Audience-specific workflows
Different audiences do not automatically require separate documents. Use one page when differences can be handled clearly through labelled sections or branches.
Create separate pages when:
- The workflows differ substantially.
- One audience would have to ignore large parts of the page.
- Different levels of assumed knowledge make a shared document hard to follow.
- Separate pages would make the correct path easier to identify.
Do not split solely because one audience is more experienced than another, if both ultimately follow the same process.
Historical and versioned documentation
Older documentation should remain available only when it continues to serve a real user need: users still rely on an older product version, or behaviour differs enough that current instructions would mislead them.
Where historical documentation remains:
- State clearly which version it applies to.
- Make its historical status obvious.
- Prevent users confusing it with current guidance.
- Link to the current documentation where useful.
If the old workflow no longer serves active users, archive, remove or redirect it rather than keeping it indefinitely. Version labels should solve a real ambiguity, not be added to every page by default.
Update an existing page, or create a new one?
Before creating any new page, ask:
- Does an existing page serve the same user intent?
- Does it already cover most of the required information?
- Could the new material be added without making that page harder to use?
- Would users reasonably expect to find the new information there?
- Would creating another page introduce overlap or uncertainty?
If the answer to most of these is yes, update the existing page. Create a new one when the content serves a genuinely different user need, audience, workflow or documentation type.
