Expand and collapse chapters in the sidebar

Now, by clicking on chapter titles in the right or left sidebar, readers can expand and collapse chapter contents while still viewing a lesson. This makes it much easier to find related lessons.

You can try it out for yourself in our example Salesforce manual.

You can also set a preference for how you would like to have chapters expanded when the page opens: no expansion, just expand the current chapter or expand all chapters.

Procedural Manuals

Some manuals are just a collection of articles. But some are designed to be followed in a step by step fashion from lesson to lesson. We call these tyes of manuals procedural manuals. You can now choose to mark manuals as procedural. Procedural manuals will have numbers prepended to the chapter and lesson name.

The impetus for this feature came from our ideas about roadmaps and roadblocks (read more about roadmaps and roadblocks). For a long time, ScreenSteps Live has been really good at removing roadblocks for users. We are now working on making it easier to provide roadmaps for your users. So, if you are creating a new user set up guide or an implementation guide we would suggest that you try out procedural manuals.

• Learn how to adjust chapter and procedural settings for your manuals

We are excited to announce an integration with our new partner Parature. Parature is a global leader in web-based customer service software. Now you can use ScreenSteps to quickly create knowledge base articles in Parature.

This means that Parature customers can now create knowledge base articles that do more showing then telling. And with ScreenSteps ability to quickly update articles you’ve created you can make sure those articles stay up-to-date.

You can learn how to configure a Parature web export account in ScreenSteps in our manual.

Instantly Edit Lessons and Manuals From ScreenSteps Live

This update also makes ScreenSteps Live customers more efficient. ScreenSteps Live now provides links that will open the lesson or manual that you are viewing right in ScreenSteps Desktop for editing. This makes it a snap to make a quick change without having to go searching for the content in ScreenSteps Desktop.

Workgroup Templates

Many companies now know that ScreenSteps Workgroup is a great solution for collaborating on ScreenSteps content. One problem that many of our customers face, however, is the ability to share a common PDF, Word or HTML template across the organization. In version 2.9.1 you can now add templates to the Workgroup Resource folder and they will be available in any ScreenSteps Desktop clients that are connected.

To learn how to make templates available to all desktop clients please refer to our manual.

ScreenSteps.me is Now Clarify-it.com

If you haven’t already heard, we have been hard at work on a new product named Clarify. Clarify is based on the same concepts as ScreenSteps but is focused on your daily communications. It aims to make those communications faster to create and easier to understand.

With the introduction of Clarify we are renaming the ScreenSteps.me web service to Clarify-it.com. The service remains free for entry level accounts so ScreenSteps customers can continue to post lessons without any changes aside from the branding.

For more information on Clarify please visit the Clarify website. If you would like to read about the differences between Clarify and ScreenSteps we have prepared an article in the manual.

ScreenSteps 2.9.1 is a free update for version 2 license holders.

Visit the ScreenSteps downloads page to get the update. If you would like to purchase ScreenSteps please visit our online store.

See the video below for an overview of how it works:

This is currently a beta feature so if you would like to start using it on your account you need to do two things:

1. Download the latest ScreenSteps Desktop beta.
2. Submit a support request asking us to activate this feature on your account.

Try it out, we think you are going to really like this for quickly editing lessons on ScreenSteps Live.

Active Directory integration with ScreenSteps Live is one of the really nice features OneLogin offers. They have several options for connecting your Active Directory to their identity management system including the following:

• Active Directory connector
• LDAP authentication
• NT LAN Manager (NTLM)

With our SAML integration you can then easily connect ScreenSteps Live to OneLogin. The result? All of your Active Directory users can login to ScreenSteps Live without you having to set up separate accounts or them having to remember a different username and password.

OneLogin has a special plan for organizations that want to use the Active Directory integration with a single application like ScreenSteps Live. It costs just $1/month per user. You can sign up for a OneLogin trial account here. See these instructions to learn how to configure ScreenSteps Live to work with OneLogin.

