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I was documenting a particular COT line unit (one of the cards that goes
into a shelf at the central office--a telephony thing) and the Product
Manager wanted to put a drawing in showing where a certain switch was on the
board. The engineer and I objected to this--"There's only one switch on the
whole board! And it's RED!!!" but he really wanted it, so I ended up doing
it.
A few weeks after the product was released, Tech Services got a call from a
customer asking why a certain feature wasn't working. Tech Services couldn't
figure it out, and sent the call to the aforementioned engineer. As it
turned out, the reason that feature wasn't working was that the customer had
not set that particular switch correctly!
What was nice about this was that the document could NOT be blamed for Tech
Services' lack of knowledge about the product (they try to do this on
occasion). The information was right there, in black and white, for anyone
who wanted it--and even a drawing of where the switch was!
Now I make sure to include a drawing of where options are located on the
board, even if they seem intuitive.
Nora
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