Handbook page draft

Purpose

Convert an approved source policy or operating rule into a handbook page that a defined employee audience can use without losing the original boundaries. The draft makes actions, decisions, exceptions, ownership, and review metadata explicit.

Scope

Cover one topic per page: audience, purpose, definitions, prerequisites, procedure, decision points, prohibited actions, exceptions, escalation route, examples, related pages, owner, effective date, and review date. Preserve mandatory language and distinguish policy requirements from practical explanation. Excluded: changing the policy, granting exceptions, publishing the page, or inventing a contact, deadline, or system behavior.

Data basis

• Approved policy, standard, procedure, or source page supplied in scope.
• Existing handbook style guide, glossary, navigation taxonomy, and related pages.
• Role and system descriptions that define who performs each action and what the interface calls it.
• Optional audience and page_topic inputs for the intended readers and requested subject.

Result

Write a handbook-page draft with title, summary, applicability, “what to do” procedure, decision table, examples, exceptions, escalation, related links, owner, source references, and review metadata. Include a source-to-draft traceability sheet for each normative statement and example.

Quality criteria

• Every mandatory instruction maps to a quoted or precisely located source passage.
• Steps use the audience’s role and the source system’s actual field or button names when those are documented.
• Decision tables cover every source condition; unsupported conditions are marked as questions.
• Examples are clearly illustrative and cannot be mistaken for policy thresholds or real records.
• The draft has one owner, one effective-date statement, and an explicit review trigger or date rule.

Instructions

Treat the approved policy as authoritative. Preserve modal verbs such as must, may, and must not; do not soften a prohibition into advice. Put definitions before the first dependent instruction and convert dense prose into numbered actions only when the meaning remains intact. Where sources conflict, show the conflict in the traceability sheet and do not choose a winner silently. Keep local terminology in the glossary and mark system-specific details that need confirmation.

Adapt before use

• Add the governing policy, handbook style guide, glossary, and navigation conventions.
• Define audience roles, page ownership, review cadence, effective-date format, and escalation labels.
• Map documented system names, field labels, and related-page identifiers to the company vocabulary.