Case study
Computing Directions Australia
Overview
In 2003, Computing Directions Australia (www.cda.com.au) employed KnowledgeDoc to write the documentation for their flagship software product, Synergetic Management System for Schools. CDA's requirements were for KnowledgeDoc to document the entire system and produce:
- a PDF of each module for distribution to customers for printing
- an online compiled help file with a table of contents, index and search facility
- context sensitive help for each separate screen that displays when a user presses F1.
CDA had already started the documentation themselves using RoboHelp, but realised that they needed assistance to get the documentation professional-looking, complete and user-friendly.
The project took two writers six months to complete.
Solution
In 2005, KnowledgeDoc recommended that CDA move their documentation into AuthorIT. CDA were introducing new products into their range including a stand-alone product and a web product and they needed documentation.
Updating existing topics and creating new topics is now very quick and easy. A lot of content is used in one or more Synergetic modules and in one or more manuals. This means the information in the different manuals doesn't get out of sync. Updating information in one topic automatically updates all the instances of that information in the whole documentation suite.
Benefits
Each Synergetic product is shipped to the customer with:
- PDF files containing manuals for printing
- a compiled online help file containing a table of contents, index and a search facility that also doubles as context-sensitive help.
CDA publish a web-based version of the latest version of the online help for each of their products on their website. This is maintained as HTML pages.
All content is maintained in AuthorIT and the three industry-standard outputs are generated from a single source. KnowledgeDoc can maintain and update the documentation easily, giving CDA more documentation for less cost.
New projects
Using AuthorIT's single-sourcing technology where each piece of information is written once and re-used multiple times, we can now easily take on new projects for CDA. For example:
- Creating documentation for new products in the Synergetic suite. Using AuthorIT allows us to produce new manuals quickly by re-using all the relevant existing content such as field descriptions and module overviews. A change of content anywhere is propagated out to all the documents, help files and web documents that use that content. Even with the huge number of screens, tabs and fields in the software, keeping all the documentation up to date takes a fraction of the time it did in the past.
- Creating instructor-led training materials. CDA have written training materials over the years, but they easily get out of sync with the product releases. By importing these materials into AuthorIT and incorporating content from the existing user manuals, we can produce training materials with a specific training "look and feel". CDA will be able to have professional quality, comprehensive and up to date training materials to complement their instructor-led courses.
Ongoing maintenance
CDA continue to employ KnowledgeDoc on a maintenance contract arrangement to keep the documentation up to date and to enhance it to create versions for new:
- releases of Synergetic
- products within the Synergetic family.
Summary
The documentation for the Synergetic suite of products now contains 23 modules, generating over 2,000 pages of printed output.
Using AuthorIT, KnowledgeDoc has been able to quickly and easily create new manuals, online help and web pages for new products as they are released. The new products, for example a stand-alone version and a web-based version of the system, typically contain a lot of features of the flagship product and a lot of the content is re-used in the new documentation.
Technical presentation
You can view a powerpoint presentation, which includes:
- an insight into how we develop and maintain content
- samples of the published output
- information on how we use AuthorIT to dramatically improve the usefulness of the documentation
- examples on how we re-use content, to leverage off the original investment.
Click on the following link to open a PowerPoint slide show: Computing Directions Australia case study (about 30 slides, 1.5Mb)
Contact us to arrange a free, no-obligation meeting to discuss how we might be able to help you with your unique documentation needs.
