Procedure Writing Help Needed

May 20, 2009 2:26 PM

Looking for software or document templates of some kind to make writing up informal procedures at work easier.

I frequently have to write up notes on how to perform various complex activities at work. These notes are usually just for my own use so that when I do them the next time I know what to do. Currently, I just scratch notes on a piece of paper, but I would like something digital to more easily preserve them and also to make editing them easier. Not SOP so much, but similar.

As an example, I might want notes on how to do a particular calibration. Someone might show me once or twice, and then I'd have an opportunity to practice it and maybe even improve the procedure. I would like to be able to print out the procedure, make some additional notes on the paper, and then make digital edits to the process.

Some kind of software (free?) would be great. Thanks, MeFiters!

posted by Rad_Boy to computers & internet (8 comments total)

This is a perfect use for Google Sites - you can make any number of sites with pages within them, upload files, etc. I think the free account gives you 100 mb of storage.
posted by jbickers at 2:54 PM on May 20

Have you thought about a wiki? We use DokuWiki at work. It's pretty user friendly and I think it was fairly simple to set up (though I was not involved in that process).
posted by Aleen at 3:02 PM on May 20

To get some more clarity to this question, what do you find lacking with using Word and a numbered list?
posted by smackfu at 3:31 PM on May 20

Good question, smackfu. Frequently, my quickly written procedures have multiple branches which may need to be moved around to other sections, edited, added, deleted... that kind of thing. Dragging and dropping comes to mind. Perhaps, if Word can do this, it might work, but I'm clueless at the moment.
posted by Rad_Boy at 3:54 PM on May 20

I have to do this a lot.

I keep these notes in a text editor and use a subset of WikiCreole syntax for lists, sections, etc. A big plus of using a portable wiki syntax is that many editors and sites can format it appropriately.

I keep my text files open in vim under screen. Here's a Wikicreole syntax file for vim that provides some simple syntax hilighting: http://www.peter-hoffmann.com/code/vim/.

I work on a variety of wikis and in a variety of contexts; using a simple text editor with a few habitual conventions for notating lists, numbered lists, headings, etc, has served my needs better than anything more structured I've tried.
posted by doteatop at 6:11 PM on May 20

Seconding Aleen. We set up DokuWiki after mucking around with SharePoint, spreadsheets, e-mail lists, etc. It does everything we need.
posted by odinsdream at 6:23 PM on May 20

Whoa! Suddenly things are looking very technical and not what I had in mind. I will not be closed-minded to the suggested approaches and I appreciate the responses. However, I was hoping for something a little simpler (maybe tomorrow the ideas will look easier to accomplish. I just spent a 12-hour day at work). Any other ideas?
posted by Rad_Boy at 8:03 PM on May 20

At smackfu's indirect prompting, I looked more closely at Word and discovered Outline View! It's exactly what I wanted (right under my nose). Thanks to all.
posted by Rad_Boy at 12:23 PM on May 21