Re: Online Help vs. Knowledge Base vs. FAQ

[Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>]

I totally disagree with the use of FAQs unless they are intended for
presale information to push clients into the "buy" zone. In this case I
prefer product comparison tables to the generic question and answer format.

Online help as you said is good for reference and systematic training. This
should be beefed up as required based on the most common use cases.

KB works great for specific, unique solutions. The best KB are customer
driven. These should be curated to both remove ineffective
(unrecommended) solutions and discover usage material to move to the online
help. A stackoverflow site may be better than hosting your own.

Just my thoughts.

-Tony

On Tuesday, July 22, 2014, Sue McKinney <smckinn2001 -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

> In my job we have all 3 of these available, and we're now trying to figure
> out what's what and what should be in each. Here's my working start of a
> definition:
>
> Online Help = online user guide with introductory material and procedures
> FAQ = answers to questions users ask most often, with links to online help
> KB = troubleshooting/workarounds for strange things
>
> My thinking is that the KB would change as issues are resolved.
>
> Our problem is too much documentation and it may be that we have some
> duplicate material in these different resources. What do you recommend?
>
>

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