Why do you want single sign-on? With single sign-on between ScreenSteps Live and Salesforce your Salesforce users don’t need to remember a separate username and password to access your ScreenSteps Live help content. If they can login to Salesforce then they will have access to your ScreenSteps Live training materials. It makes setting up ScreenSteps Live to work with Salesforce that much simpler.

Of course, we have great instructions to get you up and going right away. Just follow the link below to see how easy it is:

Using SAML Single Sign-on with ScreenSteps Live and Salesforce

Enjoy.

Learn more about Salesforce and ScreenSteps Live

• How to optimize your documentation for customer support
• How to create “just in time” documentation
• How to integrate ScreenSteps Live with Zendesk to make your support agents more productive

You can register for the webinar here:

Register for webinar

We hope to see you there.

Watch the video below for an explanation of the changes:

If you don’t want to watch the video, you can read below for the highlights:

1. As of this release you will no longer be able to create new buckets. We will provide a tool to allow you to convert your existing manuals into buckets. The conversion will take care of moving your lessons into the new manual, adding that manual to spaces that contain the bucket and setting up redirects so that links to your old buckets will point to your new manuals.
2. Manual editing via the web interface has been much improved. You can now do all of your reordering of lessons across chapters from a single page.
3. Manuals will have a new property that will allow you to set a Public Title, basically allowing you to have a separate internal name for the manual and a public, customer facing name. This is for our ScreenSteps Live users that create many similar manuals for different clients and want a way to differentiate those manuals in the administration area and desktop editor.

ScreenSteps Live will be down for a short maintenance period while we push this update. The maintenance window will be from 12:00 AM to 12:15 AM EDT On Wednesday, June 8th.

Illuminate Education is one of those customers. They provide data applications to educational customers. Their primary mission is to help those educators make a positive difference in students’ lives.

We just published a case study on how Illuminate Education is using ScreenSteps Live to make their mission a reality. Their ScreenSteps Live site has moved well beyond just being a collection of software documentation articles. Illuminate Education uses ScreenSteps Live to achieve three goals:

1. Improve customer support by integrating ScreenSteps Live with their help ticketing system.
2. Reduce adoption costs for their new customers (very important with the current shrinkage in state budgets).
3. Drive customer success by expanding their use of ScreenSteps Live beyond just showing customers how to use their product into showing educators how to interpret and act on data to create meaningful outcomes in students’ lives.

We love this quote from Jenny Rankin, Chief Education and Research Officer for Illuminate Education:

“I honestly believe that our help system (ScreenSteps Live) is a big piece of how we ultimately help kids. The fact that documentation, something that is so often thought of as a peripheral feature, is able to take a center-stage role as one of the ways we are impacting kids is really amazing.”

Read the case study to learn more about how Illuminate Education is making an impact with ScreenSteps Live.

Is online chat worth it?

Yes! We added chat to our site over a year ago and it has definitely been worth it. I would say that over half of the chat requests we receive are actually pre-sales questions. Often someone just has a question about a feature, an integration or product licensing. By being able to answer their question instantly we have been able to close many sales that would have otherwise been delayed or abandoned. I have spoken with several other users of chat services and they report similar experiences. So, from a strictly monetary standpoint, chat makes a lot of sense.

It is also great as a customer support tool, but this is where you need to be careful. If you don’t have the proper systems and resources in place then online chat can end up taking a lot of time as you try to explain solutions to your customers’ problems. This is where ScreenSteps Live makes a big difference for us. We leverage our ScreenSteps Live documentation site to reduce the time we spend answering support chats.

Using ScreenSteps Live with Online Chat – Basekit

Basekit, one of our customers, has had a lot of success integrating ScreenSteps Live into their online chats. They use their ScreenSteps Live documentation to handle two types of questions, “Does it do this?” (pre-sales questions) and “How do I do this?” (support questions). In the video below Gordon Plant from Basekit explains how ScreenSteps Live is helping them scale their online chat support.

Read our full case study on how Basekit uses ScreenSteps Live

Basekit will even create new documentation in their ScreenSteps Live site during a support chat and send the answer to the user.

