UPLOAD CLARIFY DOC TO SCREENSTEPS HOW TO

When your end users don't quite know what to search for, they can browse your documentation to find an answer. It's when you have over 20 or 30 articles that you really want to make a nice Table of Contents - especially if your documentation is online. If you only have 10-20 articles, then you don't really need to make them easy to browse. Otherwise, end users waste time searching for what you just referenced. When you reference another action, product, workflow, or term, it always helps to include a link to the related article. The step-by-step instructions are great for the quick reminder. But after the initial training, end users don't need to watch the entire video again - they just need a quick reminder of what to do. The video acts as a teacher to explain an overall process and provide some initial training. This is a great way to do end user documentation. If you have the budget, the patience, and the time, you can do what Wistia does - create a video explanation, then include step-by-step instructions underneath the video.

Adding an arrow, a circle, or number sequences can make end user documentation completely dummy proof, and save end users from having to figure out what to do.Įven if it seems obvious to you where to click, including a few simple annotations will go a long way in removing confusion. The majority of end user documentation should have screenshots, and those screenshots should include some sort of annotation. Plus, you can always combine a lot of little articles into a larger workflow and organize them into a chapter or a manual. These are so much easier to write, and your end users will find them much more useful because they can quickly search for, and find, answers to their specific questions (end users need specifics).

UPLOAD CLARIFY DOC TO SCREENSTEPS HOW TO

How to add contacts from Gmail using Cirrus.To continue the example from above, instead of writing one big article titled 'Contacts' just write a dozen little articles that each answer one specific question: Their documentation is a great example of how to write end user/customer documentation. HubSpot does a great job writing useful titles, and then demonstrating the workflow using pictures, text, and annotations. If each article has its own, great title, then your end users can quickly answer their own questions by performing a keyword search or by browsing through your table of contents. Instead of going right to the information they need, end users will have to sift through all of the other stuff to find an answer. So you create an outline of all the 'Contacts' topics you can think of, take screenshots of the Contacts object, explain all of the menu options, and write a history of the Contacts object - all useless to an end user who just wants to know how to create a partner contact in Salesforce. This not only makes it easier for your end users to find what they are looking for, but it helps you write better articles.įor example, think about how much time it would take to write an article titled 'Contacts.' You wouldn't know where to start. Great end user documentation consists of titles that are specific, and often in the form of performing a task.

We call them Interactive Conversation Flows because they help call center agents respond to callers in a conversational way and because when customers use them for self-service, they can recreate the conversation a support rep would have to narrow down what needs to be done. These articles come in very handy when you want to direct users (either employees, customers, or call agents) to specific instructions that need to be tailored to a situation. Here's another example of the same type of article, but this one is meant for customers to use as self-service (click on one of the options to go through the procedure).

If you want to create an Interactive Conversation Flow like the one above and the one below, check out ScreenSteps. Otherwise, continue on.' Not quite as easy to read, but can still be effective if that's all you have. Note: If you're writing complex documentation in Word or Wikis that aren't interactive, then you could include instructions that say, 'If this is the situation, jump down to step #7. The idea is to help the end-user (in this case a call center agent) respond to any scenario related to questions coming in around the Paycheck Protection Program by including prompts and decision trees. Here's an example of what ScreenSteps calls an Interactive Conversation Flow that a call center agent could use to respond to a call about the Paycheck Protection Program. If your documentation needs to explain a complex procedure, make sure you account for all of those variations. Some procedures are straightforward while other procedures include a lot of 'if this, then that' situations.

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