Planning an interview

An interview plan is how you prepare a knowledge transfer before anyone is interviewed. You describe the interview, give Wissenstifter some background material, choose what to cover, and generate a guideline the interview will follow.

Before you can create an interview plan, you must be a planner in at least one group (the plan is always assigned to a group). A group alone is not enough; if you don't have the planner role yet, an admin can grant it. If no group exists, start there first.

Open Interview plans from the sidebar to see everything you're preparing. Each plan shows its subject, Status (In Planning, Planned, In Use, Done), and your Role. Subject categories such as Exit, Process, Product, and Project are not selectable filters yet. Select Create new in the upper right to start a fresh plan, or open an existing row to keep working on it.

The planning steps

Select Create new in the upper right to begin. Creating a plan walks you through a guided sequence. You can move forward with Next and come back later - your progress is saved.

1. Interview plan

Describe the interview:

• Title - e.g. "Exit interview, Senior Engineer".
• Group - which group owns this interview.
• Name - the interviewee's name, e.g. "Jane Doe".
• Description - optional, e.g. the interviewee's job description.

2. Upload files

Add any background material that should inform the interview (briefs, documentation, org charts). Drag files into the upload area or browse for them. Supported: PDF up to 20 MB.

Depending on the file size, processing may take a moment. While a document is being analyzed, it shows Analyzing document... Once complete, it displays a checkmark confirming it was processed, and a trash icon to remove it.

3. Add topics

Choose the themes the interview should cover. Pick from the available topics, or type a new one and select Add to create your own.

4. Key questions

Select the topic the question belongs to, enter the question, and click Add. These questions will be used when creating the interview guideline later and can be filtered by topic. Once you are done, click Generate guideline to continue.

5. Create guideline

Wissenstifter generates a structured interview guideline from your documents, topics, and questions - organized into topics and subtopics. You can:

• Edit topics and subtopics directly.
• Use the AI assistant to refine the guideline: select the topic you want to work on, enter your instructions, and the request is computed and offered as changes you can accept or reject.

When you are happy with the guideline, click Publish to continue.

WARNING

Publishing is final: once a guideline is published you can no longer edit it. Make sure it is complete before you publish.

6. Schedule interview

After publishing, the interview plan view appears. The interview guideline is shown on the left - you can click through the topics and read their subtopics. When you are ready, click Interview to create a new interview for a participant. A new interview link is created - click it to copy it. Each interview starts with the status Not started and moves to In progress once the participant begins, and Finished when they are done.

Hover over any of the following to reveal the action:

• Interview link - hover to reveal a icon, click to copy the link.
• Passcode - hover to reveal a icon, click to regenerate the passcode.

WARNING

Regenerating the passcode immediately invalidates the old one. Make sure to send the new code to your interviewee.

• Valid until - hover to reveal a icon, click to extend the expiry date. Extending always sets the expiry to 7 days from now.

Send the link and passcode to your interviewee. See Conducting interviews for what they'll experience. When they finish, the interview becomes a knowledge document for review.