Re: techwr-l digest: August 09, 2001

Subject: Re: techwr-l digest: August 09, 2001
From: aschiff -at- factset -dot- com
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 13:27:19 -0400


Hi Michael --

We switched to (mostly) Web-based documentation about two years ago. (We
still publish a fairly robust "Getting Started" manual and a few
introductory coding guides/quick-reference cards -- but 99% of the
nitty-gritty stuff -- 11,000+ pages' worth -- resides exclusively online.)

Pro's:
==============
1. Easier to update documentation across entire client base worldwide;
clients always get the most up-to-date doc.
2. Ability to do a full-text search across ALL documentation/reference
materials, ranked by relevance, with summaries. Sweet.
3. Reduces duplication of effort (i.e., we can now link to related topics
instead of publishing common themes in 20 different user manuals).
4. Reduces printing/fulfillment/shipping costs. A lot.
5. Ability to link to outside websites; incorporate PDF documents, Flash
interactive multimedia, etc. -- really cool stuff you simply cannot do in a
manual.
6. Ability to mark pages "Internal Only" -- only people from our company
can access those pages or get them returned in a search.
7. Ability to track who's accessing what -- i.e., each time a user
completes a tutorial, the system automatically notifies their Support Rep.
to follow-up & see if they need further training.

Con's:
===============
1. Some clients and internal users still prefer paper books and are very
vocal about it. We provided a neat feature for users to print out a
"mini-site" (manual) of any topic on the fly, but this does not pacify
everyone.
2. Technical requirements: you need a certain version of our software (that
a very small percentage of our clients have not yet upgraded to) in order
to access the Web-based help system. You also need Internet Explorer 4.0+,
which a minuscule percentage of our users do not have. These people can
access the help via a CD-ROM we burn for them, but they lose full-text
searching & context-sensitivity and those are two huge factors to be
without.
3. Very occasionally, the system slows down or just plain goes down -- just
like any Web server might. We recently added a redundant server so
hopefully this will get even rarer.
4. See #1, ad infinitum.....

Obviously there are pro's and con's to any changeover; in my mind, the
trade-offs were absolutely worth it. Very important factor: once the system
was up & running, we spent a lot of time marketing it & training on it
INTERNALLY. I dare say that we got a reputation for being a group that
aggressively promoted our product ("pimped" was a word heard 'round here),
but it paid off: once the support reps were converted, they converted the
client base relatively quickly.

These are overall comments -- if you have any specific questions, I'd be
happy to respond either on- or off-list.

Abby Schiff
Director of Documentation
FactSet Research Systems Inc.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Cohen wrote:
<<Hosting your company's documentation on a Web server that all customers
access remotely.

I'm interesting in hearing about your experiences in this area , good and
bad. My company delivers many varieties of documentation with our
client-server software products: print, PDF, winhelp, and browser-based. We
are considering providing access to our docs via a Web server that is
hosted onsite. Customers would access the documentation they need from
where ever they are, and it would enable us to add an additional bullet
item to our marketing literature. Some larger companies already do this,
such as Microsoft and IBM.>>


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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/

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