Operational documentation has a status model (or a lifecycle of documentation sections). Use it to manage the process of preparing operational documentation. You can introduce your own statuses, for example to organize approval of the documentation with stakeholders. The operational documentation development chart reflects process convergence: the number of sections in progress, pending approval, and ready.
Synchronous changes of section states can be used to speed up status management. For example, when a document is marked ready, changing the state of the document itself is enough for all of its subsections to move to the "Ready" status as well. Such synchronous operations are configured in the documentation section lifecycle, using the corresponding system actions.
Documentation sections also have useful attributes related to the lifecycle:
| Attribute name | Description |
|---|---|
| Lead time (LeadTime) | The time an artifact spends from the moment it is created until the current day, or until work on it is completed. |
While developing operational documentation, you can create tasks based on sections. Such tasks make it possible to distribute work among technical writers, plan effort, perform plan/actual analysis, and manage human resources.
The list of assigned tasks is available in the "My Tasks" list. The work plan for preparing technical documentation can be managed using the task board or a specially configured documentation task board.
During approval, questions and remarks on the text may arise. Select part of the text to add a comment. Unfinished comments on the document are shown on the additional panel on the right. Click a comment to go to the corresponding section of the document.
Using the "Comments" filter, you can display only those document sections that have unfinished comments, or only your own comments. This significantly speeds up document approval.
Signal that a comment has been taken into account (implemented by making changes), or is no longer relevant (if a complete answer has been given), using the comment state: completed or open. The comment state can be managed with the checkbox on the comments panel on the right, or with the context menu on the Comments tab of the document section edit form.