Need help with Help

[Aviva Wulfsohn <AWulfsohn -at- ecipay -dot- com>]

All,
I have been a technical writer for 10+ years now and am almost ashamed to admit I have never once authored, edited, or otherwise touched a help file. Others were always responsible or a company did not use them ... whatever. So now I have been asked to use Help & Manual to author a help system for a reporting program that is replacing Crystal reports. Apparently, the company we bought this program from used H&M to create it's help files so we need to modify them to reflect our company and our software. I hope this makes sense.

I have no idea where to begin compiling information to put in these help files. I've only been on the job here for a little over three months so most things are still new to me, including our proprietary program and this new reporting system. Can anyone advise me how to go about compiling help data? Who I should be talking to? How to structure the information? I'm also the only writer here!

Thank you in advance!
Aviva

Aviva P. Wulfsohn
Technical Writer
Electronic Commerce, Inc.
574-970-4400 x148
awulfsohn -at- ecipay -dot- com



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Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
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