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Subject:RE: Brainstorming ideas? From:"Goldstein Steven (STNA-IN/PRM1)" <Steven -dot- Goldstein -at- us -dot- bosch -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 4 Aug 2004 10:28:36 -0500
Geoff,
Thank you for your insightful response.
<<One thing you didn't mention is whether the techs are responsible for
training their customers.>>
The dealers/technicians do train the owners of my products. Once
installed and properly configured by the technician, my product is easy
to use. So support calls from the product owner are not the issue.
Technical support calls from the dealer/technician regarding how to
install/configure/troubleshoot the product are the issue.
<<In the short term, you can reduce the
duration of the calls by developing some form of knowledgebase that
provides fast, effective access to the answers to the most common
questions, and slower but no less effective access to the less-common
answers.>>
Good point, which has also been mentioned by the technicians I've spoken
to. This will ultimately become an important piece of my long-term
solution.
<<Good start. Depending on the nature of your product, you may also want
to make these guides available to the users of the product via your
documentation.>>
This would not be appropriate for my products. If there's a problem, the
owner is encouraged to call the dealer/technician.
<<A "help" project strikes me as a suboptimal approach. Most help files
are designed for integration with software, and although they work just
fine as standalone applications, they're arguably less efficient than a
simpler Web-based design using straight HTML. The main advantage of an
HTML approach is that you can create new topics and update old topics
without having to recompile the whole help project, and can easily
publish the support material on your Web site as a knowledgebase. When
installed on a tech's laptop, the tech need only download a few new or
changed pages rather than an entire help file. But if the tech is on
the road, they can also download the latest update directly from your
Web site rather than having to return to the office.>>
The format I'm leaning toward is RoboHelp's WebHelp format, which is
actually a web site of separate .htm topics rather than one big,
compiled .chm file. Keeping the web site up-to-date would require
republishing the project in RoboHelp, then pushing the updates onto the
web server. But RH makes this a simple task.
>From a navigation perspective, the WebHelp user interface (TOC, Search,
Glossary, etc.) would make navigating and finding the appropriate files
easy for the technician. Also, with WebHelp Pro, by pulling the product
documentation PDF files into the RH project, the PDFs become part of the
WebHelp search. This means that if the technician does a search from the
WebHelp user interface, the contents of the PDF files will also be
searched, and will result in additional hits. Very cool.
<<<<[automatic updates] If this is possible, then I might only have to
send 1,500 CD-ROMs to the technicians once (to install the first
release of the documentation, plus to install the auto-update
software).>>>>
<<That's a big time and cost saving on your end, and thus, well worth
recommending.>>
Agreed. What I'm wondering is if I can auto-update an entire web site
that resides on the technicians' hard drives....
Steve
Steven -dot- goldstein -at- us -dot- bosch -dot- com
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