Write guides for your crew in the knowledge base

The Knowledge base holds your business’s how-to guides, also called SOPs: how to sealcoat a driveway, how to fuel the mowers, what to do when a client isn’t home. Everyone on your team can read them, on a phone too. You can make a guide required reading and see who has read the latest version.

The trade you picked when you set up your business started you off with a few categories (see Choose a trade preset).

Who can do what

Everyone can read published guides, search them, print them and confirm required reading.
Writing, editing and deleting guides takes the Write and edit guides permission. Owners, admins and the office have it to start with. Change it for a role under Settings → Roles (only roles on the Owner, Admin or Office access level can have it).
People who can write guides also see drafts, the revision history and who still has to read a required guide.

Write a guide

Open Knowledge base and choose New guide.
Give it a title, like “Sealcoat application”, and write the steps.
On the right, add a Cover photo if you like (see below), and choose its Category, whether it’s Published or a Draft, and any Tags.
Choose Publish, or Save draft for a draft. ⌘S on a Mac or Ctrl S on Windows saves too.

The toolbar has headings, bold, italics, underline, numbered steps, bulleted lists, checklists, quotes, callouts, tables, links, videos and dividers. You can also type a shortcut at the start of a line, followed by a space: # for a heading, ## for a subheading, 1. for numbered steps, - for a bulleted list, [] for a checklist, > for a quote and --- for a divider.

Steps, checklists, callouts and tables

Numbered steps show each number in a green circle, so someone reading on a phone keeps their place.
Checklist makes a list with a box beside each line, for what to load on the truck or check before leaving. Tick a box in the editor to show it already ticked.
Callout (the speech bubble with an exclamation mark) puts the line you’re on in a colored box with a label: choose Tip, Important or Warning. Choose it again to switch the kind, or Remove callout.
Table (the grid) has Insert table, which adds a table with a header row. With the cursor in a table, the same button has Add row below, Add column to the right, Header row on or off, Delete row, Delete column and Delete table.

To put a training video in a guide, see Add a YouTube or Vimeo video to a guide.

To change a guide, open it and choose Edit, then Save. If someone else saved it while you were editing, you’ll see “Someone else saved this guide while you were editing. Copy your changes, reload the page, and apply them again.”

Add a cover photo

A cover photo makes a guide easy to spot in the list: a photo of the sealcoat rig, the mower, the finished job. Anyone who can write guides can add one.

Open the guide and choose Edit, or start a New guide.
On the right, under Cover photo, choose Add a cover photo and pick a photo. On a computer you can also drag a photo onto it.
Choose Save (or Publish for a new guide). The photo is saved with the guide, so it’s not kept if you leave without saving.

To swap it, choose Change photo. To take it off, choose Remove. Then choose Save. Once you save, the old photo goes to the Trash for 30 days.

Where it shows:

On the guide’s card in the Knowledge base, in a category and under Recently updated, above the title. On a phone it’s a small picture beside the title, so the list stays short. A guide without a cover shows a book there.
Across the top of the guide, above the text. A guide without a cover has nothing there.
In search results, as a small picture beside the guide.

It doesn’t print.

Photo sizes

Any JPEG or PNG works. Crewtavo turns it into a JPEG up to 1,600 pixels on its longest side, so a full-size phone photo is fine and loads quickly.
The card shows the photo wide (16 by 9) and the top of the guide wider still, cropping it to fit. Keep what matters near the middle. Landscape photos work best.
See-through parts of a picture turn white.
If you see “Crewtavo can’t open that picture here. Try a JPEG or PNG.”, your browser can’t open that kind of picture (like an iPhone’s HEIC photo on some computers). Save it as a JPEG and try again.

A cover isn’t part of the guide’s revisions. Adding or changing one doesn’t make a new revision, so nobody has to read a required guide again, and Restore this version keeps the cover the guide has now. Deleting a guide puts its cover in the Trash too.

Can I put a photo inside the steps?

