Hey all!
It’s been a minute or two! A lot has changed since the last documentation update, so let’s dive right in!
New team member!
As you might have seen in #team-banno last month, we added a new member to our team! Brittany McNamara is our new apprentice and is already flying through our backlog! Some of you have already spoken to her as she joins us in hunting down all the info the Banno team has to offer. If you haven’t gotten the opportunity, you certainly will eventually. Wish her a warm welcome aboard!
How to request new docs
Some of you have heard this before, but as it’s an ever evolving process, this seems like a good time for a quick overview on how to get docs from the documentation team!
For those that don’t know, our team primarily provides internal and customer facing technical documentation around our products, as appears on knowledge.banno.com. In addition, we maintain the wiki at docs.banno.com for internal documentation around our teams and processes. These sites are managed by our team, so if you have any questions about them, we’re your go-to!
If you have a doc you need created, or you see one that needs an update, the easiest way to queue up that work is via Documentation Requests Jira Service Desk as defined in this robust documentation. If you don’t have a service desk seat, no problem: we have an in-flow form. The more information you provide us with, the quicker we can get your new document out the door!
However, if you need something smaller, there’s always the #org-documentation channel in Slack. In addition to being the one-stop-shop for questions, any messages with the :documentation-team: reaction emote will get reposted in that channel. If you have a small piece of info you want to make sure gets captured in a doc, throw down that emote and feel free to forget all about it! It’ll get into our queue that day!
What we’ve made
The Knowledge Base has grown. It’s grown a lot. I couldn’t possibly list everything we’ve added, so here are the highlights.
Internal vs External
Just a reminder for those of you who are new, or those that may have forgotten.
There are two versions of the Knowledge Base. The customer-facing version is at knowledge.banno.com. These pages are public and ready to be consumed. You can share these docs with any customer who requests info at any time. It’s ready and waiting for them! The knowledge base focuses on the deeper workings of each feature, including common troubleshooting and where all of our data comes from. Each page also links to the related how-to guides at banno.com/a/help for those seeking step-by-step guidance about how to use our apps.
The internal version is as docs.banno.com/knowledge. This version is only accessible to folks with a Jack Henry or Banno email and includes all internal docs, including the defacto home for all of our ops docs. These internal-only docs can be edited by anyone, not just the documentation team, though we’re happy to help update anything you need via the aforementioned request system.
New documentation
We’ve made a ton of new docs over the last few months, with more in progress. We’re covering all major feature launches as they release by coordinating with Project Managers. If you’re worried something you’re working on needs documentation it’s not getting, let us know.
We have two main focuses with the knowledge base that we try to make progress on each month: Consumer apps and enterprise apps. Currently, Banno Support, Banno Marketing, and Banno Settings are fully documented. Other enterprise apps have specific features documented, such as the Form Builder in CMS. All are available on the public-facing version of the knowledge base.
Consumer apps are more of a hill to climb, but progress continues on. Over the last few months we’ve completed documentation for Zelle, Authentication, Travel Notices, Self Service Settings, Card Controls, Permissions, and more.
In addition to a wealth of internal docs, our primary consumer app focuses for August are Conversations, Transactions, and Transfers (with the first section live as you’re reading this).
Other sections are given priority as new features launch. Generally, we’ll prepare any necessary supporting documentation as a part of any new documentation project. For example, our Support documentation was built out as a part of the Case Tagging and Case Routing project.
New Sections and Features
We’re also improving the functionality of Banno Knowledge as we go. In addition to usability features, like tying subject matter experts to internal docs, we’ve started making sections for more documentation to be centralized in the knowledge base. Currently, functionality to store and index sales collateral is up and running in a proof of concept PR and will be live in August. We’re working on ways to better alert users to new documentation, to store and index training videos, and to better gather feedback and analytics over the knowledge base. We are always open to feedback, and each month we’ll be continuing projects to centralize all things Banno.
Anything else?
That’s what we’ve got for ya! If you have any questions or feedback about anything you’ve read here, feel free to sound off in the #org-documentation channel. Like our plans? Want us to add anything special? Have some profound misgivings about decisions we’ve made? We’re happy to hear all of ‘em! We’re here to make your lives easier.
Signed, The Documentation Team