What are Manuals?

Manuals are for the big documents that need indexable sections and pages. Instead of flicking through cabinets or searching PDFs, click and scroll your way through navigable collections of critical knowledge.

Relevant roles: 

• Webmaster
• Publisher
• Editor
• Author

Creating your manual

We recommend you have the sections of your manual already mapped out before you begin. In the first creation screen, you can add all the sections first then assign the appropriate pages when you create them later.

1. In the workbar, select ‘Create’ 

2. Select ‘Manual’

3. Add title, summary, body and relate the manual to a section

4. Add an image

Note: Images are displayed through the ‘Image’ widget

5. Change ‘Workflow state’ to ‘Published’

Note: If you do not wish to publish your manual, leave the ‘Workflow state’ as ‘Draft’ or ‘Needs review’. Select ‘Enable preview mode’ in your profile menu to continue editing without users discovering an incomplete version. 

6. Add a ‘Manual reference’, e.g. initials of title and 001

7. Add ‘Section name’, e.g. Chapter 1

8. To add more sections, select the ‘Add another section’

Note: Ignore ‘Add another manual page’ and ‘Section contents’ for now as you have nothing to add.

9. Add an accurate ‘Review date’

Note: When a review date passes, your manual will be unpublished. You will be notified 31 days and then 3 days before that happens.

10. Add the ‘Owner’

9. Select ‘Save’

Adding manual pages to manual sections

1. Go to your manual

2. Select ‘Add manual page’ in the top right corner of the screen

3. Add your title and the content of your manual in the body

4. Style your content using the WYSIWYG editor

5. Add an image if you have one

6. Leave as ‘Draft’ in the workflow if you are not ready to publish the manual page

7. Check that the ‘Manual’ your manual page is assigned to is correct

8. Add ‘Owner’ 

9. Select ‘Save’

Repeat this step until you have added all of the pages in your manual.

Sorting your manual pages into sections

1. Go to your manual

2. Select ‘Edit’, ‘Content’

3. Scroll down to ‘Sections’

4. Beneath your first manual section, you will find all of your manual pages

5. Do not select ‘Remove page’ on any pages yet

6. Instead, search for and populate each manual section with the correct manual page

Note: You can populate separate manual sections with the same manual pages.

When you’ve sorted your manual pages under the correct section names…

7. Remove the incorrect duplicate pages

8. Add attachments if you have them

Note: Attachments will be displayed through the ‘Attachments’ widget in the ‘Content fields’ category of the Widget Library. In this instance, it might be a good idea to include a download version of the manual.

9. Select ‘Save’