How To > Effective operations manuals
Tallyfy turns static operations manuals into live digital workflows. Your team tracks and runs…
Auto-recording steps for SOPs
Capturing procedures without expensive recording tools
Section titled “Capturing procedures without expensive recording tools”Free screen capture tools take the screenshots and videos, and Tallyfy’s rich text editor holds them next to the written steps. Once a procedure is in Tallyfy, you can also track who completes each step and automate the workflow around it.
Deciding what to capture
Section titled “Deciding what to capture”Walk through the procedure once with your capture tool running. Take a screenshot at each decision point, or record the whole flow as one video, and annotate the screenshots to highlight the areas that matter.
Most steps only need text: simple linear steps, background concepts, policies and rules, and the criteria for a decision. Add a screenshot when the reader has to find something on screen, like a button’s location, a configuration screen or other complex UI with many options, an example of a filled-in form field, or an error message. Record video for multi-step sequences, drag and drop, anything where timing matters, and steps that need someone to talk the reader through them.
Free tools for capturing procedures
Section titled “Free tools for capturing procedures”If you want one tool per device to start with, use ShareX for screenshots or Xbox Game Bar for video on Windows, the built-in screenshot tool or Kap on a Mac, and Screenity in Chrome on any computer.
Built into your computer or phone
Section titled “Built into your computer or phone”| Device | Tool | How to start it | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | Xbox Game Bar | Press Win+Alt+R | An MP4 of the app window you’re using |
| Windows | Steps Recorder (PSR) | Run psr.exe from the Start menu | A screenshot and a written description of every click, saved as an .MHT file |
| Mac | Screenshot | Press Shift-Cmd-5 | Screenshots, or a video of the screen |
| iPhone and iPad | Screen Recording | Swipe down to open Control Center and tap the record button | A video |
| Android 11 and later | Screen Record | Pull down the notification shade and tap the Screen Record tile in Quick Settings | A video |
To use Steps Recorder, click Record, do the task, then click Stop. Save the recording as a web page (HTML) to turn the .MHT file into HTML plus separate images, then copy each step’s text into Tallyfy and insert its image. Microsoft stopped updating it in November 2023 ↗[1] and plans to remove it, and suggests the Snipping Tool instead.
You can upload a Game Bar or phone recording straight into a step, since video uploads take files up to 100MB. Or put it on YouTube or Vimeo and embed it, which you’ll need to do for anything bigger.
Free to install
Section titled “Free to install”ShareX is open source and runs on Windows. It takes screenshots you can annotate and records short GIFs that demonstrate a single step.
ScreenToGif on Windows and Kap on a Mac both record short GIF loops of one action. Kap is free and open source, and it also exports MP4 or WebM for longer procedures. You can trim and compress a recording in Kap before you export it.
OBS Studio runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Use it to record a whole procedure as one video with your own voiceover, then upload it to YouTube as unlisted and embed it in Tallyfy.
Screenity is a Chrome extension, so it works on any operating system that runs Chrome. It records procedures you do in the browser, lets you add annotations while you record, and doesn’t need an account.
Putting captures into a template
Section titled “Putting captures into a template”For steps built from screenshots, the way a Scribe guide is:
- Go to Templates, click +Create, then choose Create a template. To add to a template you already have, open it and click Edit.
- In each step, type the instruction.
- Choose Image from the editor’s Insert menu and upload the screenshot. You can also drag an image file straight into the editor.
For a video, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo as unlisted. In the step, use the video button’s By URL option, or Embed URL, in the toolbar, and paste the video’s link. Then add text descriptions of the key steps below it.
A GIF goes in as an image, the same way as a screenshot. Export it as a compressed GIF and it plays by itself in the task view. A short loop shows drag and drop, hover states or a run of clicks better than a still image can.
If the instructions already sit on a web page, host the HTML on your web server and paste the page’s URL into Embed URL in the editor toolbar. It takes a URL, not HTML. You can also copy the text from the page, paste it into Tallyfy, and rebuild the formatting with Tallyfy’s rich text editor. Pasted text keeps its words but loses most of its formatting. To paste raw HTML, use the Show HTML link under the editor. Only admins see it unless your organization turns on HTML authoring in Settings > Organization > Customization.
Bringing in documentation you already have
Section titled “Bringing in documentation you already have”Embed URL shows content from another site inside a step. YouTube and Vimeo links paste straight in. Publish a Google Doc or Sheet to the web first, and share a Miro or Mural board by public link. A SharePoint page embeds only if it’s publicly accessible. For a Figma prototype, paste its share link into Embed URL, or paste Figma’s embed code through Show HTML.
Text copied from Word or Google Docs loses its formatting when you paste it, so rebuild the structure with the editor tools and insert the images one at a time.
For a PDF, copy the text out, take a screenshot of any image you need, and recreate it as structured Tallyfy steps. If people still need the original, attach it to the step with Upload File.
From a wiki or knowledge base, export the pages as HTML or Markdown and copy them in one section at a time. Break each section into steps, then add the automation and tracking described further down this page.
Keeping captures small and current
Section titled “Keeping captures small and current”Resize images to no more than 1920px wide, save screenshots as PNG and photos as JPEG, and shrink them with a free compressor such as TinyPNG. Put longer videos on YouTube or Vimeo and embed them.
Crop each screenshot to the part of the screen the step needs, so a change elsewhere in the app doesn’t make it wrong. Date your screenshots so you can tell which ones need retaking. Show sample data, never real customer records. If the detail lives in another system, link to it instead of copying it into the step.
What happens when the procedure runs
Section titled “What happens when the procedure runs”Before you launch, add variables so the instructions pick up each run’s details, form fields to collect data, deadlines on time-sensitive steps, and automations that route tasks and adapt the procedure to people’s answers. Then launch a test process and ask your team to leave comments on anything that’s unclear.
Every run you launch assigns its tasks to the right job titles or groups. Each task gets a due date, and Tallyfy sends reminders. Approval steps let a reviewer approve or reject work for quality control. The tracker view shows every running process, who’s stuck and where bottlenecks occur, and a kick-off form can collect the details for each run up front.
For employee onboarding, Scribe would give you a step-by-step guide with screenshots. The same procedure in Tallyfy auto-assigns IT setup to the tech team, dates training from the start date field with a deadline automation, collects equipment confirmations and tracks completion across departments.
In customer support, iorad makes an interactive tutorial for agents to review. A Tallyfy support procedure assigns each ticket from its type field with an assignment automation, escalates a missed SLA deadline through an expiring step, collects resolution data and launches a follow-up process when the work is done.
Dozuki makes visual work instructions for jobs like quality inspections. Tallyfy can launch those inspections on a schedule through middleware, capture defects with photo uploads and route issues to the quality team.
To report on runs in Power BI or Tableau, use the Tallyfy Analytics add-on. Other systems connect through the API, webhooks or middleware.
Avoiding vendor lock-in
Section titled “Avoiding vendor lock-in”Scribe - The free Basic plan shares guides by link or embed. Exporting to PDF, HTML or Markdown needs a paid plan, according to Scribe’s pricing page ↗[2].
Trainual - Exports subjects as PDF files ↗[3], and tests, standalone videos and checklists can’t be exported. Once a cancellation finalizes, the account and its data aren’t accessible ↗[4], so Trainual tells customers to export everything first.
Keep the original of everything you capture outside any one tool, Tallyfy included. Screenshots go in your own cloud storage, recordings stay as standard MP4 files, and written instructions live in documents you own, in an open format such as HTML or Markdown where you can.
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