Re: Oracle Documentation

[Art Fluter <Art -dot- Fluter -at- QNTM -dot- COM>]

        -----Original Message-----
        Fran Madera [SMTP:Fran_Madera -at- WILLBROS -dot- COM] asked:

        Hi, folks:  Has anyone out there documented customized Oracle
procedures/instructions?
        TIA Fran  fran_madera -at- willbros -dot- com
        *** snips and cuts from Fran's original message ****

At Quantum, the hard drive manufacturer located in Silicon Valley, we have
documented Oracle procedures and instructions for most of the basic
financial and manufacturing applications.  The first time we did it for
Oracle 10.4.2 when we did a complete live cutover from ASK to Oracle in May
1966.  Right now, we are coming up on Oracle 10.7 Character based
applications and starting to use the Oracle Tutor products (Author and
Publisher) to do the process documentation.

For those of you new to Oracle Tutor, it is a a set of "seeded" documents
(about 2800 of them for our installation here) that reflect general business
practices that Oracle found to be relatively consistant across many Oracle
sites.  For example, there are only so many ways you can cut a check in
Accounts Payable within the Oracle AP module, so a generalized set of
documents is provided for that process.  You then edit the documents for
unique job title, process steps, and similar items within your individual
organization.

Tutor supplies about 5 major object types as follows:
-- PROC - A procedure used by multiple personnel (actually discrete job
titles) within or across department boundaries. for example, how to receive
a shipment from the receiving dock to inspection through the accounting
payment function.
-- INS - An instruction for use by 1 specific job title.
-- NAV - A navigation instruction that defines how to navigate through the
application screens in input the correct data for a specific transaction
such as inputting a check or requesting a report.
-- FORM - How to use a paper or electronic form such as an expense report,
how to submit, file, and the relevant PROCs used to handle the transactions.
-- REF - Reference information that provides background data such as
narratives, or detailed policy statements.

A key aspect is that each document only has one owner who is the personal
responsible for making sure the document accurately reports REALITY, rather
than wished-for policy.  So even if a Vice President sets the policy, a
local SME, usually a Business system Analyst for with a specialization
within an application such as Accounts Payable is responsible for keeping
the documents up to date technically.  SMEs develop the various documents,
and then tech pubs writes them up using the Tutor Author (an add-in into
WinWord 7.0) according to the VERY strict Tutor formatting requirements.
All style names and attributes are controlled; the documents don't look very
nice, but that's the requriement.

Once individual documents are completed, you use the Tutor Publisher package
to create the various types of manuals, for both paper and HTML versions.
You can create a reference manual for a document ownere that dumps all
documents owned by the SME.  You can also create training and desk manuals
for individual job titles or a collection of job titles.

We are still getting used to the system, and the Oracle people provide
technical support, but we have to provide most of our infrastructure support
such as internal procedures, forms, organization, and on-going education of
the new SMEs.

So far, the key to the whole thing is getting top management to stress the
need for documented processes.  We are developing that management focus
right now.

=====================================
Art Fluter
Sr. Technical Writer
Quantum Corp., Milpitas CA, USA
art -dot- fluter -at- qntm -dot- com
=====================================