A Well-Structured Waybook Drives Clarity, Efficiency, and Growth
A well-structured Waybook makes onboarding faster, training smoother, and scaling effortless by ensuring everyone has instant access to the information they need. Right now, your company's knowledge might be scattered across different tools and locations. Waybook helps you build a single source of truth that ensures clarity, consistency, and accessibility.
By the end of this module, you'll know how to set up your Waybook structure to fit your team's unique workflow.
💡 Case Study:
SponsorCloud transformed their onboarding process by creating a structured, centralized knowledge base. New hires ramped up quickly, and teams gained consistent access to essential information.
The Simple Structure Rule
Documents hold knowledge. Steps break it down. Subjects and Categories organize where they live.
Understanding this hierarchy helps you build an intuitive knowledge base from the start. Documents are the main unit of knowledge - complete processes, policies, or guides that someone can read, understand, and be accountable for. Steps are the individual actions inside each document. Subjects group related documents together, and Categories (optional) provide top-level organization for larger teams.
Understanding What Makes a Good Document
Each document should explain one complete process, policy, or knowledge area from start to finish. Think of common types like SOPs that explain how something is done step by step, Policies that outline rules people must follow, or Guides that provide reference knowledge.
Quick test for document size: If one person can own it, complete it, and confidently say "I know how to do this," it's the right size. If you find yourself writing "and also..." between sections, it's probably too broad and should be split.
Getting Started with AI
Document Suggest: Your Fastest Start
For most teams, Document Suggest is the quickest way to build your structure:
Click the AI icon in the bottom left
Describe your business and key focus areas
AI generates a tailored structure with Subjects and Document suggestions
Customize and refine your structure before adding it to your Waybook
This approach saves time and ensures your knowledge is organized efficiently from day one. You can always adjust manually later as your needs evolve.
✨ Quick Win:
Try the Document Suggestor now and set up your team's knowledge base in minutes!
Manually Structuring Your Knowledge Base
If you want complete control over how your knowledge base is organized, manually adding Subjects and Documents gives you flexibility. Whether structuring by department, project, or workflow, you can create a setup that mirrors your business operations.
Best Practices
(For growing teams, broad Subjects like Sales, HR, or Operations work well. If your team is smaller, you might start with a few key workflows—like onboarding or client processes - and expand as needed.)
Start with broad Subjects (e.g., Sales, HR, Operations) and refine them over time. Remember: if you'd tell someone, "Everything you need to know about onboarding is in this folder," that's a Subject.
Break down complex processes into clear, step-by-step Documents - Each document should explain one complete process, policy, or guide. Keep documents to 5-10 steps for digestibility.
Use consistent naming conventions - SOPs end with "SOP," policies with "Policy," guides start with "How to." This helps people instantly recognize what they're looking at.
✨ Quick Win:
Add your first Subject and Document now to get familiar with Waybook’s structure!
Structure Templates: Get Started Faster
Not sure where to begin? Waybook’s Structure Templates eliminate the guesswork by providing pre-built best-practice frameworks tailored to different industries and business functions.
Why Use Structure Templates?
Saves time with a ready-to-use structure.
Ensures key topics are covered from the start.
Allows easy customization to match your workflows.
Get Your Team Involved
Waybook works best when your team collaborates! Invite key stakeholders to review your structure, suggest improvements, and contribute to the knowledge base. By involving your team early, you can drive adoption beyond a single champion and ensure company-wide engagement.
✨ Quick Win:
Invite at least one team member to review your Waybook structure today!
Ready to Organize Your Waybook?
Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to structure your Waybook, the next step is taking action. The sooner you implement these best practices, the faster your team will benefit from an organized, scalable knowledge base.
In the next module, Creating and Importing Content, we’ll dive into best practices for creating clear, engaging, and actionable knowledge documents that your team will adopt effortlessly.
Need hands-on guidance? Book a free session with our customer success team to get a custom implementation plan tailored to your needs!