Not yet. There’s no button to add a photo inside a guide’s text, only the one cover photo. To show how something’s done, you can:

Add a training video from YouTube or Vimeo. See Add a YouTube or Vimeo video to a guide.
Link to a photo, or a page with photos, with the toolbar’s Link button.

A picture copied in from a web page, along with its text, still shows in the guide. It stays on that website, though, so it disappears if the site removes it.

Read a guide

A guide shows in a column sized for easy reading. When it has two or more headings:

On this page, beside the guide, lists its headings. Choose one to jump there; the part you’re reading is highlighted as you scroll. On a phone, or in a narrow window, On this page sits above the guide instead: tap it to open the list.
Point at a heading and choose the # beside it to copy a link to that part of the guide, for example to send in team chat. The link opens the guide at that heading.

A guide’s tags show at the top, next to when it was last updated.

Drafts

A draft is only visible to owners, admins and the office. It shows “Draft · only the office can see this” at the top. When it’s ready, choose ⋯ then Publish on the guide, or switch Visibility to Published in the editor and save.

To take a guide down without losing it, switch it back to Draft.

Required reading

For guides everyone has to know, like safety rules, turn on Required reading in the editor. Under Who has to read it, choose any of Office, Estimator, Crew lead and Field crew, or leave them all off: “None selected means everyone.” These are access levels, so a role of your own counts as the level it’s built on.

Once it’s published:

Everyone who has to read it sees “You have 1 required guide to read” at the top of the Knowledge base, and the guide shows Required until they’ve read it.
They open the guide and choose I’ve read this. It then shows You’ve read this, and Read in the list.
Read this revision, beside the guide, shows who has confirmed it and when. People who can write guides also see Still to read.

A required guide needs something in it before you publish it. Otherwise you’ll see “Add some content before making this required reading.”

Find a guide

Type in the search box at the top of the Knowledge base. Results show as you type. Guides whose title, tags or category match come first, even from part of a word (“seal” finds “Sealcoat application”) or with a small typo. A moment later, guides that have every word you typed somewhere in their text join the list, with a line from the guide, so a few key words like “sealer cure” work best.
Choose a tag on a guide to search for it.
Browse by category, or look under Recently updated.
The search at the top of every screen finds guides too. See Find anything with search.

Only owners, admins and the office see drafts, in search and everywhere else.

Ask a question

When AI is on for your business, the search box says “Search or ask a question” and has an Ask button. Type a question in your own words, like “How long does sealer need to dry before cars drive on it?”, and choose Ask. Crewtavo picks the guides that best match the words in your question and answers only from them, with numbered links to the guides it used. If none of them covers it, you’ll see “I couldn’t find a guide that covers that. Try different words, or ask the office.”

To turn on Ask, an owner or admin adds your business’s own Anthropic key:

Create an API key in your Anthropic account. Anthropic bills your business for what Crewtavo’s AI uses.
In Crewtavo, open Apps and choose Claude.
Paste the key under Your own Anthropic key (optional) and choose Save.

Ask shows up for you right away, and for the rest of your team the next time they open Crewtavo. The same key powers Crewtavo’s writing help too, like Polish with AI on a quote and Write with AI on a campaign.

If whoever runs your Crewtavo server added a Claude key in its hosting settings (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY), Ask is already on, and a key your business adds is used instead. See Optional settings.

Revision history

Every saved change is kept. On a guide, choose ⋯ then Revision history, and pick a revision to see it as it was. Restore this version brings it back as the newest revision, so nothing is lost. On a required guide, that counts as a change, and everyone reads it again.

Print or delete a guide

Print: choose ⋯ then Print. The page prints without the side panels.
Delete: choose ⋯ then Delete guide. “It’s removed for everyone, along with its revision history and read receipts.” To take a guide down but keep it, make it a draft instead.

Let Claude or ChatGPT write guides

With your Crewtavo connected to Claude or ChatGPT, you can ask the assistant to write a guide or update one, in plain words. It can use numbered steps, checklists and callouts too. A guide it writes starts as a draft, so you can check it before your crew sees it. It needs the Write and edit guides permission like anyone else. See Connect Claude and ChatGPT.