How to Leverage ScreenSteps Live in Online Support Chats

Most of the articles in our ScreenSteps Live documentation site answer specific questions such as “How do I configure my desktop software?” or “How do I create a custom template?” When a user asks one of these questions we use the ScreenSteps Live Support Client to find the article that answers their question. The ScreenSteps Live Support Client lets us quickly copy a url that points to the article with the answer the customer needs. Instead of spending a lot of time typing out an answer that is either lengthy and confusing or short and incomplete, we just paste in a url. The user clicks on it and is instantly taken to an article full of detailed pictures that helps them accomplish whatever task they are struggling with.

This works even better with more involved chats. Sometimes we have customers that are trying to accomplish a more complex task. We can point them to the articles they need for each step of the process. Many times I will send multiple articles in a chat and the customer will reference them after the chat session has ended. Once again this saves us and our customers a lot of time and spares us a lot of the confusion that is inherent in text only communications.

The best part is that our customers love it. They will often read a help article that we have sent them, come back to the chat and thank us for providing such clear instructions. Like Gordon said in the video above, it is a great outcome for both of us. The customer is happy and we don’t spend all day typing.

1. It had to be beautiful
2. It had to make it easy for end-users to “discover” information
3. It had to be more customizable than what we had previously offered
4. It had to be easy to set up and maintain

After a lot of long nights we are very happy with the results. We think you will be too.

The New Look

We know that our users want to create beautiful documentation with a minimum of fuss. The new ScreenSteps Live template has a very pleasant styling that helps you look great right from the start.

Better Navigation

With this new release we really wanted to focus on discoverability. It has always been really easy to search your documentation on ScreenSteps Live. We wanted to make it easier to browse. We have added a new chapters sidebar widget that displays all of the chapters for the current manual making it easy for your users to browse your ScreenSteps Live site.

Better Lesson Presentation

We have also improved the presentation of lessons:

1. The search box is now more prominent
2. Manual navigation appears right at the top of the content area
3. The formatting of lesson content has been improved

We have also added a new lightbox effect for viewing oversized images. Here is the zoom icon:

And the zoomed image:

Better Customization

With this new release we have added a lot more customization options. You can now do the following:

1. Add custom javascript (ideal for adding Google Analytics or any other tracking code to your site)
2. Customize all text strings (this will be especially useful for our international users)
3. Control what items appear in your sidebar.
4. Have more consistent HTML markup for adding custom CSS

Adding custom javascript

Customizing text strings

Customizing sidebars

You now have complete control over what items appear in your sidebar. You can even choose whether you would like your sidebar to appear on the left or on the right.

Improved Markup

We have also gone back and totally redesigned the HTML markup giving you many more id’s and classes to allow you to customize all of the elements on the page with custom CSS.

How to get it

The new templating system is currently in beta. It you would like to try it out just follow the instructions here:

Activating the new template on your space

See an Example and Give Us Feedback

You can see an example of the new ScreenSteps Live template here:

ScreenSteps Live New Template Example

We would love to hear your feedback on the new look and functionality. We really think this new template will help you create beautiful documentation with less work.

Auto Comparing Manuals

ScreenSteps Live is being used among larger and larger teams. Our users told us that they were often unsure if the manual they had in their desktop software matched the latest content that had been posted to ScreenSteps Live.

You have always been able to perform a check to see everything was up to date but that was a step that was easy to forget. Our users told us that they wanted ScreenSteps to automatically check for them, letting them know if there were any changes they needed to download.

We are happy to announce that, as of version 2.8.7, ScreenSteps will automatically compare your manuals for you. Watch the video below for an overview of how it works.

Managing Redirects

The beauty of ScreenSteps Live is that it lets you evolve your documentation over time. But as your documentation grows you may find that you need to reorganize things. You may want to split lessons out into a new manual or bucket, or consolidate two manuals down to one. But what do you do with those inbound urls that are pointing to lessons, chapters, buckets and manuals that aren’t in your ScreenSteps Live site anymore?

With the new Redirects feature you can now redirect outdated urls to your current content. Watch the video below for an overview of how it works.

