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Subject:RE: How do you announce new features? From:"Steve Janoff (non-Celgene)" <sjanoff -at- celgene -dot- com> To:"Bowes, Rebecca" <Rebecca-Bowes -at- IDEXX -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 7 Nov 2012 11:21:32 -0800
If you're using a CMS or a HAT such as Flare then it's an easy matter to pop out a New Features Guide using topics in your repository that also may be used in your user manual -- you just create a custom TOC, slap on a new cover, auto-generate front and back matter and you're done. Kill two birds with one stone with the original writing of the common topics.
If you don't have these tools, suggest you pitch them to the company. If you can't, well, the shorter the solution, the better, and release notes or a single help topic both sound good.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with duplicating material in the New Features Guide vs. User Guide as long as you don't have to duplicate the work. Hence, a CMS or HAT will save you that trouble.
If you already know all this and I'm not answering your question, well then, apologies. :)
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: On Behalf Of Bowes, Rebecca
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 7:14 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: How do you announce new features?
When your company releases a new version of software, how do you announce its new features?
Our company is looking for a better approach than our current method, which is a new-features guide that actually duplicates the same information included in the user manual. I've used other methods at other companies-such as a release notes text file and a new-features online help topic--but I have no idea which approach, if any, is better than another.
Any thoughts or recommendations from the community?
Thanks for your insights!
Rebecca
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