Answers.Body: <p>We have a variety of approaches none of which are ideal:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>in the CMS (with problems you indicate),</li>
  <li>in our help tickets,</li>
  <li>in a wiki for the client in our ticketing system,</li>
  <li>in Google docs in folders shared with our client,</li>
  <li>in email responses to client queries, sometimes resent,</li>
  <li>in documents in our clients' documentation system or shared drives.</li>
  </ul>
  <p>We'd be interested in collaborating on something in CiviCRM possibly integrated with CiviTutorial. FWIW, we are gradually providing more of our documentation as a screencasts rather than step by step text recipes since at least some people seem to the visuals.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-10-03T21:59:40.360Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2024-10-03T21:59:40.360Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Joe Murray
Answers.Body: <p>I think the main thing no matter what the approach is strongly encouraging the org to take ownership of documenting their key processes and unique system as it changes. And link to it in the CiviCRM navigation =&gt; Support menu. This includes areas like user roles and why they exist. Then they develop the in-house expertise over time.</p>
  <p>For small orgs, keep it simple and do a shared drive. It can be as simple as one google doc.</p>
  <p>For something more advanced, I prefer the CMS route for logged in users (or certain roles/groups) to manage it.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-10-03T22:23:09.027Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2024-10-03T22:23:09.027Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Andy Burns
Body: <p>Some CiviCRM  processes are intuitive (ex: send mailings to a specific group), some are less, based on the workflows of each organization.</p>
  <p>For example, an organization sends a report by paper mail on a yearly basis. Every year they have to figure out how it was done. They have an opt-in group, but they will then exclude some groups, and they don't remember in which format to export, and what happens afterwards.</p>
  <p>It could be summarized as bullet point reminders: 1) do the segmentation in x-y-z way, 2) export using Advanced Search or a SearchKit, with a specific mapping, 3) send the file to Jane Doe.</p>
  <p>Every organization documents their processes in a different way, if they document at all. As a service provider, we often don't have access to their documentation, and training new staff can be complicated. Finding the documentation can be a challenge. People often don't know there is documentation exists.</p>
  <p>The <a href="https://civicrm.org/extensions/civitutorial" rel="noreferrer">CiviTutorials</a> extension could  perhaps provide a table of contents of available documentation (it can be hard to say on which page the tutorial should appear, but Tutorials has a menu under Support that can be useful to list relevant docs for a given page).</p>
  <p>Although Tutorials can only hold short bits of documentation, a few sentences. Ideally we would link to where the documentation really is. Sometimes we have used the CMS to store documentation, but we have to make sure there is proper access-control on it, which can be tedious, and client-specific duct-tape (some of our  clients are on Drupal 7, Drupal 9/10, WordPress and soon Standalone). I guess we would prefer the documentation to be in CiviCRM itself, to keep it technically simpler.</p>
  <p>What do you use?</p>
  
Tags: <documentation>
Title: How do you document organisation-specific processes?
ThreadText: # How do you document organisation-specific processes?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2024-10-03)
  
  Some CiviCRM processes are intuitive (ex: send mailings to a specific group), some are less, based on the workflows of each organization.
  
  For example, an organization sends a report by paper mail on a yearly basis. Every year they have to figure out how it was done. They have an opt-in group, but they will then exclude some groups, and they don't remember in which format to export, and what happens afterwards.
  
  It could be summarized as bullet point reminders: 1) do the segmentation in x-y-z way, 2) export using Advanced Search or a SearchKit, with a specific mapping, 3) send the file to Jane Doe.
  
  Every organization documents their processes in a different way, if they document at all. As a service provider, we often don't have access to their documentation, and training new staff can be complicated. Finding the documentation can be a challenge. People often don't know there is documentation exists.
  
  The [CiviTutorials](https://civicrm.org/extensions/civitutorial) extension could perhaps provide a table of contents of available documentation (it can be hard to say on which page the tutorial should appear, but Tutorials has a menu under Support that can be useful to list relevant docs for a given page).
  
  Although Tutorials can only hold short bits of documentation, a few sentences. Ideally we would link to where the documentation really is. Sometimes we have used the CMS to store documentation, but we have to make sure there is proper access-control on it, which can be tedious, and client-specific duct-tape (some of our clients are on Drupal 7, Drupal 9/10, WordPress and soon Standalone). I guess we would prefer the documentation to be in CiviCRM itself, to keep it technically simpler.
  
  What do you use?
  
  **Tags:** documentation
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 2 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2024-10-03. Score: 4
  
  We have a variety of approaches none of which are ideal:
  
  * in the CMS (with problems you indicate),
  * in our help tickets,
  * in a wiki for the client in our ticketing system,
  * in Google docs in folders shared with our client,
  * in email responses to client queries, sometimes resent,
  * in documents in our clients' documentation system or shared drives.
  
  We'd be interested in collaborating on something in CiviCRM possibly integrated with CiviTutorial. FWIW, we are gradually providing more of our documentation as a screencasts rather than step by step text recipes since at least some people seem to the visuals.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2024-10-03. Score: 2
  
  I think the main thing no matter what the approach is strongly encouraging the org to take ownership of documenting their key processes and unique system as it changes. And link to it in the CiviCRM navigation => Support menu. This includes areas like user roles and why they exist. Then they develop the in-house expertise over time.
  
  For small orgs, keep it simple and do a shared drive. It can be as simple as one google doc.
  
  For something more advanced, I prefer the CMS route for logged in users (or certain roles/groups) to manage it.
  
  
  ---
  
  