University of Washington Facilities

Technical Writing Project-
Improving the way employees utilize and digest new and old procedural content

Tools used: Drupal 7 and Drupal 9 CMS, Asana, Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop

 
 
 

Background

The University of Washington (UW) Facilities manages the University’s buildings, infrastructure, and land, with more than 1,100 employees in a variety of fields. Including but not limited to 643 acres of grounds, 22 miles of roads and pathways, and services including capital planning, power, HVAC, cleaning, and construction for more than 15 million square feet.

The UW Facilities Communications team manages 11 websites on the Drupal content management system.

This requires a variety of procedural documentation for the various needs of content producers, web managers, and employees who need technical documentation for processes like, updating payroll periods, best practices for naming files, creating different content alerts, news, promotions and much more.

Goals of the Project:

  1. Migrate and update Drupal 7 procedures to Drupal 9.

  2. Create and update new visual assets for procedures.

  3. Improve and streamline the process of creating and organizing assets.

This technical writing project involved creating an internal online searchable knowledge base for the University of Washington Facilities. I reviewed, edited, wrote, and delivered 35+ web-based procedural documents. I used Microsoft Excel to organize the Procedural Documents and share updates with stakeholders. I used Adobe Illustrator to create and edit graphics as a visual aid. Transportation Services, Finance & Administration, Sustainability, and more units use the documents.

For this procedure example, I detail how to create and edit ‘Promotions’ for website content editors of the various Facilities websites. When an editor goes to the Employee Portal for this procedure, they would open this procedure page. The content sections shown are already expanded for view purposes in this example, but they would otherwise be closed. To create these procedure pages, I would utilize Drupal (shown in the next link is version 7) and edit in a WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor, that example can be seen here.

I really enjoyed this opportunity to work with the Communications team at UW Facilities! Throughout my time with them, I was able to explore and sharpen different technical writing skills, including editing, web design, content management, and graphic design. It was an awesome project that gave me free rein in editing and decision-making.