Procedures Manual - A Living Document

I'm a little late to this post - but I feel like I have created a procedure manual for every workplace I have been. I like to think of it as both a daily reference, and a training guide. I often joke that I need to save brain cells so I often refer to my written process rather memorize some of my less frequent processes. I like to use One Note, so I can quickly make subject chapters. If I know I want to add a subject, but don't have time at that moment, I'll quickly create the page header for it, and fill in the blanks later. I'll sometimes just drop in email content, community posts, whatever strikes as possibly helpful, and go back to do a proper write and edit later. It's very much a living document.

Cheers

We are always working on our manual!!!

Thanks for the tips and insight Elizabeth!

This is great advice. We're trying to make more use of OneDrive at my office so that we can all work off the same document.

Looks like I am in good company with this project! Our end goal is a Microsoft OneNote file that is shared with the fundraisers and kept up by me and the Advancement Services team. We'll have a combination of tables for field definitions and other terminology exclusive to our organization, Visio workflow charts, quick entry guides with screenshots, and a formal best practices/procedures guide. I'd love to add in some videos as well. Lots of work, but my inner data geek is thrilled to take up the challenge.

I've subscribed to see what other gems the community has to offer. Happy editing! :)

Great question Jessica, creating a manual was high on my to-do list when I was hired and I found nothing from my predecessors although at that point we had already been using Blackbaud for 18 years. I had written manuals before for property management databases and it had been shared throughout my state as other housing land trusts moved to digital. Same as with that manual it had to happen one procedure at a time. As I would do something I would document it. The layout came a little later after a few had been created and it only made sense to follow the layout of the database. That will be interesting to see how it unfolds when NXT becomes more functional for all of the tiles since they can move. Alphabetical would make more sense in that situation.  If I came across something that would be helpful and I didn't have time to add at that moment I filed it for later. I used a paragraph symbol at the top of the paper to indicate it was something I wanted to add to the procedures manual. Abbreviations and definitions came very early on. If I came across an abbreviation in my work I added it immediately. Just last week a co-worker asked as they were adding appeals if I was familiar with an abbreviation. I was, however maybe not everyone would be 10 years from now, so in it went. Anytime I had to define something for someone it went into the manual. I had a file folder system to hold my handwritten notes until I could enter them that were organized in the same way as the manual. That way I could review all the like topic matter quickly and easily when I had a moment to work on it. If only I had had two monitors from the get-go it would have happened a lot quicker. Each time I would train someone on a procedure we would print out that section and we would edit it as we went through it. If there was enough time I would review it and adjust before we sat down to do the training. It is important that it means something to the end-user so they could add their own notes, emphasize steps they were likely to look over. This was part of the buy-in process - help them see the document is theirs for the editing as they own it too. I hope this helps! Good luck :)

How did you start this process?

Very insightful, thanks for sharing!

Originally I wrote all out when I started my manual in 2006. Now I refer to the wonderful BB resources where possible and try to make it more about what we do as an organization and why.

With the many resources that Blackbaud has, do those of you updating your internal procedures refer to those documents or recreate step by step?

Cindy - we work in it daily. Changes are made to it regularly. Consistency is important so that find and replace can be used for things like changes in titles. I avoid names so those responsible for performing a task don't have to be changed as often. For some reason, we do tend to change titles more frequently. Perhaps I should rethink this. Each individual procedure is dated with an original creation date and an update date with the initials of the person responsible for most of the updates. New hires are told that if a procedure has an old date on it to ask me to review it for updates should they be referring to it. Hope this helps :)

How do you make sure the manual is kept up to date?  Do you review it s often or ?

I am in process of updating the P & P manual. These are really great tips. Thanks for sharing. I especially like the idea of limiting permissions. 

I use Jing with a microphone on my computer. I learned about Jing from someone at BB support. Great way to share screenshots with a url in chat.

I like the idea of narrated videos. How do you do those hardware/software wise?

Great thoughts!

I am a big fan of manuals. Great advice!

Our manual is in Word, however you could limit changes to a Google Doc to just comments, mark suggestions, or use the revision history to see what changes have been suggested. I hope that helps Julia.

Is this referring to creating a personalized online manual, or are you just using Word or Google Docs?

I love the idea of a "Table of Contents" and also have two monitors.  Great advice!  Thanks :)