Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

One thing nearly all small businesses suck at is documentation of their inventory and processes. Unless they are a major chain managed and operated retail outfit, their documentation consists of postits and invoices kept somewhere by someone.

So what is a small business more likely to value – something overpriced that they can’t understand or value (“We defrag your Exchange store every weekend so it’s faster”) or (“We base all your technology decisions on knowing everything about your network and we’re an asset, not an expense”) – nearly all businesses have no problem paying for a cleaning crew to come through the place every night.. the same businesses that don’t want to pay for a business line T1.

So Karl says, sell them on Network Documentation.

And I shamelessly copy Karl. But many don’t. Why? It’s too hard. A document is outdated the moment that it is printed. It sits in a dusty folder on the shelf. There is a process for the process of keeping documentation.

No wonder it sucks.

Now, here is the Monkey way. Easy access, easy management, easy updates. Or so I optimistically hope. From any Shockey Monkey display select New, Documentation.

It presents the following screen to add a new document. Name and comments are self-explanatory. The email part binds the document to the particular user, it is smart and uses AJAX search to make sure the document gets associated with the right company in much the same way that your assets do.

The attachment can be marked private – hidden from the client. This is good if you are uploading documents that the clients should not be aware of or have access  to. For company eyes only you know.

Finally, where do the documents sit. Well, go to either the Company tab or the Contact tab and look under the Documentation link.

So how complex is the process of documentation management now? Well, once Karl hooks you up with the Network Documentation book, or the SLA book, or Erick’s MSP book (remember kids, theft is wrong!) and you adapt them to your business, the documentation upkeep process is simple.

1. Find the company or contact you’re working with.
2. Click to open the documentation from the web site.
3. Save changes, upload file.
4. Done.

I bet you it takes less than a minute. The documentation process magically no longer sucks anymore.

What’s more, this is something that can be sold in a number of ways. First, and most obvious one, we don’t kill a bunch of trees every time we upgrade Quickbooks for the R16th time.

Second, the data is always up to date. Where is the data? It’s under your profile in our portal. You know, that place you keep on going to so you can get our help every step of the way. That place we use to consolidate all your IT operations so we can save you money, eliminate confusion and work in an open an honest way.

The Karl way.

P.S. Always be pimping. Shameless whoring, or SMB IT leaders working together to bring you solutions designed for this market. It’s all in the perception I guess. But one thing is for sure, never ever ever take pictures with a slimy vendor when he gives you a free tshirt. You know you’re going to end up in the advertising clipart sooner than later.

One of the most important things I did with Shockey Monkey is to pick up the phone and call around the people that really had the whole SMB IT business figured out. If you are going to copy someone, you should copy the best, right?

Howard Cunningham is a widely respected Connectwise guru, not to mention one of the biggest supporters Own Web Now has ever had. Howard’s company services the Washington DC area and he works with a ton of other partners that need help with their clients DC offices – so I figured who better to talk to about ticket exports and sharing between portal than the man himself.

And being the bastard that I am, I had to ask him what he hated about his current software. One thing you learn about people and software is that the passion and frustration tend to go hand in hand – as much as you love something, you are at your wits end with the other things. So Howard shared a feature request with me that really fits in with the way that nearly all the successful IT shops out there do, and that is:

Everything is logged in the portal. EVERYTHING. It is logged when its done. If its not in the portal, it does not get done. If time is not in the portal, you do not get paid for the time.

Everyone I spoke to said that. 

(click to zoom)

Well, when you are expected to log everything and note as you go, sometimes you will find yourself without connectivity. Or a laptop. Or the mobile device signal. Or 3 acres deep in a data center 🙂 Sometimes you will need to send an email directly from the portal. But how do you do that?

Well, with Shockey Monkey 2 there is an “hc” link next to the contact, click on it and the UI displays the new message window. It takes your information, allows you to provide a CC, BCC, change subject, message, everything except the attachment.

Where in the world would I use…

This is the other thing you get when you’re writing software – sometimes the feedback makes no sense to you. Why would you need a new message dialog inside of a portal, why not just open Outlook or OWA or?

• Sometimes you are at a client site and using their computer. You don’t want to connect to your own server just to send a message.
• Sometimes you are at a computer that doesn’t have Outlook or you use Outlook Web Access so copying and pasting email and ticket information from one web browser into another is just not the best use of your time.
• Sometimes you are at a shared PC / kiosk and you don’t want to put up with the 28.8 baud modem usually attached to those devices.

Made enough sense to me, so its built into SM 2. You can thank Howard for the feature.