Automated search tools such as Google Web Search or Google Desktop usually produce a long list of documents, but the document you are looking for is not always in that list. And when we finally find the right document, is there anything we can do to speed up search for this document in the future for us or for our colleagues?

Is there a way we can acquaint a new employee with active documents quickly?

What happens to the documentation when the project is completed? Will we find the knowledge collected during the previous project in a year?

What do we need to help us with our work?

• Find documents quickly
• Access only the documents that are necessary to you
  including the ones, created by your colleagues
  and documents that you did not know beforedo not know about
• Find online documents as well as paper documents
• Find documents on
  a single computer
  local network
  corporate website, wiki or CMS
  intranet, extranet or Web as well
  Google Docs, DropBox etc.

What is the solution for you? The easy solution is to build a Document Navigator. The Document Navigator is divided into Main topics of document categories as a book is divided into chapters. Each subtopic of the Main topics contains the name of one of your documents and hyperlink to the identified document.

Notes in a topic can be used to identify where the hard copy of document is stored. Also the topic note section can be used to provide additional documentation such as a short abstract, comments or keywords for the linked document.

Symbol icons can be used for the visual marking of documents, for example: Idea!, Completed, Important, Information, Investigate, Attention, OK, Read this, Look, More information, Think over, etc. A standard convention of using symbol provides a consistent understanding of Document Navigators across the organization.

To navigate through multiple Document Navigators, one can create a Documentation Catalog mind map that is the master map. Topics in this Documentation Catalog will contain the hyperlinks to all Document Navigators in your team, department or organization.

Create Document Navigator mind map by

• Collecting of information sources for new project
• During development of the project documentation list
• During revision of documents on work-table and computer desktop

Edit Document Navigator mind map

• After any changes in the list of documents (add/delete)
• After any moving of documents into another place

Storage and reuse of Document Navigators

• When the current project has ended, store the Document Navigators of the project team with the project documentation.
• Storage of Document Navigators as part of the project documentation provide quick finding of documented knowledge collected by project team.

Who should be responsible?

Create and edit Document Navigator for the working documents is something everyone can for himself personally, but for collaboration it is convenient to create also a few shared thematic Document Navigators. It is recommended to assign a responsible person for creation and updating of each collaborative Document Navigator.

How to find necessary document with Document Navigator?

The Documentation Catalog mind map is very useful if you need to a find certain Document Navigator in the group of other Document Navigators.

One can search Document Navigator to find a name of a necessary document, then use the corresponding hyperlink to open it.

You can use Google Desktop Search plug-in if you are using Windows when searching large numbers of Document Navigators on local or network computers, DropBox folders etc.

Benefits of Document Navigators

• Document Navigators are a fast and intuitive access to personal and team working papers.
• Document Navigators structure the documents on topics and supply brief descriptions, which is especially useful when searching among new documents.
• Document Navigators help new team members to quickly become familiar with the case.
• Document Navigators allow you to quickly find and use the knowledge collected in other projects.

 

Learn How To

Create DocNavigator Mind Map