What a procedure is

A procedure is how you handle a case, written in sentences. It is documentation that does something.

A procedure is how you handle a case, written in sentences. It is documentation that does something.

What it contains

• When it applies.
• The steps, in order.
• The conditions: if this, then that.
• What to do when a step cannot be completed.
• What must never happen.

Written for a person, read by both

The same text guides the AI and reads as an instruction to a new colleague. That is the useful property: your process documentation and your automation stop being two things that drift apart.

Different from an article

An article explains something to a customer. A procedure tells your side how to handle a case, including the parts a customer never sees: which field to set, when to check something, when to involve somebody else.

Different from a macro

A macro applies a fixed set of changes and text. A procedure reasons about the situation: it can check a condition, take one path or another, and adapt what it proposes to what the ticket actually says.

Macros are still right for the simple repeated action. Procedures are for cases with steps and decisions.

Why writing one is worth it anyway

The exercise forces the question nobody has answered: how do we actually handle this? Teams routinely discover that three agents do it three ways, and that discovery is worth the hour even before automation.

They need maintenance

A procedure describing last year's process is followed faithfully and wrongly. Put them in the same review rhythm as your articles.

See also

• Writing a procedure
• Writing a good procedure: where it usually goes wrong
• What auto assist is and how it differs from copilot