{"id":4982,"date":"2011-10-06T03:27:43","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T02:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/?p=4982"},"modified":"2021-03-31T03:30:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T02:30:42","slug":"msp-operations-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/de\/blog\/msp-operations-manual","title":{"rendered":"Building an IT Operations Manual – Client Documentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

My blog post entitled,\u00a0\u201cHow to Create an IT Operations Manual for your Business\u201d<\/a>, generated quite a bit of feedback from IT companies, with the most common question being \u201cWhere should I start?\u201d<\/p>\n

For the micro IT companies, even a \u201cone man band\u201d \u2013 my answer on where to start would be to document your client’s IT infrastructure.<\/p>\n

By doing this, you afford yourself a number of options.<\/p>\n

Firstly, it enables you to become more efficient on a day-to-day basis. If you\u2019re like me and have the memory span of a goldfish then having the information about a client site to hand massively reduces the amount of time spent trying to remember usernames, passwords and IP addresses. Even if you have a good memory, having that information to hand is re-assuring as a sanity check during intense and complex troubleshooting jobs.<\/p>\n

Should you want to take a holiday, you can hand your client documentation to any suitably qualified Technician, ideally a peer who you\u2019re building a long-term Strategic Alliance with, and they\u2019ll be able to manage any support issues that arise.<\/p>\n

If you take on a new technical member of staff, by having good client documentation you\u2019ll empower them to get on with their job supporting your client’s network rather than continuously having to ask, \u201cHow is this Router setup?\u201d or, \u201cWhat\u2019s the password to the Firewall?\u201d. They feel better about not feeling like a nuisance and you and your colleagues aren\u2019t interrupted as often.<\/p>\n

Plus, while we all assume it\u2019ll never happen to us, if you\u2019re\u00a0*unable*<\/strong>\u00a0to work because of illness or emergency, then being able to hand your client support requests to someone else in a hurry \u2013 and knowing that they have all the information they need to do the job \u2013 is essential for peace of mind.<\/p>\n

Documentation basics: What goes in an IT operations manual?<\/h3>\n

So what information do you need to document? Ideally anything and everything. The more documentation you have about your client sites then the more information there is to help anyone supporting that site.<\/p>\n

But as a basic I\u2019d suggest you capture the following information for all your clients:<\/p>\n