We hate software documentation that doesn’t have pictures. You would be amazed at how many professional technical writers consider pictures and screenshots an afterthought. This video will give you an idea of what we think of documentation that doesn’t use pictures.
Do you answer yes to any of these questions?
Managing knowledge bases without an easy way for groups of people to access them can suck productivity out of your business. If your customers and employees are constantly scrambling to find the information they need you need to consider the hidden power of an online manual.
Online manuals centralize all of your pertinent data for specific groups. Whether it is a customer support manual, an employee handbook, a research guide, a lesson plan, an employee hiring test or a product tutorial guide, online manuals can solve your problems of distributing information to a large or small audience.
Compare this to what a lot of organizations are doing – locking their knowledge in PDF and Word files. Capturing your organization’s knowledge in these formats makes that knowledge hard to access and hard to update.
But with online manuals you can provide the flexibility of instant access to the material your customers and employees need wherever they are and whenever they need it. If you have locked your knowledge in a PDF or Word file the user has to:
The process is so painful that every business we talk to reports that almost no one in their organization reads the manuals they create as Word or PDF files. All that work waisted simply because the information is trapped in a document somewhere and not online.
Publishing new content to your knowledge base is an additional hidden benefit of using online manuals. If you have a new product to add to your tutorial guide or you have expanded your base of operations to include a new branch office, you can easily incorporate the new information into your online documentation.
And updates? Not a problem. Did you forget a step in your step-by-step online guide? You can easily update your guide information to clarify and improve your instructions. No more searching for the latest revision of the document or sending out emails to your entire company just so that they have the “latest” version of the PDF or Word file.
You can also make your online manuals more engaging. Adding many images to Word and PDF files can dramatically increase their size making it more difficult to deliver to users. But with online manuals you can easily add images to clarify your documentation (especially if you are using a tool like ScreenSteps Live.
Online manuals are powerful tools for communicating crucial information with your customers and employees. So if your manual is gathering dust as it sits locked in a PDF or Word file it’s time to move online. The ease of access, ease of use and increased productivity for you and your customers make it well worth the effort.
Online manuals are awesome. They make accessing and updating information so much easier. But if you apply the old paradigm of PDF software manuals to the new medium of online manuals you get documentation that is cumbersome to write and cumbersome for your users to use.
The biggest mistake we see companies making when authoring their documentation is misunderstanding the relationship between scope and detail in their help articles. The principle they are violating is the Goldilocks principle (part of our 5 keys to great software documentation). They either deliver too much information or not enough.
In today’s Docs that Rock Whiteboard video I discuss scope vs. detail in software documentation and how keeping these two concepts clear in your mind can help you write better docs that will help your users and drive product adoption.
If you want to see a funny example of dumping too much information on your customers then check out our Chatty GPS video.
By the way, we are going to be releasing a full series of Docs that Rock Whiteboard Videos over the next couple of months. These were inspired by SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday videos which, if you haven’t checked them out yet, are awesome.
If there are specific topics you would like us to cover in this series, please let us know in the comments.
Owning or running any portion of a business can be one of the most complex and difficult endeavors anyone can undertake, and very few entrepreneurs have been able to achieve success, let alone make ends meet, without the assistance of professionals bearing some of the load. When the CEO of a technology company is burdened with crashing servers, angry clients and an upcoming meeting with the angel investor, it’s unlikely that he or she even has a minute to call the plumber. This sort of task, and other small-but-still-important assignments, can be handled by a virtual assistant for a small fee.
Many companies of all types and sizes utilize the services of virtual assistants because it’s proven to be an effective and easy way of delegating tasks, and allows more time in your schedule to handle all of the other items on your constantly growing to-do list. However, there may be times in which your virtual assistant will need to be trained or briefed on an assignment request and it is at this time that visual items such as screenshots and images can make a major difference in the details.
