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In this lesson,

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we're going to talk about the final step in the troubleshooting

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methodology, which is documentation.

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Now, CompTIA calls this document the findings,

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actions, and outcomes.

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And this really is all about documenting what was wrong,

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what you did about it, and what can be done

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to prevent it in the future.

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Now, every organization is a little bit different in

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how they do their documentation

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for all the different problems

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and issues they've had inside of the company.

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Now, at my company, we use a trouble ticketing system

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that's dedicated to this, that allows us to document

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all of the problems, who it's been assigned to,

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what they did to fix it and what the solution was.

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In addition to that, we also have our own internal knowledge

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base where we can gather all of our troubleshooting steps

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and all the things we've learned in the past

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as we've been troubleshooting different issues.

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Now, in addition to that, we also have an area called our

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frequently asked questions,

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and this is an area which has a bunch

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of different support articles based on the questions

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that we get from our end users on a daily basis.

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It took a long time to build up our knowledge base

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and our frequently asked questions,

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but it is something that is really helpful,

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especially for new technicians as they join the team

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because they can go look through our

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frequently asked questions and our knowledge base

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and learn how we do business and how we solve issues.

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When you work as a technician, your organization may

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or may not have a knowledge base,

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frequently asked questions,

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or a trouble ticketing system

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depending on the size of your organization.

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These days though, even small organizations can get a great

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trouble ticketing system for a very low cost

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or even free in some cases.

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There are lots of them out there including Fresh Desk,

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Jira, Help Scout, Intercom, and many, many others.

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Now, which one you use really doesn't matter,

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but the idea is the same.

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You want to be able to document your findings,

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your actions, and your outcomes.

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Now, another part of this is

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that you don't want to wait necessarily just till the end

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to do this either.

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As you get assigned a ticket

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and you're identifying the problem,

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you should be going back into the trouble ticket system

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and documenting what you've identified.

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What were the symptoms you saw,

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what do you think is the probable cause of this issue?

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And then as you keep moving through the steps,

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you want to keep updating this.

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If you're dealing with a small problem

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that can be resolved in one sitting,

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you're probably not going to have to update the ticket

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for each and every step.

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But if you're dealing with a larger problem,

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then it's really important to be documenting this

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inside of that trouble ticket system.

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Another reason that the trouble ticket system is

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so important, especially in large organizations,

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is it allows you to do trend analysis.

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This will allow you to be able to figure out

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what are the common themes or problems

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that your organization is suffering from.

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For example, in one organization I was in,

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we found that 90% of our phone calls

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for trouble tickets had to do

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with people needing their password reset.

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Now, that was a huge amount of person hours

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that we were dedicating simply

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to resetting people's passwords.

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So we decided that as a trend,

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this was not a trend we liked,

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and we ended up working with our developers

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and our system engineers to create a password reset option

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that people could reset their own passwords.

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And this dropped our trouble ticket load about 90%

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as soon as that system went live.

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So this documentation can be really important in

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identifying areas of continual improvement

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for your organization as well.

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Another side use of this trouble ticketing system

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that you're using to document your findings, actions,

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and outcomes is that you can actually document the amount

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of work you've been doing.

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Now, this can be a good thing

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or a bad thing, depending on how much work you're doing,

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but I can tell you personally as an IT director

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and running a help desk with 150 people in it,

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supporting over 15,000 users,

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that we used our trouble ticket system all the time

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to help justify the fact that I needed more people

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to support those 15,000 users.

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And this was because we started seeing the volume

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of our tickets going up.

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As we started looking at it, we found that it was

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because there was new systems being installed, and often,

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the organization would spend money on new systems,

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but they wouldn't spend money on training its users.

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And so that led to more calls to the service desk.

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And that's fine, as long as we can get more people

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to answer those calls.

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Otherwise, the entire system starts to grind to a halt.

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So keep this in mind, the more you can document,

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the more you can justify what you as a technician are doing,

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as well as the larger help desk staff that you're a part of.

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And this can help identify times when there needs

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to be more resources put into your service desk system

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to be able to hire more folks,

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or to increase the skill level of the folks you have

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to be able to answer those calls in a better

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and more efficient way.