Every document belongs to a document library and is written by it. The library's template sets the sections, so every document it holds is laid out the same way. A title, a category and tags sit above those sections.
Recordings are the raw material. A recording of work that nothing covers yet starts a document. A recording of work a document already covers is added to it, and the write-up is redone to take in both.
What a document holds
The title is a short label for the task. The category is one of the kinds of work its library sorts by, and the tags are keywords for finding it. The body is one card per section.
A library on the Default template gives every document three sections:
- What and why - what people do, and the reason behind it.
- Cause and effect - what starts the task and what it produces.
- Standard operating procedure - the steps to do it again, each with the application, the instruction, an optional note and the expected result.
A library whose template was built by hand carries the sections that template defines instead. Whichever it is, the structure is fixed when the library is made and every document in it follows the same one.
One document, one task
A new recording is compared with what its library has already written. It joins an existing write-up when the situation that starts the work, the end result and the essential job being done all match.
Surface differences never split a task in two. A different route to the same screen, a different order of typing, the keyboard instead of the mouse, a mistake fixed halfway through and a recording that caught only part of the work all belong to the same document. A different starting situation, a different result or a genuinely different method is different work and gets a document of its own.
Source recordings
Every document lists what it was written from, and each entry links back to the steps of that recording, so any line can be checked against what happened. The dashboard also counts the task: how often it has been seen, on how many devices, when it was first and last seen and which applications it touches.
Libraries write independently of one another. A recording taken by two libraries produces a document in each, so the same task can be written up more than once in a workspace.
Related documents
A library's writing also records how its tasks sit together. Every link carries a label:
- "Often comes next" and "Often comes before" - drawn from recordings that happen one after another.
- "Another way to do this" - written when two write-ups answer the same situation by different means.
The first pair is counted rather than judged. It comes from how often one task was recorded straight after the other, and it is always held in both directions. A link only ever joins two write-ups in the same library.
A document's page groups its links by label. The Document map draws them all as a graph.
Who can see a document
Visibility comes from the library and nowhere else. A library set to Private is seen by the member who made it, one set to Whole workspace by everyone in it, and one set to Members you pick by the people named on it. A member whose role includes "View all data" sees every library either way.
A library made on a device in the desktop app is seen only from that device, and so are the documents inside it.
Editing a document
The written sections can be changed by hand. Change a field, add or remove a timeline entry, then select Save on that section. The title, the category and the tags are read-only.
An edit by hand is not final. When another recording joins the document its sections are written again in full, and text changed by hand can be replaced. The title is left alone, because writing never changes it.
Reading and editing in the dashboard both need the "Manage documentation" permission. On a device, both need "Publish".
Deleting documents
Neither app can remove a single write-up. A document goes when its library goes, and erasing a library takes everything inside it at once. This cannot be undone.
Recordings are not part of a library. Erasing a library leaves every recording it wrote from untouched.
A document can also outlive what it was written from. Deleting a recording, or the device that made it, leaves the write-up standing and takes away only the link back to that recording.