Source material
Every question is about the form, and the form is the part with no words in it
A pack is usually two documents that arrived together: the form somebody has to complete, and the notes that explain how to complete it. Uploading the form is the obvious move and it achieves almost nothing, because a form is a grid of labels rather than a piece of writing. Everything anybody actually asks is answered in the notes, which are the least published, least read and least well titled thing in the set.
Why this one is harder than it looks
A blank form contains almost no prose. Field labels, box numbers, tick boxes, a declaration, a signature line. There is nothing in that for a question to attach to, because matching works on meaning and a label is a word without a sentence around it. The form can be indexed perfectly and still never be retrieved for anything, which is a strange outcome for the document the whole conversation is about.
The questions people ask are about the artefact, not the business. What goes in the box asking about previous addresses. Whether section C applies to somebody in their situation. What counts as acceptable proof. Whether an electronic signature is accepted. Whether somebody else can sign on their behalf. Where the completed pack goes and in what format. How long it takes. What happens if they have already missed the deadline. None of these are answered anywhere else in your material, because they are not questions about what you do.
The notes that answer them are usually numbered rather than titled. A note carrying only a number, or a heading reading guidance on part two. A heading is the strongest matching text a document has, and a heading that is a number says nothing whatsoever. Meanwhile the reader typed the words printed on the field itself, which appear in the form and not in the notes, so the question and the answer have no vocabulary in common at all.
Then there are the two things that go wrong around the edges. Old versions of a form stay online forever because the link was in an email somebody sent in a previous year, so several editions with different section numbering compete for the same question. And the most useful thing in the pack, a completed example, is full of specimen data: a made-up reference, a sample date, a fictional amount. Indexed as text, that specimen material is quotable, and a made-up reference number offered to somebody as though it were theirs is an unpleasant thing to have to explain.
What it has to contain
Structure rather than wording. A passage pulled out of this document has to stand on its own, because that is the only form in which it will ever be read.
| One page per question the form provokes, titled with that question | Named for what somebody is stuck on rather than for where it sits in the pack. What to put in the section about previous addresses. What counts as proof of identity here. Who can sign on somebody else's behalf. |
|---|---|
| Every note carrying the words printed on the form | The field label as it appears on the paper, quoted in the note, alongside the section number. People type what they can see. The number is worth keeping too, because a minority type that instead, and both cost one line. |
| A submission block that answers the practical questions in one place | Where the completed pack goes, in what format, what has to be attached, whether it can be sent electronically, how long a decision takes, and what arrives next. These are asked constantly and they are usually scattered across a covering letter, a footer and an email. |
| One edition of the form and one of the notes, each naming its edition in the text | The version stated in a sentence rather than in a filename or a footer code, because a filename is not part of the text and a footer code means nothing to the person reading it. |
The rewrite, in order
Publish the notes as text and let the form stay a form
The guidance is the half that can answer, so it is the half that has to exist as readable text on the web or as an uploaded document that is genuinely text rather than a scan. The form can stay as a downloadable artefact for people to print, sign and send, because that is what it is for.
This inverts the instinct, which is to publish the form prominently and treat the notes as an appendix. For a person standing at a printer that instinct is right. For anybody asking a question it is exactly backwards, because the form is the object and the notes are the only writing in the pack.
It is still worth indexing the form itself where it is real text and short, for one narrow reason: it puts the exact label wording into the material, so a question quoting a label has something to match near the note that explains it.
Retitle every note with the words somebody can see
Go through the notes and rename each one after the field it explains, using the label printed on the form and the ordinary phrase people use for the same thing. A note about the section on prior residence becomes a heading naming previous addresses, where you have lived before, and the section number, all in one line.
Then open the note itself and make sure the first sentence restates the subject. Notes are written to be read beside the form, so they habitually begin with a bare instruction: complete this only if the answer above was yes. A passage carrying that sentence and nothing else is unusable, because the answer above is not in the room.
Where a note branches, split it. A note covering three different circumstances in three paragraphs will be retrieved as one of those paragraphs, and the paragraph that arrives will not say which circumstance it belongs to.
Write the four things the notes never cover
Guidance notes are written by whoever designed the form, and they explain the fields. They very rarely explain the process around the fields, which is where most of the questions live. Four in particular are almost always missing.
What happens after submission, described as a sequence with the waiting times in it. What happens if a deadline has already passed, said plainly, including whether a late submission is accepted at all. Who may sign, and what is required if somebody is signing for another person. And how a mistake is corrected once the pack has been sent, which is the question people are too embarrassed to phone about and therefore the one an assistant is best placed to answer.
Each of these is a short block under a heading in the customer's words. They cost half an hour and they remove a category of message that currently reaches a person every time.
Take the specimen data out of the worked example
A completed example is the single most useful thing in most packs and it cannot be indexed as it stands. Replace every invented value with a description of what belongs there: the reference printed at the top of your letter, the date the work began, the amount shown on the invoice. The example keeps its instructional value and stops containing quotable facts that are not facts.
The same applies to any real completed form somebody kept as a template. Those turn up in shared folders more often than anybody expects, and one of them ending up in the material is a personal data problem rather than a quality problem.
While you are there, retire every superseded edition of the form and its notes. Two editions with different section numbering will both match a question about a section number, and the answer will describe a box that has moved.
What happens if you skip it
The form is indexed, and every question about it is refused
Somebody asks what to put in a particular section. The form is in the material, complete and correct, and it contributes nothing, because a passage of field labels and box numbers has no meaning for the question to match against. Below the threshold the owner set, the assistant declines without calling the model at all and returns the fallback wording. From outside it looks as though the pack was never uploaded.
The louder failure is the wrong edition. Two versions of the form are online because an old link was circulated years ago, and the notes retrieved are the old ones. The customer is told, precisely and with a citation, to complete a section that is now numbered differently and asks for something else, and they will not discover this until the pack comes back to them.
The most awkward is the specimen. A worked example indexed with its invented values produces an answer containing a reference number that belongs to nobody, offered to somebody who has been looking for exactly that.
Check it against this
Before you index it
- The guidance notes exist as text, not only as a scanned appendix
- Every note is titled with the field label and the section number
- No note opens with a sentence that depends on the one above it
- Deadlines, signing, timescales and corrections each have their own block
- Worked examples contain descriptions of values rather than invented ones
- Only the current edition of the form and its notes is indexed
Questions
- Should we index the blank form at all?
- Where it is real text and not long, yes, for one reason: it puts the exact label wording into the material so that a question quoting a label matches near the note that explains it. It is a supporting document rather than the answering one, and on its own it answers nothing.
- Our form is an interactive fillable document. Does that change anything?
- It makes the form even less useful as a source, because field labels held in an interactive layer may not be read as page text at all. That pushes all of the weight onto the notes, which then have to carry the label wording themselves rather than assuming the reader can see it.
- Can the assistant help somebody actually submit the form?
- No. It answers from the documents it has been given, and it cannot open a system, check the status of an application or send anything on somebody's behalf. What it can do is answer the questions the notes cover, then take a name, an email address and a message and pass those to a person.
Keep reading
- How to upload a PDF manual so an assistant can answer from itA linked PDF is never crawled and a scanned one yields nothing. What to do about page furniture, columns, split tables and size.
- How to use an internal knowledge base space as a customer-facing sourceInternal spaces are full of shorthand, owner names and links customers cannot open. What to export, what to rewrite, and what to leave behind.
- Using a staff handbook as a source without publishing the rest of itThe handbook answers customer questions in the second person, with pay and discipline bound in beside them. What to extract and what to leave.
- Every kind of source materialWhat to feed an assistant, and the surgery each document needs first.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.