Post on 18-Jun-2015
description
Jane Toon
Bringing Help in from the Cold
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What is this talk all about?
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About me
Technical Author - Esri UK
Industry - Geographical
Information Systems (GIS)
Product Specialist role
What no documentation!
HTML Help, Webhelp and PDF
Manuals
Now we have doc – how about
integrating it in our products…
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Esri UK and GIS
A geographic information
system is a system designed to
capture, store, manipulate, analyse,
manage, and present all types of
geographical data.
Esri UK’s solutions help
businesses, governments and
educational institutions make
decisions by leveraging the power
of geography.
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LocalView Fusion and its help
Solution to provide an easy
way for local government to
share spatial information.
Separate help system –
nothing in context.
Users were often non
computer experts.
Moving to the cloud. Software
as a Service (SaaS)
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LocalView Fusion: Previous help
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LocalView Fusion: Previous help
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The challenge to change
Migration from on premise to
cloud based solution included
redevelopment of the platform.
Allowed for rethinking how the
help could be delivered.
Previous solution contained a
separate help system generated
by our authoring software.
Management liked the
simplicity, developers thought it
could be more integrated.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/londonmatt/3163571645/
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It’s going to cost
how much?
Push-back and entrenched
views…
Future – one product
Lower cost of support
Increase use of help over support calls
Allowing support to concentrate on
more complex problems
“Just refresh the help book - can we
give it a new skin or something. Won’t
that be cheaper?” Product Manager
“Hey – help is on the critical path here!”
Scrum Master
“Isn’t this a good opportunity
to integrate the help?”
Tech Author & Dev
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/6869768383/
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Making the case
Cons
Change = Risk
Technical challenge
Lack of control
No traditional search
Pros
Flows with application
Easier to find
Less to read
Support buy in
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Planning the new help
How the help would show:
Context (functions/workflow)
Concepts (background)
Specify integration points within
development
Develop workflow for the doc team
Reuse existing packages to speed
up HTML development.
Write minimal design (agile!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nedrichards/205685852/sizes/l/in/photostream/
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Technical implementation
This slide
intentionally left
blank
Because there is code on the next one.
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Technical implementation 1
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Technical implementation 2
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Technical implementation 3
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Technical implementation 4
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Technical implementation 5
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Technical implementation 6
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Technical implementation 7
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Technical implementation 8
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Technical implementation 9
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Help in an agile process
Good
Increased communication
Doc team integrated
Close to testing
Focused effort
Job tracking
Bad
Lack of flexibility once goals
agreed
Estimating with little data
No housekeeping time
Repeated events
Motivation
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54943750@N00/3651678437/
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The finished product
Before and after (lots of maps)
Speedy delivery
Many audiences
Have a test party (internal)
Help is famous too….
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The Future
Outstanding Issues
Establishing the process
Search
Concept coverage
What Next?
Customer feedback
Product still changing – new templates
Move more information online
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Conclusion
The journey (maps) – on premise to cloud
Intuitive UI and well written help
Real-time help from the cloud!