From a PHP intranet to Now Assist: nearly 20 years documenting IT

My first knowledge base wasn’t called that. It was an intranet I built in PHP so our warehouses had support procedures, vendor contacts and the steps for recurring issues at hand. Today I govern more than 4,000 ServiceNow articles used by a 24/7 Service Desk, and those same articles now feed artificial intelligence answers.

What changed

• The tools: from static pages to ITSM platforms with approval workflows, versioning and built-in feedback.
• The scale: from four warehouses in Mexico to the North American operations of an automaker with 14 plants.
• The reader: it’s no longer only people; an AI now reads, summarizes, suggests and answers too.

What stays the same

• You write for someone in a hurry. Step by step, one outcome per article, no detours.
• What nobody looks after ages fast. An article needs someone who answers for it.
• Feedback from the people who use it is worth more than any audit.
• Documenting is a form of service. Every well-written article is a ticket someone else resolves without escalating.

What I learned along the way

Documentation nobody maintains is technical debt, just like code. Start with what repeats most, measure whether it really helps and retire what no longer serves without fear. And when a new technology arrives, like generative AI, well-governed knowledge bases are the first to benefit.

The tools changed; the goal is still that the next person resolves it faster than I did.