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Subject:RE: On The Bench From:sguttman -at- semantix -dot- com (Susan Guttman) To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 20 Apr 2001 09:28:42 -0400
Robin Willard asked "Please share what TYPES of writing "projects" you
create for yourself
when on the bench. An example would be Analyzing the Top 10 Problem
Reports from Customer Support, as someone suggested in an earlier post
for a slightly different situation."
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In a long quiet spell just past, I ended up (on my own initiative) working
with tech support to create documents for their use: we went over their
email logs, targeted the most frequent problems, and I made PDF (for email)
and HTML (for our support website) documents to answer those questions in
excruciating detail. I also helped to create and improve template responses
to other common questions, and wrote a few procedures to help our end-users
look up the information required by tech support to solve their problems.
The tech support guy was very, very happy, I had something useful to do,and
I also learned a lot about our end-user's needs, information which will have
a significant impact on the next generation of the Help.
Caveat: The project was my idea, but it only worked because the tech support
guy was into it as well. I would never push a project on an unwilling
audience, and I made it clear that the documents belonged to him, and that
he had final approval. Luckily, he respects my work so there were never any
comma-changing issues to contend with.
Bill S.
"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
- G. K. Chesterton
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