I recently encountered a frustrating situation where I had to handle a batch of Word documents from students that were supposed to follow specific formatting styles for macros to generate XML files. Unfortunately, none of the students adhered to those styles, resulting in documents that looked fine visually but were a formatting mess internally. This forced me to manually adjust each document to ensure the macros worked properly.
I'm also using various platforms for documentation—Google Docs, Confluence, and Word—and I'm finding them all quite lacking. Word can be powerful but is fragile when non-technical users manipulate formatting. Google Docs often disrupts styles and spacing. Confluence is decent for notes but not great for structured documents or templates. Approval workflows seem inconsistent across these tools, and automating the process feels like a cumbersome task.
I'm curious about how other sysadmins navigate these challenges. Do you enforce strict templates? Rely on scripts or macros? Use Confluence or SharePoint without much success? How do you manage version control and approvals? Any recommendations would be appreciated!
4 Answers
It seems like you may have let the students go too far without making the standards clear. Maybe they didn't grasp how crucial it was to follow the template you provided. But to be honest, Word can be wildly unpredictable even when formatted to specifications, and I've seen the same document formatted by different people end up with completely different internal structures.
If you need documents to generate XML files reliably, Word isn’t the best choice. Honestly, I've been trying to phase out macros, especially with the security issues that come with VBA. For approval workflows, I'd suggest using a web form that enforces specific input formats rather than asking users to fill out Word templates. Something like MS Forms or Google Forms could really streamline the process. If you really want to use something editable, PDFs might be worth considering as templates.
You might want to explore using Markdown as it could simplify things significantly for you. You can convert Markdown to XML easily, and it avoids a lot of the headaches that come with Word. LaTeX is another option to consider; while it has a learning curve, it allows for beautiful document formatting. But, I understand that many users are still stuck in Word or Google Docs.
Just a tip: Word is great for simple documents, but for anything complex, it’s probably the wrong tool. I use SharePoint with custom templates and set up approval workflows using Power Automate. It’s been working really well for me.
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