This template belongs to the knowledge handover gaps guide, which explains what a practice acquisition puts at risk. Use this page once the operations director has agreed that their firm's records can be described, in general terms, to SourceX.
When the brief is ready to write
Fill it in at the end of a conversation, not at the start. Three conditions should hold:
- The operations director, or someone of equal standing, has agreed to sponsor an internal discussion.
- You know who can approve a licensing conversation on the side of the deal that currently controls the records. If you do not, the who can say yes decision tree gets you there.
- You can answer most fields from what you were told. If an answer would require logging in to the knowledge base, ask the administrator and write down what they say.
The blank knowledge handover gaps brief
Copy the table into a document and complete the right-hand column in a phrase, range or role. Keep each entry under twenty words.
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Company size | Full-time employees at peak, contractors excluded; offices or practices |
| Business task | The handover in one line: what was handed over, and why |
| Record classes | Which exist: process pages with versions, handover checklists, exception tickets, question logs, deliverable sign-offs |
| Systems | Each system by category and start year: knowledge base, project tracker, checklist workbook, document store |
| Years of history | Earliest page version and earliest ticket, and any break at a past migration |
| Volumes | Rough count of process pages and of tickets with exception notes, with whose estimate it is |
| Record owners | Who administers or runs each system |
| Integration event | Any dated change: space merge, tracker consolidation, tenant retirement, purge |
| Open question | The one thing nobody could answer yet |
| Authorized contact | The person who can approve a licensing discussion now, plus the sponsor as working contact |
There is no field for content, screenshots or exports. Partners never ask for or handle raw client records.
Notes on the fields that matter most
Company size. The threshold is 50+ full-time employees at peak, contractors excluded. In an acquisition, give the headcount of the entity that holds the records, and note if a parent or acquirer will hold them after closing.
Years of history. Ask when the oldest page version dates from, not when the wiki was bought. In Confluence Cloud, each page keeps a version history and restoring an older version adds it as the newest rather than deleting later ones, so a long-lived page can carry years of change. A space copied into a new one may have started its history again.
ConfluenceVolumes. "About 400 process pages, maybe 300 tickets with exception notes, per the operations director" is a good entry. Never count records yourself.
Integration event. Write only dates the firm confirms. A planned merge or purge is real urgency: purging a trashed Confluence page removes every version and attachment, and deleting a single version is permanent. On the tracker side, Jira keeps the timing of field changes only in each issue's History tab, so a migration of current values alone loses it.
Open question. Pick one. A specific unknown shows you listened and gives SourceX a starting point.
A completed brief (Illustrative)
Fictional firm, invented for this page; not a real case or a completed deal. A 230-person regulatory compliance consultancy is being acquired by a larger advisory group; the worked June year-end case describes one of its gaps.
| Field | Completed entry (Illustrative) |
|---|---|
| Company size | 230 full-time at peak, contractors excluded; three offices |
| Business task | Handing over client filing processes, and recording the exceptions that surfaced, across practice transitions since 2017 |
| Record classes | Process pages with version history, handover checklists, tracker tickets with exception notes and questions, deliverable sign-offs |
| Systems | Knowledge base since 2017, project tracker since 2019, shared checklist workbook, older tracker kept read-only |
| Years of history | Page versions from 2017; tickets from 2019 in the current tracker, 2015 to 2019 in the old one |
| Volumes | About 400 process pages and several hundred exception tickets, per the operations director |
| Record owners | Operations director for checklists; IT lead for the knowledge base; delivery lead for the tracker |
| Integration event | Acquirer plans to merge the seller's wiki spaces six months after closing, date confirmed by the firm |
| Open question | Whether pre-2019 tickets in the old tracker link to current pages |
| Authorized contact | Selling managing partner before closing; acquirer's integration lead after; operations director as working contact |
Read it as SourceX would. The page history is long, the exception tickets exist, the integration event is dated by the firm, and the open question is narrow. Nothing identifies a client or quotes a record. The system map is the place to test the joins behind the "Systems" row before you send it.
What the brief settles, and what SourceX still has to review
The brief settles what exists, where it sits, who owns it and who can say yes. It does not settle whether the records can be licensed. That depends on client engagement letters, the purchase agreement, staff named in tickets and the proposed use.
The firm also needs a documented operating history, rights to license and an authorized contact. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 90% of the data is in English. SourceX licenses approved business data directly from companies for AI training and evaluation, and manages the agreement, rights review, data preparation, delivery and payout. What stays unknown until it reviews the brief: SourceX's current data needs, the rights result, what must be removed and any offer. Sign the Channel Partner Agreement before submitting; the first valid introduction within the 90-day window is credited when the company submits a verified application.
Send the brief under a short covering note; the warm introduction brief is a model. The Confluence projects guide for knowledge management consultants covers spotting these firms during routine work, the CFO handover document covers the finance side of the same transition, and other sectors are on the industries hub.
Next step
Refer a company. Earn up to $100,000. Default reward: 25% of Actual Supplier Payout, capped at $100,000 cumulatively per referred company. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
When the operations director has read and approved the completed brief, register as a partner, check the firm against who qualifies and read the program terms before you send it.