Blueprint for Success: User Guides
July 11, 2023
Up next in the Blueprint for Success series is User Guides. All customizations should enter the UAT phase with a user guide to assist in UAT activities and additional user training. I have found that providing this documentation to users as I demo the finalized working solution has increased the confidence of users in their new process and cut down on user error both during and after UAT. User guides serve as process and training documentation for the process well into the future as the customization becomes a routine process for an organization.
I like to create user guides as part of my quality assurance (QA) testing process, ensuring no steps are missed the completion of the process. One handed off to the client, I like to provide a PDF and Word version of the user guide. The PDF version is ideal for distribution to all end users, ensuring someone cannot add information that may be inaccurate and distribute that version to the team. The Word version should allow for the owners of the process to add business decisions (such as GL accounts or other business decisions for input) or update those decisions and redistribute to the users once resaved as a PDF. The user guide should be updated by the process owners as needed to ensure their teams have the latest guidance when applicable.
Let's jump into several key components to include in user guides!
Step-By-Step Process
User guides should identify click by click processes and include all relevant information. While users may have the background knowledge of specific parts of the process, it is important to write the user guide assuming the reader has no knowledge of the process. User guides are often used as training, onboarding, and reference material for new hires, who may have not had prior exposure to D365 or the specific components required for the customization to be used.
Providing screenshots in addition to written instructions provides additional context and supports different learning styles. Screenshots should be easily seen (not too big or small, not grainy) and clearly identify the part of the screen where something should be entered, selected, or clicked.
When applicable, identifying downstream impacts of the process will help users to understand the importance of the details of the process and drive user adoption which can lead to an overall reduction of errors.
Prerequisite Processes
If there are prerequisite configurations or process that need to be completed before the customization can be used, be sure to identify these items in the user guide. While additional documentation may be required for these processes, this section should identify the existence of these scenarios and identify that documentation exists for those processes. I like to provide the name of the documentation so users can search for it when applicable. Additionally, if a company adds another legal entity, the customization may need to be configured in the new legal entity before it can be used. Providing this information in the user guide will help to quickly identify the prerequisites for use to minimize research required to complete the setup.
Security Requirements
Identifying the security that can perform the functionality that has been developed is another component I like to include in my user guides. From the access required to complete or maintain the process to access to view the process, noting the security for each scenario is important information for future use.
Depending on how security is maintained by the organization, there may be a use to identify the role, duty, and/or privilege for each use case to easily identify what a user would need to be assigned to obtain the required access level to the customization.
Template Format and Mapping
When custom processes include an import process, including the template format in the user guides will prevent future code reviews to determine the required input values and header labels. When possible, embedding a copy of the import template into the user guide will ensure the user guide and template stay connected. I also like to provide a separate file for the template that the company can save and distribute to their team.
Be sure to identify specific requirements for the file to be imported successfully, such as saving as a specfic format like CSV.
Including a mapping of the type of data or where possible values are maintained in D365 is also a helpful section to ensure users can understand how to fill out the template when the scenario uses different values than the user guide illustrates.
Potential Error Messages
Identifying potential and expected error messages in the user guide will help prepare users for errors they may encounter during the custom process. By providing the error message, reasoning, and process to resolve the error, users will be empowered to own the custom process and this will minimize unnecessary support requests and delays in business once the customization is introduced into production. Reducing support requests and reports of known error messages will minimize impact to your support team and allow for more capacity to address unknown and more pressing issues.