RE: OFF TOPIC: Writing "Wizards", creating "Tips", and online tu torials

[Brent L Jones <bjones -at- VersatileSoftware -dot- com>]

Lisamarie Babik wrote on 23 September 1999 10:21:

> Well, it was inevitable.  Someone at my company started 
> pushing the idea of 
> "Wizards" -- you know, like that annoying paperclip that pops 
> up whenever 
> MSWord thinks you don't know what you're doing.  Then it 
> began snowballing. 
>  Soon we were talking about Wizards, Tips, online tutorials...

[deletia]

> I would greatly appreciate any information you might have.  
> We're beginning to 
> budget for new employees, and I'd love to be able to throw in 
> the added 
> personnel needs from my department.

One big mistake I made the first time I got involved in this sort of effort
was to not realize that I'd need either my own part-time development
resource or some time and assistance from the development team. Integrating
tips, wizards, etc. with the application you're documenting is not trivial
if you want them to be contextual or to interact in a non-trivial way with
the app. I'd suggest you give the development folks a heads-up so they can
plan ahead and not be upset with you later when you need time and effort
from them that they didn't know to provide for.

cheers,
brent
--
Brent Jones, Documentation Manager
Versatile Software, Boulder CO
brent -dot- jones -at- versatilesoftware -dot- com