You can use Sidebar and Doc tags to ensure your team finds important info no matter where it's stored.
Learn how Alex organized documentation in Sprint Folders in the Sidebar, and used custom Doc tags to categorize information.
Meet Alex
Alex is a senior developer with a cloud-based software company. About six months ago Alex realized that their team was spending too much time investigating how features work directly from the software's code.
Using ClickUp Docs, they created a Doc Template so the team could quickly and easily document each new feature and update. Now the habit of writing documentation is an important part of the engineering team's duties.
In fact, all five engineering squads now use Alex's Doc Template.
The challenge
The product and engineering teams work in a one-week sprint cycle. In just a few months the teams have created a lot of Docs and info is becoming harder to find.
Some developers are starting to think Alex's Docs plan won't work!
The solution
Alex sees some new Docs features in the ClickUp release notes and they come up with a plan. Some Docs would be easiest to find when stored in a Folder or next to a related list. This solution makes the relevant info visible where the teams work.
Sometimes, though, developers need to search to see if a Doc about a particular feature exists. The team has only been documenting for a few months. Some features have no related Docs and aren't part of a task that's currently in progress.
Alex realizes this is where Doc tags really shine. The team already organizes work by squad and by feature name. Alex decides that the team should tag each Doc they create with the name of their squad and the name of the feature.
They feel confident that by adding Docs to Sidebar and using Doc tags their team will easily find Docs stored in any Sprint Folder or anywhere in Docs Home.
Organize Docs in Sidebar
When the team is working on a feature, all the relevant information is in one self-contained Doc that's created and stored in Docs Home.
Alex explains that creating Docs right alongside sprints makes more sense for their purposes. The team is already working in Sidebar so storing Docs there saves clicks.
The team agrees to create Docs right in each Sprint Folder.
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Click the + icon next to the Sprint Folder
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Select New Doc
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Drag the new Doc next to the Sprint List in Sidebar that relates to that feature
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Don't remove the Doc after the sprint is complete
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When the Sprint Folder is archived all of its Docs and Lists are archived but can be restored at any time
Organize Docs with tags
Everyone agrees that creating Docs in Sidebar works really well. Now that they have so many Docs to manage, Alex notices that other developers are having a hard time finding existing documentation. How do you search for a Doc if you don't know the name of it or if it even exists?
They show a few developers how to create Doc tags.
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Access the Doc settings menu
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Either open the settings sidebar and click the Doc settings icon
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or click the Doc settings icon from the quick access sidebar
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Click the
+icon to add a tag for each of the five squads-
Once a tag has been added, click that tag to edit or remove it
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Click to the right of existing tags to add tags for some popular features
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Attach the tags to several corresponding Docs
Proof of concept
Alex presents the Doc organization prototype to the whole team at the next meeting. The team is concerned about the number of tags. They wonder how long it'll take to set them up.
The team decides to work collaboratively. A few developers from each team jump in. Everyone adds and creates tags to the Docs they're most familiar with. Everyone is pleasantly surprised that it's not taking long at all!
Alex proves how useful the tags can be by searching with Doc tags.
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In Sidebar click Docs to expand the Docs menu to use the Doc tags search filter
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Click one or more of the tags to the right of the Show filter to find all Docs that tag is applied to
The Consolidator modal feature Doc is found immediately when Alex clicks the squad tag and the feature name tag.
The result
The team agrees to give Alex's Docs organization method a try. Each sprint one developer from each squad organizes new Docs and time-boxes 20 minutes to go through the Docs Backlog and apply tags to old Docs.
Creating and organizing documentation becomes an incremental process just like the other tasks in the developers' sprint.
After a few weeks, teams from other departments start asking Alex to help them organize their Docs too. It's a win for the whole organization!
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