I am at the point where I am passing a lot of my routine work to virtual assistants.

So I need to document all my processes prior to handing them on.

I have been playing with Process St and REALLY like it's ease of use and interface, but I am reluctant to add another monthly fee to all the current software subscriptions I have to pay.

I do have OneNote and it comes close but would be hard to organize with each process being a tab.

It seems to me perhaps there might be an open source or lower cost/one time fee alternative. Perhaps a wiki would work?

What are your thoughts?

Garland Coulson wrote:

I am at the point where I am passing a lot of my routine work to virtual
assistants.

So I need to document all my processes prior to handing them on.

It seems to me perhaps there might be an open source or lower cost/one
time fee alternative. Perhaps a wiki would work?

What is a virtual assistant?

For simple task delegation and tracking I just use WorkFlowy, enhanced with some Stylish CSS scripts that colour in date tags (starting with @, e.g. @12_Oct_2017) and hashtags, such as #WAITING, so I know I'm waiting for someone to complete that task.

If your needs are more complex, then ConnectedText can certainly help in slicing and dicing and recombining the data in weird and wonderful ways.

But it's a lot more hassle than just banging stuff into WorkFlowy, especially with Chrome extensions such as "Clip to WorkFlowy."

Personally, I'd be strongly in favour of a wiki, but much depends on how you work.

I can recommend Dokuwiki, which is relatively easy to set up, has a powerful search engine, and if you don't want to set it up on your own web server, is hosted by lots of service providers.

But Wordpress also offers a plethora of useful themes. One of them, which might meet your needs, is PrimusNote (www.primusnote.org for live demo). It's free, and it's got a lovely set of functions (they also offer hosted services, but those start at a relatively robust USD 29 per month, albeit for apparently unlimited users and 5GB of storage space).

A free option would be Samepage (www.samepage.io). Don't be put off by the fact that the free option only includes 10 pages; you get 1GB of space (more than enough for most purposes), plus a plethora of team options. You can put any number of items on a page, because of the way Samepage is structured (by different kinds of elements, including text elements, task elements, file management elements, calendar elements etc. etc.). It's best to go and try it out, because it will surprise you. It's the successor to Kerio Workspace, which we still use internally because it's so user-friendly and capacious. If you decide you like it, the pricing isn't outrageous.

Cheers,
Bill

"Document all my processes" can have a lot of nuances -- from "writing up some todo list templates" to "making formal BPMN process notation. If you are thinking more toward the right end of that spectrum -- some degree of process formalization -- I'd recommend Cacoo or Lucidchart. I prefer Lucidchart because it has integrations that I need, but Cacoo has some nice features too. Both have individual or team options.

Garland Coulson wrote:

I am at the point where I am passing a lot of my routine work to virtual
assistants.

So I need to document all my processes prior to handing them on.

I have been playing with Process St and REALLY like it's ease of use and
interface, but I am reluctant to add another monthly fee to all the
current software subscriptions I have to pay.

I do have OneNote and it comes close but would be hard to organize with
each process being a tab.

It seems to me perhaps there might be an open source or lower cost/one
time fee alternative. Perhaps a wiki would work?

What are your thoughts?

I like the look of Cacoo, I must say. From the original description of the need, I felt that text descriptions played a fairly important part in what Garland is trying to achieve, and Cacoo appears to be flexible enough to support text as well as diagrams. Lucidchart looks pretty cool, but very much charting only. But that's from a very superficial glance!

Dr Andus wrote:

?
What is a virtual assistant?

I virtual assistant is a person who takes care of tasks for me. Really just an office worker that works from their own home instead of my office.

For simple task delegation and tracking I just use WorkFlowy, enhanced
with some Stylish CSS scripts that colour in date tags (starting with @,
e.g. @12_Oct_2017) and hashtags, such as #WAITING, so I know I'm waiting
for someone to complete that task.

I looked at Workflowy a long time ago but never liked that you could create only one outline rather than a different outline for each project. And, when I looked at it last, it wasn't really set up to add graphics and videos.

If your needs are more complex, then ConnectedText can certainly help in
slicing and dicing and recombining the data in weird and wonderful ways.

Thanks, I will look at Connected Text again.

MadaboutDana wrote:

I can recommend Dokuwiki, which is relatively easy to set up, has a
powerful search engine, and if you don't want to set it up on your own
web server, is hosted by lots of service providers.

Thanks. I did install Dokuwiki but it is NOT intuitive at all. I couldn't get a table of contents/navigation to work. No [new page] button - you have to type a complex command or do a search for a nonexistant page and then a [create page] option finally shows up. Very poor interface.

But Wordpress also offers a plethora of useful themes. One of them,
which might meet your needs, is PrimusNote (www.primusnote.org for live
demo). It's free, and it's got a lovely set of functions (they also
offer hosted services, but those start at a relatively robust USD 29 per
month, albeit for apparently unlimited users and 5GB of storage space).

