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Creating your first document

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Overview

This tutorial walks you through creating your first document configuration in Azure Documenter and generating a document from it. By the end, you will have a saved configuration and a generated document published to your chosen destination.

Business value

Completing this tutorial gives you a working document configuration you can reuse, schedule, or duplicate as a template for other document types. It also confirms that your Service principal has the correct access to your Azure subscriptions before you build out a broader reporting library.

Prerequisites

  • A Turbo360 account with access to Azure Documenter
  • A Service principal configured in Azure Documenter with Reader access to at least one Azure subscription. See Managing service principals.
  • At least one Azure subscription accessible through the Service principal

Required permissions

Role Access
Account owner, Owner, Contributor Full access by default
Custom role Requires the Documentation permission set to Manage

Steps

This tutorial takes you from the document configurations list to a generated document. Navigate to Azure Documenter in Turbo360 to get started.

Step 1: Open the Add configuration wizard

Opening the wizard starts the 7-step process that captures all the settings Azure Documenter needs to generate your document.

  1. In the document configurations list, click + New configuration. The Add configuration wizard opens at the Basics step.

Step 2: Set up the Basics

The Basics step defines the configuration name, description, and document type: the settings that identify this configuration and determine what Azure Documenter generates.

  1. Enter a Name for the configuration. Use a name that reflects the document type and subscription scope; for example, Executive summary - Production.
  2. Optionally enter a Description to record the configuration's purpose or intended audience.
  3. Under Choose document type, select the document type for this configuration. Use the category filter tabs (Executive, Finance, Security, Operations, Architecture, Sustainability, Microsoft 365) or the search field to find a type.
  4. Configure any document-type-specific options that appear; for example, billing range and currency for cost-related types.
  5. Click Next.

Step 3: Configure the Service principal scope

The Service principal step defines which Azure subscriptions Azure Documenter accesses to generate the document.

  1. Select the Service principal that has Reader access to the subscriptions you want to include.
  2. Select the subscriptions to include. Use Bulk scope selection to filter and assign multiple subscriptions at once.
  3. Click Next.

Step 4: Set branding

The Branding step controls the visual appearance of the document cover page.

  1. Set an Accent colour for the document cover page and accent elements. The default is #2b6cb0.
  2. Optionally upload a Logo (PNG, JPG, SVG, or ICO; max 100 KB) to appear on the cover page.
  3. Click Next.

Step 5: Configure publish settings

The Publish settings step determines where the generated document is delivered.

  1. Choose a publish destination:
    • Publish document to Azure Storage account: delivers the document as PDF, Word, or Excel to an Azure Storage account.
    • Publish document to Document360: publishes the document as a PDF directly to a Document360 knowledge base.
  2. Configure the destination details for the option you selected.
  3. Click Next.

Step 6: Skip schedule and notifications for now

For your first document, proceed through the remaining steps without enabling a schedule or adding notification recipients; you will generate immediately from the Review step.

  1. Click Next on the Schedule step without enabling a schedule.
  2. Click Next on the Notifications step without adding recipients.

Step 7: Review and generate

The Review step shows a summary of all your settings and lets you generate the document immediately.

  1. Review the configuration summary.
  2. Click Generate to save the configuration and generate the document immediately. A link to the completed document is displayed once generation finishes.

Troubleshooting

  1. Document generation fails immediately
    Cause: The Service principal lacks the required permissions for the selected scope or document type.
    Fix: Confirm the Service principal has Reader access on the selected scope. For document types requiring additional permissions, verify those are configured in the Azure portal. See Service principal permission errors.

  2. Generated document is missing resources
    Cause: The Service principal lacks access to specific resource groups or resources within the scope.
    Fix: Verify Reader access is assigned at the correct scope level and regenerate the document.

  3. Publish to Document360 fails
    Cause: The Document360 API token is missing, invalid, or lacks required request methods.
    Fix: Confirm the API token has GET/POST/PUT/DELETE enabled and that the user email is listed as a project member. See Prerequisites.

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