Docs

Documentation overview

What the Docs area holds, how it is organised, sign-up addresses, and where documentation shows up across Tenvara.

The Docs area is where your team keeps what it knows. It holds three kinds of thing:

  • Articles: rich-text pages. Your own how-tos and processes live in the knowledge base; notes about one customer live with that customer.
  • Records: structured facts about a customer, filled in from a template: their network, Wi-Fi, Microsoft 365 tenant, line-of-business applications, suppliers, backup plan and site access.
  • Credentials: logins, SSH keys, certificates, API keys, secure notes and secret files, encrypted in the vault. Every reveal and copy is logged.

Alongside them sit diagrams, IP address management, rack layouts and site photos, records that Tenvara keeps up to date from Microsoft 365, backup, the network and the software inventory, and a daily snapshot of each customer's Active Directory.

Around the vault, Tenvara rotates local administrator and Active Directory passwords, reminds owners when a password is due a change, puts sensitive credentials behind an approved check-out, sends secrets through one-time links, fills credentials into websites through a browser extension, watches your customers' domains in breach data, and gives your customers their own password manager and self-service password reset in the portal. Chosen knowledge base articles can also be published as a public help centre on your own domain.

Each customer can also have sign-up addresses: email addresses you give to vendors, licence portals and registrars when you sign the customer up, whose mail lands on the customer's Docs tab, never as a ticket. Tenvara reads codes, invoices and renewals in that mail and offers the vendor accounts as credentials. See Sign-up addresses for customers.

Everything links to the real customers, sites, contacts, devices and tickets in Tenvara, so the right documentation appears where the work is happening rather than in a separate tool.

The knowledge base with its folders in the Docs sidebar
The knowledge base with its folders in the Docs sidebar

The Docs sidebar

Open Docs from the rail. The sidebar has:

Group Item What it shows
Favourites Anything you have starred
Knowledge base Knowledge base and each folder Your internal articles, with the number in each folder. Folders can be nested, and a folder with limited access shows a lock
Documentation Customer documentation Every customer's articles and records in one list
Our company Your own company's credentials and records
Diagrams Every customer's network, rack and floor plan diagrams in one list
IP addresses Each customer's subnets and who has which address
Passwords Credentials Every credential in the vault
Check-outs Requests to reveal credentials that need approval, and who has one checked out
Password rotation Local administrator and Active Directory passwords rotated into the vault
Password resets Customers' staff resetting their own work passwords
Customer password managers The password vaults your customers keep in the portal
Sharing One-time links Secrets sent by one-time link, and password requests
Share links Read-only links to articles and records
Upkeep Awaiting my review Articles and changes waiting for you to approve them
Review due Articles due for review in the next two weeks, overdue, or expiring
Expirations Everything that runs out, soonest first
Record templates The templates records are made from
Vault audit log and Access reports Who revealed, copied or changed which secret, and a customer's credential access report

Docs settings at the foot of the sidebar opens Settings > Documentation. The + next to the Docs heading creates something new, and Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows) lists every Docs page by name, for example "Docs: Credentials".

Things that work with the vault live in other places: Security > Dark web monitoring watches your customers' domains in breach data, Settings > Browser extension is where each person installs the extension and sees the browsers they have connected, Settings > Documentation, the Browser extension policy tab, sets the extension's defaults for your team, and Settings > Sign-up addresses sets how sign-up mail is received.

The lists

The knowledge base, customer documentation, credentials, review and audit pages all use the same table. You can:

  • Type in the filter box (press / to jump to it) to search.
  • Add filters with the buttons beside it, for example Folder, Owner, Review and In the portal on the knowledge base, or Type and Customer on customer documentation.
  • Save a combination of filters as a view with Views, and choose what to show with Columns.
  • Click any row to open it.
  • Tick rows for bulk actions: on articles, Move to folder, Set owner, Review date, Portal, Archive, Delete and tags; on credentials, Change site, Administrators only, Move to another customer, Archive and Delete. Each row is checked as if you changed it by hand, rows that cannot change are skipped with the reason, and the message offers Undo.
  • Export the list.

Where documentation shows up

You rarely need to go to Docs to find something. Documentation also appears:

  • On the customer: the Docs tab, under Documentation, lists that customer's folders, records, IP addresses, diagrams, files and photos, articles and credentials, Accounts holds the customer's sign-up addresses and their mail, and Active Directory under the customer's Infrastructure tab shows its domain. See Customer documentation and records.
  • On devices, sites and contacts: a Documentation section lists the articles, records and credentials linked to them. Credentials show inline with reveal and copy buttons. The agent also collects an encrypted Windows device's BitLocker recovery keys into the vault, as credentials for that device: see BitLocker recovery keys.
  • On tickets: the details panel suggests articles for the ticket and lets you insert one into your reply. See Documentation on tickets and in the portal.
  • In the browser: the browser extension offers the matching credentials on the sign-in pages your technicians visit.
  • In search: Cmd+K finds articles by their full text, records by name, and credentials by name, username and address. Secrets are never searchable.
  • In the customer portal: articles and records you publish appear to customers in the Help centre.
  • On the web: articles you make public appear in your public help centre. See Public knowledge base.
  • In activity: creating, changing, reviewing and deleting documentation appears on the customer's timeline and in the activity log. Reveals and copies of secrets go to the vault audit log only.

Switching Docs on and off

Documentation is a module. A new install starts with the service desk, and an administrator switches Documentation on in Settings > Modules. Switched off, Docs is hidden everywhere for everyone, including the credentials vault and sign-up addresses, and its data is kept. See Modules.

Permissions

Documentation has its own area in Roles and permissions, and Credentials is a separate area under it so you can let people read articles without seeing passwords:

Area View Manage
Documentation Read articles and records Add, change and delete articles, records and folders
Credentials See customers' credentials Add, change and delete customers' credentials, and see their part of the vault audit log
Our company credentials See your own company's credentials Add, change and delete them, and see their part of the vault audit log

Revealing or copying a secret (a password, a two-factor code, a licence key, a BitLocker recovery key) also needs the role action Reveal credentials, and Tenvara asks the person to confirm it is them first. So a role can list a customer's credentials without being able to read the passwords.

Publishing articles to the public knowledge base also needs the role action Publish publicly, which only administrators have to start with. A folder's access list can narrow what someone sees further.

The Credentials permission also covers password rotation, dark web monitoring, password resets, customer password managers and the browser extension. The break-glass export in Settings > Vault export is for administrators.

Read-only users get no access to credentials by default. People without the credentials permission do not see credential links anywhere, including in records.

Record templates are changed by administrators.

Sign-up addresses have two permissions of their own: Sign-up addresses (view sees the addresses and their mail; manage makes and retires addresses, forwards messages and makes a ticket from one) and Sign-up codes and links (reveal codes, sign-in links and the body of sensitive messages, one logged view at a time), which technicians do not have to start with. Revealing a code also needs Reveal credentials.

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