Editors Note: This User Guide Template is one in a series of templates to help readers plan and manage communications and content management activities, resources and deliverables. We welcome ideas and suggestions for other Techwhirl Templates Library materials. The User Guide (aka User Manual. Repair and maintenance documentation for heavy equipment contains information for heavy machines, heavy trucks, construction equipment, engineering equipment, heavy vehicles, or heavy hydraulics, which are intended for construction, exploitation and maintenance of roads, earthwork operations, quarrying, lifting and moving heavy loads, as in the warehouse and in the construction of a discharge. Equipment & Technical Manuals Stiles technical documentation manuals are comprehensive and easy to use. Stiles Machinery understands the importance of operation manuals that are not only comprehensive in nature, but also user friendly. We work closely with our vendors to provide you with technical documentation manuals available in both CD-ROM.

• User Documentation Examples
• Application User Manual Example
• Software User Manual Example
• Examples Of User Manuals

The user manual template is an MS Word template, that contains all mandatory elements to create your own user guide. You can use the template to create a manual that complies with the CE marking requirements, the EMC Directive, Low Voltage Directive, RoHS Directive and/or Radio Equipment Directive, the EN 820179 standard for User Instructions and the ANSI Z535.6 for Safety Messages.

• Gain confidence when selling your product on the European market
• Learn how to create a compliant manual with a step-by-step instruction template for your electronic or electrical equipment
• Finally, all relevant regulations made practical without the need to sort everything out yourself

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All our templates have a 14-day, no-reason-required guarantee. So if you are not satisfied for any reason, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. As we believe that our product really helps you to create better documentation, we don’t think it’ll come to that. But as soon as you have any doubts whether our technical documentation template is the right fit for you, just put your mind at ease. We will help you to get the results you want, or we will give you your money back!

Want to write an Operations Guide? This tutorial explains how to write your first operations manual. It helps you get started, suggests how to format the document, create the table of contents and what else you need to include in a sample plan.

The Operations Guide Template will help you run your IT environment more efficiently. It provides tables, charts, and matrices for server monitoring, backups, scheduling tasks, monitoring systems, managing inventory, and performing follow-up reports on outstanding issues.

21-page MS Word template and 8 Excel spreadsheets.

Operations Guide, Operations Team Chart

Operations Guide: Definition

What is an Operations Guide?

Definition: An Operations Guide provides instructions to System Administrators to help them manage updates, maintain computers, and run reports. It also offers troubleshooting information.

Operations Guide: How to Start

The difficulty in writing an Operations Guide, like any technical document, is to know where to start. Here’s a suggested approach:

• Who – define who will read the Operations Guide, for example, is it developers, testers or users?

• What – identify the most important tasks you need to write to help sys admins. How do you find out? Ask the people who will use it and capture their most urgent needs.
• Where – identify where it will be used. Will it be used online, printed out or read on a mobile device.
• When – is this document used in an emergency? Or is it used in less pressurized settings? How does this affect the content and the way it’s structured? When is it due for completion?
• How – create a list of who will help you write the document, provide answers, review it, and then sign off.
• Others –you’ll also need things like style guides and other supporting documents.

While this may seem a lot, focus on who will use it first and what problems you’re going to solve.

Free Excel Operations Guide Templates

Responsibility Matrix

Operations Tasks

Desktop Inventory

User Documentation Examples

Operations Guide: Define Your Audience

Who’s going to read your Operations Guide? Before you start writing perform audience analysis.

• Identify the main user types (sys admins, testers, developers)
• Pain points
• Urgent needs
• Expectations

This helps structure the content. For example, if you know that developers require in depth information on how to setup a server, then provide very exact step by step instructions.

Daily Operations Checklist

Operations Guide: Create a Format

If this is your first Operations Guide, use a template to get started.

While the template may not be perfect, it identifies the key sections for the table of contents. Once you have these in place, fill in the gaps and complete the document section by section.

Formatting the document also involves:

• Updating the cover page so it displays the version number, official document title, publication date, and possibly author.
• Updating the header and footers, for example, by including the section or chapter.
• Using a consistent font (or series of fonts) across the document. When you copy and paste from different documents, it’s easy for rogue fonts to enter the document. Use styles to control this.

Operations Guide: Provide an Outline

When the user first opens the document, provide them with an outline of what’s included in the guide. This helps orient the reader so they understand how the operations guide is structured and how information will be presented.

Here’s a sample outline:

Title: IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3 Operations Guide

Description: This guide describes the major tasks involved in administering and troubleshooting IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3.

In this guide you will find:

• Administering IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3
• Troubleshooting IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3
• Additional Resources for IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3
• Appendix A: Uninstalling the Database
• Appendix B: Uninstalling SP3
• Appendix C: Settings for Web Services
• Appendix D: Permissions
• Appendix E: Performance
• Appendix F: Database Maintenance
• Appendix J: Setup Codes
• Administering IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3

This section contains background information and procedures for performing the major tasks involved in administering IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3.

In this guide:

• Overview of IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3
• Managing IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3
• Reports in IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3
• Securing IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3

Once you have outlined the high level sections, you can transition into the document, for instance:

“You can use IBM WebSphere 9.0 SP3 to manage downloading database updates from IBM and distributing them to computers in your network.”

Inspection Report

Operations Guide: Table of Contents

Now that we have this in place, create the table of contents.

Remember that this will vary depending on your setup but the following sections apply to most Operations Manuals.

Introduction

Introduce the document by describing the target audience and the systems which will be covered by the Operations Guide.

• System overview – explain how the system functions at a high level, for instance, process credit cards, record transactions, or store files.
• Authorized use – identify who is authorised to use the application, for instance developers, testers, and sys admin.
• Points of contact – identify the application owner and how this person can be contacted
• Help desk – provide details of who runs the help desk (technical support) and different levels of support, if applicable.
• Hours of operations – identify when the application is supported, eg 9-5, and when it is scheduled for maintenance, eg every quarter.

System overview

Next, provide a brief description of the operation of the system, including its purpose and uses.

• System operations
• Software inventory
• Software interfaces
• Resource inventory
• Report inventory
• System restrictions
• Hardware

Error Codes and Messages

Operations team

Outline the operations team in an org chart. If useful, provide a leadership chart and identify the leadership structure within the team, such as managers, team leaders and domain experts.

It also highlights reporting relationships and reflects the management and leadership structure of the team:

• Organization chart
• Leadership chart
• Key roles & responsibilities
• Anticipated change

Operations schedule

Here we describe how activities are scheduled. Tasks can generally be grouped into daily, weekly and monthly schedules.

Depending on the circumstances, additional administrative tasks may need to be implemented, and some tasks may occur more or less often or not at all.

Application User Manual Example

• Daily tasks
• Weekly tasks
• Monthly tasks
• Backup schedule

System runs

Describe the system runs used by Operations personnel when:

• Scheduling operations
• Assigning equipment
• Managing input and output data, and
• Restart/recovery procedures

Provide detailed information on how to execute the system runs. Provide a run identifier, i.e. a unique number, to reference each run.

Follow-up Action Report