Date: 24 November 2007
Time: Started at 11.00 am
Venue: BEA Systems India Pvt Ltd
Subject: Support Cases and Documentation
Speaker: Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Program Manager – Information Products Group, Sun Microsystems
The name of the attendees' and their respective companies are listed below:
1.Vasanth V- Sun Microsystems
2.S Gopal- Consultant
3.Binamra-
4.Anindita- Integra Microsystems
5.Sarala Prakash- Integra
6.Prabhjeet Singh- HP
7.Manoj Kumar- ACS
8.Rishi- ACS
9.George Abraham- Commit
10.Julie- Lantex
11.Binu PV- Mainstream
12.Sudhindra- Tejas Network
13.Vinay K- Consultant
14.Vaishali- Caritor/Keane
15.Anand- Caritor/Keane
16.Asha- Caritor/Keane
17.Immanuel- Caritor/Keane
18.Kumar Dhanagopal- BEA Systems
19.Paresh Naik- BMC Software
20.Vishakha Naik-
21.Sandeep B- Symphony
22.Gururaj BS- BEA Systems
23.Rajdeep- Infosys
After a welcome note by Rajdeep, Vasanth took the centerstage. He started by classifying Technical Documentation under the following heads:
•Installation and Configuration Guide
•Admin Guide
•User’s Guide
•Developer’s Guide
•Online Help
•Troubleshooting Guide
•FAQs
These documents will further differ depending on whether the company producing these documents are a product or a services oriented company.
Technical Writers should not forget their customers in their hurry to meet the deadlines of releasing the documents. They should make an attempt to find out whether the documents authored by them are being used by the customers. If they are being used, then what is their experience with it?
Next Vasanth suggested some ways to assess the user experiences with the documentation. One way of assessing the user experiences is to conduct docunentation surveys anong the customers. Such surveys can be a set of 7 to 10 questions asking customers to rate the documentaion in a scale of 1 to 10. These surveys can be indepenent ones or it can be bundled along with the product surveys; however, conducting such surveys will involve some cost and also require management sanction.
Another easy way to assess the impact of technical documentation is to get some periodical feedback form the Tech Support team. Technical Writers can network with their colleagues working in the Tech Support team. They can request the Tech Support team to share with them such case logs pertaining to documentation. Case logs are records of conversations between the customer and the Tech Support team.
Some of the case logs pertaining to documentaion could be:
•I am not able to complete my task even after following the steps given in the documentaiton
•I have been misled by the documentation and now I have a different set of problems
•I followed the steps given in pages numbers 6 and 7 of the XYZ documentation and it worked. Thank you.
Case logs may also leads to the following pointers:
•Which are the most and least document topics looked and used by the readerst?
•What is the kind of information the customers are looking for?
•Are customers looking for more Trouble Shooting Guides or FAQs?
•How can the documentation be delivered – books, blogs, wikis, screen casts etc?
Technical writers can use the valuable infornation collected from the case logs to do the following after discussing with their management:
•Rewrite some portion of documentation
•Prioratize and accordingly allocate time and manpower to various types of documentation
•Suggest elimination of some documentation or clubbing the same with some other books
This regular exercise will help the Technical Writers to focus on the needs of the customers. It will in turn reduce the calls to the Tech Support group and help their company save millions of dollars. Also, `Thanks’ notes recorded in the case logs will improve the self-esteem of the Technical Writers, enhance their standing in the company, and motivate them to further excel in their field.
The meeting ended with a general quiz – questions taken from various fields like cinema, IT, agricultual commodities, HR etc. – compiled by Rajdeep Gupta. There was an excellent participation. Nobody lost; everybody won.
The hosts provided the refreshments.
Please follow the link below for meetup photos:
http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/photos/?photoAlbumId=254532&photoId=2655254
You can also download the presentation titled ‘Support Cases and Documentation’ from
http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/files/
Hope to see you folks in the upcoming sessions.
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