OSEG Community Conversation #2 - OnBase Documentation

[Adam_Levine]

Hello, OSEG members!

    Your Board of Directors has been hard at work in the past month to work on putting together content and exploring subjects with our Hyland representatives that are relevant to our group.  A subject which came up in our recent meetings with Hyland leadership was documentation.  We're about to dive in to some deeper conversations about what the community would like to see (in terms of improvement) and I'd love the opportunity to pass on stories from our membership to help drive those improvements.

OnBase Documentation - Two Levels

    When I think about documentation, I see two different, distinct types of documentation which can be important to us as OnBase administrators, developers, and users:

1. Official Documentation - this is the sum-total of all Hyland materials available to us.  MRGs, official Community posts, and other content provided by Hyland could all arguably fall under this heading.
2. Internal / Organizational Documentation - this is documentation that we generate ourselves, perhaps detailing procedures for executing certain Workflow processes, on-boarding a new user, or simply providing comments and explanation of features and functions which are specific to our OnBase implementation.

I think there is opportunity for discussion on both of these topics, and I'd be really interested in seeing what our members have to offer!

    Do you have any success stories or areas where you see opportunity for improvement with Official Documentation from Hyland?  What practices (if any) do you employ in your own organization to help document and track processes, procedures, and comments on your applications?

Join the conversation and post your responses below!  We look forward to hearing from you.

[Shiva_Hullavara]

Adam

thanks for post. This is very timely topic as most of use either upgrading to EP from previous versions. One thing I have noticed, MRGs and older Hyland materials are great but they are numerous little things that require careful documentation. Let’s get traction on this thread and we can gather some resources to share with the rest of the group.

[Ryan_Wakefield]

Oh @Adam Levine , you don't know how much I could go into this whole documentation stuff. I think you and I could definitely chat about this offline if you want to reach out to me. 🙂

[James_Perry]

Generally, the Hyland MRGs are thorough but not always accurate for the particular version as they do not appear to always update every change in every version of the MRGs. If they are going to have a version specific for EP1 or EP3, etc. then every detail should pertain exactly to that version. They miss details on occasion which can cause confusion.

In the long run, it would be better to have a documentation wiki that had general information for all products with specific sections noting differences for all the various versions. Then, based on your installed version, you could see what you needed or you could choose to see for a future version so you would know what changes would affect you. Ideally, the specific sections would also note what version the change happened in and all versions that relate to those instructions. This would help solve the issue that many of us find ourselves in post-upgrade where we are not fully aware of the change and the cascading affects through our environments.

As for the community, I believe that all posts should have the module version number that they are discussing added so it is easier to filter and verify that the information you are reviewing is related to your installed version. It would also be nice to have a little OB badge for OnBase user's profile pictures with their major version on it.

[Adam_Levine]

Adam thanks for post. This is very timely topic as most of use either upgrading to EP from previous versions. One thing I have noticed, MRGs and older Hyland materials are great but they are numerous little things that require careful documentation. Let’s get traction on this thread and we can gather some resources to share with the rest of the group.

    Thanks, Shiva!  If you have anything specific you want to share, feel free (or if you'd rather follow up privately, you have my contact information).

Oh @Adam Levine , you don't know how much I could go into this whole documentation stuff. I think you and I could definitely chat about this offline if you want to reach out to me. 🙂

    Glad to hear it, Ryan!  Looking at your Community profile it looks like there are a few options to reach out - I'll be in touch this afternoon.  PS:  You'll have to teach me that tagging trick - I can't seem to figure it out on my own (unless it's automatic... I'll try it here... @Ryan Wakefield). [Edit: no luck with just tossing the @ in there... I'll keep trying!]

Generally, the Hyland MRGs are thorough but not always accurate for the particular version as they do not appear to always update every change in every version of the MRGs. If they are going to have a version specific for EP1 or EP3, etc. then every detail should pertain exactly to that version. They miss details on occasion which can cause confusion. In the long run, it would be better to have a documentation wiki that had general information for all products with specific sections noting differences for all the various versions. Then, based on your installed version, you could see what you needed or you could choose to see for a future version so you would know what changes would affect you. Ideally, the specific sections would also note what version the change happened in and all versions that relate to those instructions. This would help solve the issue that many of us find ourselves in post-upgrade where we are not fully aware of the change and the cascading affects through our environments. As for the community, I believe that all posts should have the module version number that they are discussing added so it is easier to filter and verify that the information you are reviewing is related to your installed version. It would also be nice to have a little OB badge for OnBase user's profile pictures with their major version on it.

    Thank you for that reply, Jim.  Version specificity is definitely a facet of this discussion that has been identified as having room for improvement, so I will add your feedback to the conversation when we have our next meeting!  I'm also in the wiki or wiki-like camp as far as what a "better" version of OnBase documentation could look like.  I also like the idea of tagging customer profiles with a version in some way... it looks like you're taking a proactive approach with that, judging by your current profile picture!