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Subject:FW: 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 10:59:15 -0500
-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Hart [mailto:ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca]
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 11:39 AM
To: Goldstein Steven (STNA-IN/PRM1)
Subject: Re: Brainstorming ideas?
Greets!
> Thank you for your insightful response.
Hope it helps!
> Technical support calls from the dealer/technician regarding how to
> install/configure/troubleshoot the product are the issue.
My point was that these calls are invaluable tools for finding out what
they don't understand so you can redesign the product or the docs to
avoid the problem.
> This would not be appropriate for my products. If there's a problem,
> the
> owner is encouraged to call the dealer/technician.
Still, I'll bet you that there are problems the users can solve
themselves. The photocopier at my previous employer had very helpful
flowcharts for solving problems, including "call a tech".
> 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.
So long as its simple, that would work. I have no experience with
WebHelp, so I can't comment further. But if it's not standard HTML, you
may want to reconsider using it, particularly if it won't work in all
browsers without installing a RH plugin.
> 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.
Sounds promising.
> Agreed. What I'm wondering is if I can auto-update an entire web site
> that resides on the technicians' hard drives....
I don't see why not. Seems like a reasonably simple programming problem.
--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
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