I use WordPress all the time, but PrimusNote looks like a Kanban style task management system, not a documentation tool. I already have good task management systems, I just need a way to document how to do the procedures more easily,

A free option would be Samepage (www.samepage.io). Don't be put off by
the fact that the free option only includes 10 pages; you get 1GB of
space (more than enough for most purposes), plus a plethora of team
options. You can put any number of items on a page, because of the way
Samepage is structured (by different kinds of elements, including text
elements, task elements, file management elements, calendar elements
etc. etc.). It's best to go and try it out, because it will surprise
you. It's the successor to Kerio Workspace, which we still use
internally because it's so user-friendly and capacious. If you decide
you like it, the pricing isn't outrageous.

SamePage is a task management and collaboration system and not really a documentation system. So it doesn't really fit the bill either. Of the ones you mentioned Dokuwiki comes closest but the user interface is unusable.

Paul Korm wrote:

"Document all my processes" can have a lot of nuances -- from "writing
up some todo list templates" to "making formal BPMN process notation.
If you are thinking more toward the right end of that spectrum -- some
degree of process formalization -- I'd recommend Cacoo or Lucidchart.
I prefer Lucidchart because it has integrations that I need, but Cacoo
has some nice features too. Both have individual or team options.

Good point. I am not looking for a way to draw work flows which is more what Lucidchart and Cacoo does. Rather I am wanting a way that people can click on a process and see the steps in a navigation bar on the left and the step with text, screenshots and videos on the right.

When I search for any BPN software, I primarily get the drawing software, not documentation software.

Dr Andus wrote:

If your needs are more complex, then ConnectedText can certainly help in
slicing and dicing and recombining the data in weird and wonderful ways.

I had a quick look at the ConnectedText site but it looks like it is primarily for desktop only? So it doesn't look like my team could access it remotely online.

Garland Coulson wrote:

I had a quick look at the ConnectedText site but it looks like it is
primarily for desktop only? So it doesn't look like my team could access
it remotely online.

Yes, it is desktop only. Although it's possible to export a project as HTML and upload it to a server to share with others as a website, I've never tried that, so I don't know how convenient it is to keep updating a website that way on a regular basis.

More on that here:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/12127

MadaboutDana wrote:

>But Wordpress also offers a plethora of useful themes. One of them,
>which might meet your needs, is PrimusNote (www.primusnote.org for live
>demo). It's free, and it's got a lovely set of functions (they also
>offer hosted services, but those start at a relatively robust USD 29
per
>month, albeit for apparently unlimited users and 5GB of storage space).

I gave some further thought to your Wordpress suggestion and I did find some themes and plugins that are specific for knowledge bases. So I will give them a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes, most BPMN software is for diagramming. Not the solution for what describe.

I agree with Dr. Andus' suggestion of ConnectedText -- what you described (navigation bar, click-through to content) is easily done on a wiki platform. Since you want others to see this info, if you do not have your own web hosting platform to upload HTML from ConnectedText to -- then look for a service that offers MediaWiki hosting. MediaWiki is the underlying software for Wikipedia and there are numerous MediaWiki hosting services offering private wikis.

Garland Coulson wrote

I am wanting a way that people can click on a process and see the steps in a navigation bar on the left and the step with text, screenshots and videos on the right.

When I search for any BPN software, I primarily get the drawing software, not documentation software.

Garland Coulson wrote:

I gave some further thought to your Wordpress suggestion and I did find
some themes and plugins that are specific for knowledge bases. So I will
give them a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

If you find some of these themes and plugins satisfactorily useful, I'd be grateful if you can mention them here; admittedly, I had not thought of using WordPress for such applications but it makes sense given its flexibility.

I would have probably resorted to Plone https://docs.plone.org/ or Confluence https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/features The latter is promoted heavily in respect to it collaborative features, but I have found it very capable for producing documentation even when one is working alone.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

I would have probably resorted to Plone https://docs.plone.org/ or
Confluence https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/features The
latter is promoted heavily in respect to it collaborative features, but
I have found it very capable for producing documentation even when one
is working alone.

Some more information on documentation applications based on Confluence http://www.intelligentcontentconference.com/technology-behind-language-content-strategy/

Hi Garland,

I've just found another piece of software that might suit your circumstances.

It's a rather neat wiki concept called Nuclino (www.nuclino.com); the basic version doesn't cost anything, allows unlimited team members and gives you 5GB of storage: really not bad.

It might work for you, it might not. Looks worth a look, however!

All the best,
Bill

Hi Garland,

I've just found another piece of software that might suit your circumstances.

It's a rather neat wiki concept called Nuclino (www.nuclino.com); the basic version doesn't cost anything, allows unlimited team members and gives you 5GB of storage: really not bad.

It might work for you, it might not. Looks worth a look, however!

All the best,
Bill