I've been given the job of standardizing our internal documentation and I'm really interested in what formats or templates others use for this task. If you have any examples or templates, I would love to see them!
4 Answers
Before we dive in, can you share your goals with this documentation project? We focus a lot on metadata like creator names and dates, but documents stored in Git already track those things well.
I just stick to a simple Word document with a structured header system to generate a contents page. Honestly, I'm the only one on my team who takes the time to document things comprehensively, and most of the team avoids my docs because they think they’re too long.
For smaller teams, you might find Git to be sufficient as a markdown document engine. If you're considering self-hosting, I'd recommend checking out BookStack; I've used it at home and found it to be cost-effective for my needs. Another option is GitBook, although the free tier limits you to one author while allowing many viewers, and its paid version can get pricey at about $100/month. Just keep in mind that you'll need the paid tier for features like SSO. With Git, you can manage documents by pushing changes directly to your repository, which will sync with GitBook.
I also recommend BookStack. It's user-friendly and really worth a try.
Yeah, I’m a fan of BookStack too, but I’m not sure I could get approval for something like GitBook.
We're currently using a wiki for our documentation. I would say that for us, the structure is more important than the specific format. Having a robust search feature is also critical for quickly finding information.
Which wiki platform are you using? I'd love to know more.
The main goal is to consolidate knowledge since our team is small and one member is retiring without much written down. I'm starting with a Git markdown setup, so I'm curious about any special practices others use.