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For many of us in the IT world, we enjoy working on computers, building networks, designing programs, and implementing new systems. But when it comes to the “paperwork” side of the business, many of us tend to lag behind and let those tasks fall between the cracks.
One of our biggest challenges is documenting our network systems and keeping that documentation up to date. You may think there’s no real value in this and that it can’t be a high priority compared to the other IT-related tasks on your plate, but let’s go through the reasons why it’s so important to maintain proper documentation and records for your IT infrastructure.
Speed up troubleshooting process
First, let’s look at the main reason why you need to document your network, regardless of whether it is a large or a smaller setup. The best one is that it will speed up your ability to troubleshoot your own systems. If you have the same network issue over and over again, it can take some time to research exactly what you need to do to fix it. By documenting your fixes, you can save yourself a lot of time and inconvenience of recreating the same wheel over and over.
Smooth transitioning
Is network administrator moving on to their next opportunity at a different company? Without documentation, hiring and training your new employees can be extremely difficult and time consuming.
Documentation is key because people change and grow, and you or your co-workers might leave the company and/or change job roles within the company. People do come and go, even from the best work situation, and it is imperative that you have the documentation ready when a new person comes in so they can quickly get caught up to speed and get ready to take over their new responsibilities.
Long-range planning
The third significant reason to prioritize IT documentation is that the practice allows you to do better long-range planning. Your up-to-date systems and network documentation should accurately represent your company’s current IT status and make it easier to map out exactly where you eventually want to go with your network. This allows you to grow your systems in an organized and cost-effective manner, which will give your team additional time to focus on other business needs and revenue-enhancing tasks.
So what are some of the key characteristics of good IT systems documentation? A good network documentation system can be created using available templates, but it should include the following information at a minimum:
- Schematics for all network connections
- Usernames and passwords for all networked devices
- A list of your vendor contacts
- A list of all operating systems being used on each device along with accompanying documents for these
- IP addresses
- Site licenses and all accompanying paperwork for these licenses
- Lists and explanations of all custom 3rd party configurations
When you are documenting, be sure to be as clear as possible. Your shorthand explanation of something may make perfect sense to you, but to someone else it may be total gibberish. You should always err on the side of more detail, not less.
In order to be truly successful as a company, it is imperative that your employees can depend on your network and IT systems. If the network is having problems, the loss of revenue and the additional pressures on your IT teams to fix those issues gets magnified.
As your IT partner, New Edge Technology Solutions can provide the necessary skills and expertise to help you assemble the IT network and systems documentation you need to keep your business safe, running efficiently, and prepared for growth/change in the future.