Discussions

@Karen Redmond this is an EXCELLENT question and one I know we have struggled with for a long time. We have tried numerous things, from static web pages and help desk systems with built-in knowledgebase to wiki servers.

We seem to be settling in two places at the moment, and it has to deal with the audience - private/IT-focused vs. public/school.

1. Private/IT-focused - For information specific to infrastructure/IT-related items, including passwords, we have settled on ITGlue from Kaseya - https://www.itglue.com/.  We came upon this as we were looking for a password manager, but we also needed to document more about the items requiring these passwords. 

ITGlue is a tool primarily used for Manage Servers Providers (MSP) to keep track of their various clients, but we have turned it on its ear. We use it to manage our internal documentation, needs, and the companies we work with.  IT Glue offers a systematic way of managing IT assets in a secure and integrated fashion. There is a small learning curve, but it does the job very well.

2. Public/School-wide - We have been moving towards using Google Drive and our school portals for items we need more forward facing. The portal provides a singular place to make the content available in an organized fashion. Google Drive allows us to develop documentation in a shared environment where we can have multiple editors. Content can be updated easily without needing to refresh PDFs or static web pages.

Sharing can be at the individual user or group levels as well as school-wide. Security can be built-in with the Google sharing options or opened to a wider audience depending on need. Additionally, based on the method of sharing, the information can be searchable from within the school's instance of Google Workspace, so you do not need to be 100% reliant on your method of creating any directory pages.

The one thing about documentation and building a knowledge base is that it is a marathon, not a sprint. The biggest puzzle piece is making the time to document things.

If anyone has a way of making more time in the day, I would love to hear about that!

@William Stites Thank you so much for your reply. I have not heard of  https://www.itglue.com/ so I will definitely take a look at that. We also use Google Drive (Docs and Google Sites) for our faculty staff knowledge base.  We recently compiled a list of all known software in use at the school so we could add that to our KB.  The hope is that this will help teachers know what we have available and how to use that software. I think this is a worthwhile project, but a big one for sure.