tcuk 2012, jane toon, bringing help in from the cold

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!

jtoon@esriuk.com

@janetoon

Thank you and questions.