Hey everyone, I'm the new IT manager and I've inherited a real mess of a documentation system. I've got over 1,500 pages of outdated documentation spread across Google Drive, Confluence, and Notion, plus half a terabyte of unorganized files. We're dealing with everything from zero organization to outdated procedures still labeled as current. I've managed to review and archive about 800 pages so far, but I'm looking for automation solutions that can help me avoid reading through every single legacy document manually. I'm particularly interested in tools or workflows for automated deduplication, content categorization, identifying obsolete content, and version control systems that are user-friendly and affordable. If anyone has been through a similar situation, I'd love to hear how you tackled it!
3 Answers
I understand how overwhelming it can be! At my company, we were drowning in outdated knowledge too. We automated ticket updates into our KB by tagging certain tickets as 'worthy of KB' in Jira Service Desk, which creates structured content in Confluence, complete with tags and labels. Simple formatting and auto-reminders for reviews have helped us keep our knowledge fresh, too!
I feel your pain—our documentation was a nightmare too! We consolidated everything manually, keeping only what was current and abandoning the rest. Unfortunately, there's no magic tool for this. You'll need to set things up properly and tag everything before you can implement deduplication and version control. It might be a tedious process, but it’s worth it in the end!
Absolutely! Picking a good solution is key. I suggest moving to a wiki platform where updates are easier, and have the respective subject matter experts (SMEs) migrate their content. It’s often a tough sell to get documentation up-to-date, but it's crucial for onboarding new hires.
With Confluence Cloud, we leverage automation rules to remind us when KB articles need updating and archive older content automatically. We're also experimenting with Rovo for AI assistance, although I think human oversight is still necessary right now. We use Jira to trigger KB article creation from comments, which has worked well for us.
That's a great tip! I saved your comment for future reference. Keeping formatting easy really does encourage people to update.