TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: Making them read the documentation From:"Robert Rinehart" <robert -at- hgus -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 25 Apr 2001 15:16:32 -0400
As I am not yet a technical writer, I do not have first-hand experience with
this, but here is what I once saw done:
(I know no one could ever do this in most companies)
My last job was with a 450-store retail company in which store managers did
most of their own ordering through a proprietary order management system.
Since many processes were only done once or twice per year, these managers
frequently forgot how to do them and called the engineers and trainers,
eating up hours and hours of time. To solve this, each year when the revised
manual came out there would be a code phrase (i.e. "The cat's fur is
calico") placed at random somewhere in the middle of the instructions for a
particular procedure. If you called and asked about that procedure, you
would be asked, "What color is the cat's fur?" (or whatever). If you did not
know the answer, you would be sent back to read the instructions and call
back if you still could not figure it out after that.
The people who came up with this got away with it because they were the same
people who developed the software, and the company needed them very badly.
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
