easy for me but nobody else does this. @devilwah good point and I thought about this, as one of our lead developers left today. @techno will check that out and exactly what I'm thinking, if its not documented .... BOOM!

Lizano

Using TikiWiki over here, although I was voting for MediaWiki.

tstrip007

How are you guys getting this policy of documenting enforced? Being a small team with a good amount of users and technology, its hard to find time to do this stuff, especially for some of our people.

phoeneous

Whatever you do, don't use vBulletin

JDMurray

tstrip007 wrote: »

an internal IT knowledge base that each IT team member can contribute

How will you get each team member to contribute? That is, what's their motivation and incentive(s) to contribute?

Will specific time be blocked out during their work week specifically for writing documentation, or will they have to find the time to document along with everything else they do?

How many of your team members actually like to write documentation?

tier~

There are multiple KBs in use at my company... between SharePoint, WebHelpDesk and then just our team has a shared Evernote account. None of them get used like they should but that's another story, haha. For ease of use, the shared Evernote definitely wins out.

tstrip007

JDMurray wrote: »

How will you get each team member to contribute? That is, what's their motivation and incentive(s) to contribute?

Will specific time be blocked out during their work week specifically for writing documentation, or will they have to find the time to document along with everything else they do?

How many of your team members actually like to write documentation?

No clue, I am the only one that documents, it just became a habit. Motivation and incentives.... minimize mistakes, avoid phone getting blown up on vacation, some redundancy within the team. I thought starting small and getting the team to commit to at least two KB's/SOP's a week and hoping it becomes a habit.

DevilWAH

JDMurray wrote: »

How will you get each team member to contribute? That is, what's their motivation and incentive(s) to contribute?

Will specific time be blocked out during their work week specifically for writing documentation, or will they have to find the time to document along with everything else they do?

How many of your team members actually like to write documentation?

Keeps knowlage base simple, it's not documentation. It's should have.

Title
key words
summary of issue
steps to fix.
(space for more detail)

Summary must be brief, as should the fix. A knowlage base you complete as you go, it should be better system than what they already use for notes.

If it is a useful tool for people to use as there own every day tool, it's usefulness to othersx although it's primary goal, should be the byproduct not the focus when you are implementing.

petedude

I used to work at a place where it was mandatory to add a wiki entry every month. All of us systems administrators would come down to the end of the month scrambling to put something in. It usually ended up being whatever Office tip.

Where I'm at now, the ticketing system has FAQ function, so if it isn't part of a ticket it goes into the FAQ section. There are only a reasonable number of FAQs in this case.