RE: Feedback requested: What doc format do your customers require?

["Kevin McGowan" <thatguy_80 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Forgive me if I'm repeating someone else's answer.

This is a golden opportunity for you, if you're revamping the docs for the 
company. I'm in a similar situation here, and it's been a major challenge.

First things first...you have to find out all you can about your actual 
customers needs. Maybe you already have that knowledge...or maybe you're 
brand new in this position. Either way, I'd go interview some of the 
support/professional services people to get a picture of who your users are, 
and how they interact with the software.

It may be a case of moving a lot of your PDF-data into the UI, so it's more 
easily found ("I got a problem...I guess I'll click on this handy help 
button..."), or maybe these users really like printed information.

In our case here, we're moving from strictly PDF info and heading forward in 
stages:

1 - Isolate the info that would be best presented as help in the UI
2 - Standardize the information in a DITA/XML format
3 - Get ready to publish PDFs through FrameMaker, or to use the XML files in 
any possible configuration.

First things first, though. Get to know how the users interact with the 
product...and with the docs. You may find that a lot of customers don't use 
the docs anyway (that's what happened here), so then the docworld is really 
your oyester.

Good luck!

Kevin




>From: Shawn <shawnly9 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
>To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>Subject: Feedback requested: What doc format do your customers require?
>Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:46:39 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Hi all,
>
>I'm in the process of revamping documentation for my company and need some 
>input.
>

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