How do y'all handle multiple content creators?
The time has come for me to set up a knowledge council and get more people creating cards. My thought is to establish a few templates that we all agree on how to use, and then unless there are questions about format/content/visibility, the individuals on the council are trusted to just let it rip and make it live. Am I being foolhardy with that view? Should I be a bottle-neck of approval on all cards? Would love your thoughts, friends. Thanks!!
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Haha this is a bit of a divided question - a few folks (myself included) have been wanting to see more team publishing/approval processes put in to gracefully bottleneck cards through - see the thread and old posts here.
It depends on your council writers' experience - is all their written content equally consistent and meets your standards for quality/best practices? In my case, it's more that I need the subject matter experts to write content then I take over and clean it up + format it + publish it, because they do not have the tech writing experience that I have.
It depends on your council writers' experience - is all their written content equally consistent and meets your standards for quality/best practices? In my case, it's more that I need the subject matter experts to write content then I take over and clean it up + format it + publish it, because they do not have the tech writing experience that I have.
Your model is likely similar to what I'll need. I find myself staring at an mountain of content that yet needs to be entered because to-date Guru is our first centralized KB...so....we gotta get it ALL in there over time.
I'll look through that thread for ideas, thanks.
At Carta, I have created a Guru Expert Certification that goes over a few topics (the course is 1 hr e-learning)
1. how to use guru
2. how guru is organized at Carta (how collections/boards are setup)
3. how to use the features that authors now have access to (creating, verifying)
and any employee can be a guru expert, but should take the course then will have author access to create their own content for their teams and in collaborative spaces.
we had a huge issues with everyone having author access in a previous vendor so felt this change was needed. it's a bit gatekeeping but necessary to teach them how to effectively use guru
We also have a style guide created (as a guru card) as a guideline on how to use formatting and whatnots, so after having them go over the certification and style guide, we let them go on their own as we hope to trust them to create effective content
but i will periodically review unverified cards and give tips on how to keep on top of their content, like with this guru made verification checklist: https://app.getguru.com/card/T9GMGbyc/Verification-Checklist
1. how to use guru
2. how guru is organized at Carta (how collections/boards are setup)
3. how to use the features that authors now have access to (creating, verifying)
and any employee can be a guru expert, but should take the course then will have author access to create their own content for their teams and in collaborative spaces.
we had a huge issues with everyone having author access in a previous vendor so felt this change was needed. it's a bit gatekeeping but necessary to teach them how to effectively use guru
We also have a style guide created (as a guru card) as a guideline on how to use formatting and whatnots, so after having them go over the certification and style guide, we let them go on their own as we hope to trust them to create effective content
but i will periodically review unverified cards and give tips on how to keep on top of their content, like with this guru made verification checklist: https://app.getguru.com/card/T9GMGbyc/Verification-Checklist
Seconding this request, if you're willing to share, Michelle. :slightlysmilingface:
yeah! the certification is created via Articulate, which we love using and it makes e-courses more digestible, then distribute the courses via Litmos. Let me pull the course and remove some company specific information and see if i can share it here (if not, via google drive)
We also have a course on how to be an author that everyone must take before I add them to the author's group for our Customer Experience Collection. In addition, I have tons of best practices/style guide documentation in Guru and templates that we encourage authors to use. I heavily use the card activity feed in Slack and periodically go through all of the newly created cards and edit them for formatting and copy changes, adding the appropriate tags, etc. (because like Brooke, most of our content creators do no have technical documentation writing experience) and leave comments mentioning the card author in thread letting them know what I did and why, as a teach-as-you-go method. The feed also allows me to see what is being created and follow up to authors if I know we have a card that is similar that the info should be added to vs. creating new cards. Or, where a card should live - what board/boards, what sections, etc. because they don't have the overall knowledge of the information architecture like I do.
Here (attached PDF) is a style guide that we have in guru that ours users can reference - more geared towards the experts who will be creating the content.
We leave a lot of the organizing of the card to the user but try to keep consistent formatting
Here is a slide deck to our guru best practices about permissions, organizing, things to think about when creating cards. It was created a little over a year ago but a lot of the concepts still apply
We leave a lot of the organizing of the card to the user but try to keep consistent formatting
Here is a slide deck to our guru best practices about permissions, organizing, things to think about when creating cards. It was created a little over a year ago but a lot of the concepts still apply
This is great, Michelle, THANK YOU!! I'll give these a read.
As far as more high-level best practices, the things we cover are:
• What we document and what we don't
• Things to consider before creating a new card
• Card content best practices like using plain language, concise sentences, writing in active voice, thinking about the card audience & applicable tone, using parallel headings & subheadings (same part of speech, same tone), etc.
• Best practices for uploading screenshots (when to use them/when not not), using tables, using Markdown
• Tagging, verification interval, privacy setting best practices
• Using drafts
These all came out of how often I was updating things/editing things and repeating myself…so I wrote them down! :slightlysmilingface:
• What we document and what we don't
• Things to consider before creating a new card
• Card content best practices like using plain language, concise sentences, writing in active voice, thinking about the card audience & applicable tone, using parallel headings & subheadings (same part of speech, same tone), etc.
• Best practices for uploading screenshots (when to use them/when not not), using tables, using Markdown
• Tagging, verification interval, privacy setting best practices
• Using drafts
These all came out of how often I was updating things/editing things and repeating myself…so I wrote them down! :slightlysmilingface:
Great Style Guide @michelle.williams thank you for sharing
Thank you so much, @aberman !!
thanks for sharing! gonna dig into this later!
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