Last updated: January 10, 2020
Creating IT documentation is not exactly the favourite task of any IT department, and the resulting maintenance work and documentation update procedures are even less tasks that IT employees volunteer for. However, it does make sense and is absolutely necessary to create and maintain the corresponding documents and records for your IT documentation. Get help from a dedicated software program. Our premium Docusnap documentation suite provides any support you need for these tasks.
All Beginnings are Difficult
You could of course start your project by saying: “IT documentation is important and also required by law. So it has to be done anyway.” With such an approach, you can be sure that your employees will show a negative attitude towards IT documentation or even refuse to perform this task altogether. And yet, a properly created IT documentation has a great number of advantages. This, however, this is often only realised when it is too late. If something was deleted or reconfigured and you need to rebuild and thus set up a system again after a total crash, the technician involved needs information about its former configuration. “As before” is not a useful statement in this situation, i.e. more specific technical information will be required. For this reason, you need some current records about the former configuration, possibly reflecting the situation when the error actually occurred. For this reason, IT documentation is not a necessary evil, but provides additional value to all persons involved.
Get a first version as soon as possible
Just get started and create your documentation. Use Docusnap to perform an inventory scan of your network and have the software create your first network plans and overviews. This way, you obtain a good overview of how your network is structured, how it behaves and how it is changing. The earlier you begin, the more extensive your archive of inventory data will become. The longer the history is, the higher the probability that the information needed in an emergency is indeed available. There might be cases, however, where you need to know how a system was configured some months ago, because at that time, everything was still working flawlessly. Since then, however, problems occurred, but nobody told you about them.
Do you already have a folder with IT documentation in your cabinet? How do you make sure it contains current information? A common issue with documentation is that nobody takes it seriously as the information it contains is usually obsolete. Therefore, it is of no use when you need up-to-date information. Only a documentation based on current and consistent data can be applied successfully.