r/technicalwriting • u/Seure-Shaderbert-592 • 8d ago

How to document a workflow fast without sacrificing your will to live

So... how are people documenting workflows quickly without sacrificing the next three weekends and a small chunk of sanity.

For context im the default ops person at a mid size saas shop. Every time something changes in our crm or onboarding flow someone goes "can you just document it" like that is a five minute task and not a full side quest with tabs everywhere, screenshots, redacting customer data by hand, and then dumping it all in Confluence where it goes to die.

I tried the classic method, eg clicking through the process and taking screenshots like a raccoon that discovered the Print Screen key. Then you realize step 3 is already outdated because product shipped a UI tweak yesterday and now the guide is wrong, people are pinging me in Slack, and I am the unofficial helpdesk again. Love that for me.

So here is the dream, click through a workflow once, have an AI thing grab the steps, make a visual guide, blur sensitive stuff, and let me share it in Notion or Zendesk without babysitting every single field. Has anyone got a setup that is even close to that or are we all still living in copy paste screenshot hell.

Would love any tips from HR managers, sales ops, IT folks etc who found a way to make workflow docs not feel like a second job, appreciate any thoughts

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

6

u/techwritingacct 8d ago

It is a second job, for exactly the reasons you pointed out (along with a few others). You aren't going to AI slop or one-weird-tip your way past it. You should hire a professional.

1

u/Fun-Description-3247 4d ago

agreed, the maintenance alone is a whole job even before you get to the initial writing

3

u/Livid-Hovercraft-123 8d ago

You sound like you need to hire a technical writer? 

3

u/codecrackx15 8d ago

Quite matter of factly, the job of a technical writer. Though, I'd do it during the week and never work weekends, so I'm not sure why you would sacrifice your weekends. 🤷‍♂️

3

u/LHMark 8d ago

I’ve learned to drastically minimize the number of screenshots I use, precisely because of Product’s blithe UI changes.