It’s so tempting to just shoot off a quick email full of instructions, but sending your virtual assistant a quick explanation of a complicated duty can result in misinterpretation and frustration on both ends. For example, you may ask your assistant to complete a task using a specific software program that they are unfamiliar with, and they end up totally missing the mark with the task. Now, not only is the task incomplete, but you will have to take additional time to re-explain the task or complete the assignment yourself.
We have a lot of customers who use Clarify to work with their virtual assistants. By taking just a few minutes to capture screenshots and images of the program’s interface, they are able to help their assistant get a clear idea of what they need. Many of our customers tell us that using Clarify to create their instructions actually takes less time than writing out an email. The result is a better experience for both parties. Our customer has a fully completed task, their assistant is paid and they are both happy.
If you are currently working with a virtual assistant or are thinking about hiring one, be sure to try out Clarify. You won’t find a faster or simpler way of delivering clear instructions that don’t get misunderstood.
We have been talking to a lot of Clarify customers since our launch a few weeks ago. Besides just finding out what they like and dislike, what features they love and what features they would like to see added we really want to find out what jobs they are trying to accomplish with Clarify. In the words of Clay Christensen, when do they “hire” Clarify?
The more we talk to people the more we realize that they are trying to remove the frustration of being misunderstood. Haven’t we all been in these situations?
Misunderstanding costs time, money and can be a huge cause of frustration. So if you are wondering when you should use Clarify, think about the times that you are misunderstood. Think of those times when you feel your temper rising because someone just doesn’t understand you.
That is when you should use Clarify.
We have all experienced the frustration of wading through wordy, unclear documentation, just trying to find the information we needed. For some reason some authors believe that we need to know the life history of an application before we are allowed to do anything with it.
We created this video to show what life would be like if GPS units treated us the same way. Enjoy!
We are thrilled to announce the the availability of Clarify 1.0 for Mac and Windows.
Clarify has been in a public beta for quite some time now and thanks to a lot of great feedback and hard work we think we have a product that you are going to love. Why? Because Clarify will make communicating clearly fast, simple and fun.
We are also thrilled that Clarify has been featured under the New and Noteworthy section of the Mac App Store.
Here are two quotes from people who have already felt the joy of Clarify:
@clarifyapp The App is genius! Just created an instructional document that would have been 6 paragraphs of exposition otherwise. Thank you!
@mostlymuppet via Twitter
LOVE clarify for mac. Took me 3 minutes to do what would usually take 30 minutes! Clients are happy, which makes me happy!!
@zolihonig via Twitter
You can now purchase Clarify in one of two ways, through our online store or via the Mac App Store.
Through Wed, October 19th a Windows or Mac license is $19.99 and cross-platform license is $29.99. After that, prices will be $29.99 and $39.99 respectively.
If you want to see what Clarify is all about you can download a free trial here.
Clarify has been getting a great reception. Here is just one quote from Bakari Chavanu at makesuseof.com:
“There will never be a shortage of these type of applications (screen capture applications), but Blue Mango has produced an app that stands out amongst the rest.”
We’re thrilled that people are finding Clarify so useful and user friendly. But we have been getting a lot of questions about when a Windows version will be available.
The answer is… today! We are happy to announce the public beta of Clarify for Windows. Clarify for Windows has all of the same great features as Clarify for Mac so please download it and tell us what you think.
If you are one of the 25 million Dropbox users out there (and I am guessing that there is a good chance that you are) you will be excited to know that Clarify can now export to Dropbox. Just configure your Dropbox settings in your Clarify preferences and you can instantly be sharing Clarify documents via Dropbox.
You can download the latest beta of Clarify for Mac and Windows here. We hope you like the updates!
As we get ready to launch our new screenshot communication application, Clarify, I have been thinking a lot about all of our marketing communications. I am alway interested to see what other companies are doing, especially when they do it well.
HubSpot has executed what I think is masterful campaign at Dreamforce this week. Here is my simple analysis of how they have created awareness, communicated value and, most likely, generated a lot of great leads. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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.
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.
Blue Mango Learning Systems
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