On 8/11/06, Malcolm Greene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Curious what products people are using to build and maintain their online help and printed user manuals.
Requisite consultant answer: "It depends." Most of my clients are using my apps as their "sovereign" application - their in-house primary-reason-for-being-in-business applications. Operators are highly trained and know how to use the apps. They are also not readers. If they can't figure out something, they ask each other, call us, or just do it wrong. Manuals would be superfluous. Online help that tells them the Save button saves the record would be annoying. A comprehensive help app would be prohibitively expensive. There are reference manuals we provide for them to train new people and for doing the administrative tasks and infrequent maintenance tasks. Written with a word processor and saved as PDFs. Printed by us or them on occasion. Long-term, we're considering online forums, knowledgebases and ticketing systems as a means to publicize the applications, provide easier to find help (let Google do the indexing) and create self-supporting communities. Obviously, if you're providing applications in different contexts - transient apps used infrequently, etc. - then your needs and tools are different. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