Finally, if you are using ScreenSteps Live to support your customers you should really check out our new ScreenSteps.me service. It is a great addition to the customer support process.

That is all for now. We hope you find these new features useful and that they help you spend even less time creating your documentation ;).

A couple of weeks ago we redid the design of our own ScreenSteps Live site. As part of the redesign we wanted to tie our ScreenSteps Live site into our Zendesk help desk. We use Zendesk to manage our support tickets and recently moved our forums over to Zendesk as well. The goal of the redesign was to bring our help tickets, forums and software documentation all together into one consistent interface for our users.

We are very happy with how things have turned out. We know a lot of our customers would like to do something similar so we have prepared several resources that will help you more tightly integrate Zendesk and ScreenSteps Live. As of today you can do the following:

1. Add a Zendesk custom template to your ScreenSteps Live site.
2. Add a “Documentation” tab to your Zendesk site that will point to your ScreenSteps Live site.
3. Add a “Documentation” search widget to the front page of your Zendesk site.

We have also prepared a new video that showcases all of the ways you can integrate ScreenSteps Live with Zendesk:

To show you how to integrate our ScreenSteps Live hosted documentation service with Salesforce, we have created a new integration manual. Currently the manual has one lesson showing how to add a new tab to Salesforce that displays your ScreenSteps Live documentation.

Here is a short screencast demonstrating how to set up a custom tab that displays ScreenSteps Live content.

Since we were going to be driving more of our users to our Zendesk site we wanted to customize the presentation a little more. This is what we did:

• Customized some basic CSS – mainly just changed the colors for some elements.
• Added our own navigation tab that pointed to our ScreenSteps Live site (details here).
• Added our Provide Support customer chat link to the Zendesk template using some custom javascript.

Everything was looking pretty good. But when users clicked on the Documentation tab they were taken to our ScreenSteps Live site that didn’t look at all like our Zendesk site. That wasn’t very good. So we added a custom template to our ScreenSteps Live site to make it look like our Zendesk site. You can see the results here:

• Our Zendesk site
• Our ScreenSteps Live site

There is a slight difference. The Zendesk site has a liquid layout while the ScreenSteps Live site has a fixed width. I probably could have done the liquid thing on ScreenSteps Live but I wanted to change as little of the Zendesk CSS as possible just to keep things simple.

So far we are really happy with the solution. We are able to bring together the best of ScreenSteps Live and Zendesk and still present a common user interface to our customers.

Using jQuery this is pretty simple. You can use the technique below to add any tab you like to your Zendesk support page. The full details of how we did this can be seen in our ScreenSteps Live API manual. In this post I will just go over the javascript we used.

Insert a new Tab

First we want to use jQuery to insert a new tab into the main navigation. The main navigation on Zendesk is just a ul with an id of green. We are going to insert our new navigation after the FORUMS tab. That has a class of .tab_forums. So here is the code:

  jQuery("div#top-menu ul#green li.tab_forums").after('<li class="main tab_documentation"><a class="tab" href="http://help.screensteps.com">Documentation</a></li>');

As you can see we are just creating our own li element with an anchor tag in it.

Some Clean Up

We could stop there but Zendesk adds little dividers between the non-active tabs and the dividers don’t appear around the active tab. This creates a problem since we have inserted a new tab that Zendesk didn’t know about when it loaded the page. To make their tabs look right Zendesk adds a first class to the li element that appears right after the active tab. See the diagram below.

Now look at what happens when we insert our new li element:

Notice the extra bar next to the navigation.

We want to fix this so let’s add a little more jQuery.

  if (jQuery("div#top-menu ul#green li.tab_forums.active").length) {
    jQuery("div#top-menu ul#green li.first").removeClass("first");
    jQuery("div#top-menu ul#green li.tab_documentation").addClass("first")
  }

This will check to see if the .tab_forums tab is active. If it is we remove the .first class from li element that has it and add the .first class to the tab we just inserted.

And now the page looks correct.

The next step for our integration is to customize our ScreenSteps Live template to blend in better with our help desk. We will post about that later.