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Subject:Re: Number of steps per procedure From:hedley_finger -at- myob -dot- com -dot- au To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 20 Oct 2000 09:28:41 +1100
I came in late on this, so what follows may be off-beam. It sounds as
though you have one step for each field, e.g. Step 9, Complete the
Reference field with the customer's registration number, etc. Why not have
just one step which says something like: Step 2, Complete the Hoo Hah
dialogue, and then have a large 100-row table with column headings
Field Explanation
If there are subsidiary buttons (for example, "Customer Details ..."),
break the table where it is necessary to deal with this button and insert a
new step, Step 5, Click the Customer Details button./The Customer Detail
dialogue appears./Step 6, Complete the Customer Details dialogue./ Then
insert a table for the Customer Details dialogue ...
Field Explanation
Continue back to the main dialogue with Step 7, Click Okay to close the
Customer Details dialogue and resume at the N. of Visits field in the Hoo
Hah dialogue. Then continue the main dialogue's table.
Regards,
Hedley
--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications/Technical communicator and FrameMaker mentor
MYOB Australia
P.O. box 371 Blackburn VIC 3130 Australia
<mailto:hedley_finger -at- myob -dot- com -dot- au>
Tel. +61 3 9894 0945
Mob. +61 412 461 558
cspurr -at- dra -dot- com
Sent by: To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
bounce-techwr-l-52046 -at- lists -dot- r cc:
aycomm.com Subject: Re: Number of steps per procedure
18/10/2000 11:19 PM
Please respond to cspurr
I try to limit my steps to 10 or less, but there is one process here that
could not be broken down. Steps were combined as much as possible, but in
the end there are 90+ steps. There just wasn't any other way that would
logically work, without totally confusing the user. When a screen has over
a hundred fields with no categories assigned for the group of fields, you
are just stuck. In this case you could not jump in and out of the screen
either. Once you went to that particular screen you had to fill it out
completly prior to moving on.
It's just a matter of what logically works with the least amount of
confusion.
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