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When I worked in the defense industry, I was one of two or three writers (depending upon the current staffing situation) assigned to almost nothing but troubleshooting procedures. In 2 1/2 years we produced multiple volumes worth of T/S for a single product line (a series of trucks, two base models with several body variants). It was from that experience that I picked up my current T/S format, a 3-column table: "Error Message," "Probable Cause," and "Solution" (sorted alphabetically by the error message). If there are multiple possible causes, I give each one a separate line in the table.
BTW, some of our electrical and transmission system errors actually had over 100 steps.
-----Original Message-----
From: Hart, Geoff [mailto:Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 8:38 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Error message appendix?
the likelihood that all you're going to do is report the problem. Call it a
"solution" message and suddenly you're thinking in a whole new way: about
helping someone solve the problem. Isn't it time we started helping the
programmers write solution messages?
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