We had a feature to import thousands of university graduates into the database using an Excel spreadsheet. I had added numerous features to this, for example awarding each graduate a number of ceremony tickets or assigning the graduate to a particular ceremony, or to more than one ceremony. Administrators performing this import could add custom columns to thus import. But it was complicated.

The front office staff had to explain the import features to different administrators over and over, verbally or in email.

I offered to write a set of instructions. This was my advice; send out a document with instructions. Capture what we knew in one place.

I wrote a different kind of document from the internal planning documents I usually wrote; more detailed, with lots of screen shots, repetitive, and with internal hyperlinks. It took a total if a few hours over three days between my server work.

The document had the front office people doing cartwheels. It saved them a lot of time, it answered all questions. Many administrators called with compliments about the clarity and thoroughness. And when later I enhanced the bulk import feature again I issued an update, easily distributed by email.

It was negligible work for me, I write easily, but it was my idea and it was very well received by clients. I then asked for and received responsibility for all documents, internal and customer. Nobody else could write well anyway so this was inevitable.