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Documentation Tools for Admins

Seat of Knowledge

Article from ADMIN 20/2014

By Kristian Kißling

Scattered documents lying on the file server are an inconvenient resource when admins need to solve problems at the help desk. Free knowledgebase components combine knowledge and structure, providing a better overview.

Help desks are a company's way of utilizing technically skilled staff to process problems and user's questions politely and in a goal-oriented way. This is especially true in IT, where admins and developers fix software bugs for their customers. Besides making a note of the most important data for a problem and feeding the ticketing system with this information, the staff preferably solve the problem immediately on the phone or by email. Ideally, help desk staff should handle 80 to 90 percent of all requests themselves and pass on only the really tough cases to the specialists.

The success rate depends, among other things, on whether the company fosters a culture that promotes gathering and documenting knowledge and whether it creates a clear workflow for problem solving. Help desk personnel, for example, regularly fish in troubled waters when important resources lie broadly distributed over PDFs, wikis, IRC logs, and bug reports on the intranet. A knowledgebase can provide a remedy by bringing together the fragments of expertise and making them accessible.

Depending on specific needs, the requirements for a knowledgebase can be different from company to company. Although standalone knowledgebase applications exist, the database is typically part of a larger work organization system, such as a production management (PM) software tool or an ITIL-compliant IT Service Management (ITSM) system.

In this article, I introduce free knowledgebase components for wikis, project management, ITIL tools, and more.

Help, I Need a Wiki

In small companies, startups, or companies without a help desk, organizing knowledge is often a fairly low priority. In most cases, a more or less logical folder structure exists on the file server, providing a home for help documents and manuals.

Knowledge also is embedded in personal email messages and in staff memories; thus, valuable know-how is lost

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