How to Write Awesome Internal Documentation?
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As your business grows, your company knowledge base expands. Documents tend to accumulate on the employees’ PCs, usually connected by intranet. This is an internal document management system allowing for storing and sharing information. The information is generally structured. Every employee can see the structure in the file manager. It is presented in folders usually named Departments, Projects, Teams, Personal folders (each employee has their own folder on the disc), Contracts/Agreements, Quality Assessment, Training, Certification/Licensing, etc. There are also such folders as ‘General’ or just ‘Documents’ used as information silos. Here you can find all kinds of documents not fitting into any other folders.
The thing is, no matter how well-structured the information in the file manager looks, people always find it hard to get the info they need. The structure described above is usually too general. Sometimes people are just too lazy to share files in common folders, and the information finally gets lost in personal folders. Sometimes people share files via company e-mail and forget to upload them on the intranet.
These are just some of the reasons why internal documentation systems become inefficient. This blog will help you learn the best practices for internal documentation creation.
Internal documents can be split into several groups. The main types are listed below.
If you create and manage documentation the right way, it becomes an asset that can give your business a number of advantages. Some of them are listed below.
If the internal knowledge base of the company is not just information silos but is structured and organized, searching for information will become faster and more convenient.
The result will be saved extra time otherwise wasted on clueless searches on the intranet or writing e-mail requests to colleagues to provide the necessary documentation.
When creating internal documents, you should consider several important factors that will help your employees read the information carefully, not ‘look through’ or just skip it as useless or too hard to understand.
ClickHelp offers a powerful online documentation tool based on single sourcing and content reuse. This allows the use of ready-made content from one project to another without wasting time on checking if text fragments from several projects coincide and derive from the same reference text. Texts based on single sourcing are automatically updated. This makes the authoring process faster and more efficient, especially in the case of multiple authors working on the same project.
Besides single sourcing and content reuse, ClickHelp offers cloud content hosting. This saves the company budget otherwise spent on buying a company server.
At the document creation stage, ClickHelp offers automatic creation of TOCs (Tables of contents) for your documents with one click of a button. This feature helps to organize each document and make it easy to navigate.
Other outstanding features are reviewing and commenting. These are important technical documentation tools that can be used on a daily basis in the routine work process of any design and engineering company where reviewing or revising documents is normal. Several revisions of a text can occur before the document is finalized. With ClickHelp, the user will get notifications about comments or questions from colleagues or reviewers on the dashboard. This allows resolving problems at the initial stage of documentation development.
ClickHelp online documentation tool will make the life of your employees easier as it offers a patented full-text search engine based on taxonomies (index keywords) and search customization features.
If you have to deal with foreign-language documentation of your partners or translate your own internal docs into other languages, the ClickHelp online documentation tool will make things easier with the Translation Module.
In other words, the ClickHelp online documentation tool is a help authoring tool that combines many features and supports the process of document creation and management at all stages of the Document Development Life Cycle (DDLC). The stages include analyzing and planning, design, content development and reviewing, publishing and maintenance.
Internal documentation can be a valuable asset to your company. However, this can be achieved only in the case of proper documentation creation and management. Only in this case will this asset work, save time, enhance efficiency, and bring profit. ClickHelp offers an easy way to make your business more competitive by improving your company’s internal documentation.
Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices
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