The last couple of postings on this blog have had to do with self-documenting systems. In our society’s ongoing effort to avoid killing trees whenever possible, and at the same time increase the general availability of knowledge, electronic documentation systems have become more popular. Two tools in particular come to mind.
Camtasia Studio, from TechSmith, allows the documenter to record a video of an operation in a fairly space-efficient format. (This technology is being licensed by Microsoft in Windows 7 for the new problem reporting tool.) If a picture is worth a thousand words, a brief, to-the-point video is worth a million. The only downside is that any type of multimedia documentation system has the potential to strain bandwidth resources if heavily used.
On the other end of the fanciness spectrum, wiki software (from the Hawaiian word for “fast”) allows multiple people to update an interlinked, Web-based help system with a minimum of overhead (no JavaScript, limited CSS). Wikis follow the philosophy of the old Apple HyperCard system and have been around on the Net for, oh, a decade and a half or so. You can host a wiki on pretty much any Web server in your organization that might have a little bandwidth available. Some wiki tools that let you create an “edit history” of a document that shows what changes were made, and when.
Of course there’s no law that says you can’t use both of these techniques, along with others your organization may favor (look up “knowledge management systems” on a Web search engine and you’ll see the breadth and depth of available solutions). The point is that there are lots of ways these days to document your networks without thinning the rain forests. Check ‘em out.
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Glenn Weadock is a longtime instructor for Global Knowledge and teaches Windows 7, Server 2008, and Active Directory. He has recently co-developed with Mark Wilkins two advanced Server 2008 classes in the Microsoft Official Curriculum. Glenn also consults through his Colorado-based company Independent Software, Inc. and is technical director of MarketCoach Investment Education Software LLC.
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