Spiceworks Community Digest: Put it in writing

There’s nothing worse that the sudden, frustrating realization that you’ve solved a specific problem before, but the solution is nowhere to be found when the same issue pops up again This hunt for “tribal knowledge” locked in old tickets or personal notes is a massive time sucker.

According to a recent poll in the Spiceworks Community, over half of IT professionals take 5-29 minutes to locate a solution for the second time. While you may think AI would help in this department, only a little more than a third of respondents noted that AI was somewhat or significantly helpful. The real solution is documentation.

Time and strategy are key

The search time heavily depends on the quality of documentation. Those that take longer often due to poor initial tracking.

• lcg86: “Issues arise when it’s something I resolved outside of a ticket and bookmarked the solution, as I don’t have every browser sync’d, that’s why I chose ‘hours’ as my answer, as if it’s lost…”
• ich.ni.san: “I’ve been using it for a while. It now has 8309 records… it usually does not take long to find a prior instance.”
• D.O.: “I have a OneNote notebook filled with every problem, solution, and customization I’ve worked on from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2000 to 11 and server 2019.”

Documentation is the non-negotiable necessity

The single biggest lesson learned by IT professionals is that documenting the solution is for your future self just as much as it is for the team.

• Evan7191: “I cannot count the number of times that I encounter an issue that I have seen before, and, when I search for the error message, I find documentation that I wrote and forgot that I made.”
• Ralf Jerol: Recounted asking an instructor for help, only to be told: “Look at the documentation.” It was documented “…by me.”
• DailyLlama: “I try really hard to document everything, for the rest of my team, but also because I know I will get asked to do something else as soon as it’s fixed, so I will forget it if it’s not written down.”
• James_K: “I make an effort of documenting, especially within a help desk ticket… but I have a cheat sheet in my OneNote for common issues and fixes.”
• Spiceuser-73923: “I now use same method, but now use phone, instead of notebook and pencil, to keep my work log, for all my customers… I would bd lost without it.”

For IT professionals, the key takeaway is that the most powerful tool in the search arsenal is still documentation discipline. Join the conversation and let us know your documentation habits!