Creating a Style Guide For Your Documents

Here is my latest video stressing the importance of having a style guide for your company’s documentation. A style guide makes it easier to start writing and editing your documents before giving it to your team and clients. Tomorrow, I am going to follow up and go in-depth on how to actually go about it. The video provides a high-level overview of how go about it.

Question is do you have a style guide for your documentation?

For more videos, go to Chicwriter.TV, which contains all my current and future videos.

Introducing Myself and Upcoming Writing Tutorial Videos

I  just wanted to introduce myself and let you know about my upcoming videos dealing with writing documentation of all sorts.  The videos will be on my YouTube Channel, ChicwriterinDC, every Wednesday.  They will contain tips and advice on technical writing and proposal writing.  They will also be available on the site Chicwriter.TV.

I would love to hear from you on what you have questions about, and what you would want cover. Being that it’s something new that I am doing, I am definitely open on suggestions or comments that you might have.

What You Need For a Successful Online Help System

Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs)

There are always the ten or so basic questions that your users will have. For instance, how do I reset my password or how to modify my user profile. For those types of questions, you should have a FAQ section that lists all the questions with their corresponding answers. It’s a great way to have them easily accessible to your users, so that they quickly are able to get their issue resolved. The best way to do this is to have an individual link for FAQs, whether it is on the home page or help area. Hootsuite has the right idea by having the FAQ link on their app, which is quickly accessible if the user has a question.

How-Tos

Before users use your product, they should be properly trained. However, we know that this doesn’t always occur. Therefore, you should have an online help system that has all the steps to perform every action. These should be easy to follow by anyone, regardless of how basic or advanced of a user he/she is. Also, there should be a search functionality, so that users can quickly search for what they are looking for. To aid this, also have an index that they can go to. Linking to related resources is a plus, so that users can find other how-tos that can aid them in what they are trying to accomplish. Adobe Robohelp has a great online help system that uses the Adobe Air technology.

Cheat Sheets

Cheat sheets are a great for the user to find helpful tips and steps all on one page (or try to). They are great during training, but can also aid when users need help. The best way to provide them is by having them accessible via the help area. If the user wants, they can have it on a separate window or print it out and have it at arms reach. Make sure that the sections are easy to find by having them be a different shading and text color than the rest of the steps.  Using tables will help in providing these distinctions. Leslie Franke has a great Mozilla Firefox cheat sheet.

Glossary

Users should have a way to find definitions for technical jargon or business terminology that you use throughout your documentation. By providing users a glossary, you can help answer any questions they might have about what a term means. It also shows them that you understand their business processes and rules. You should try to make it easy for them to jump around the glossary. The best ways is by having the letters on top that link to the part of the glossary starting with it. If there are a lot of terms, then you can even break it down even further. Microsoft TechNet has a glossary for their Windows Server that is easy to access and to understand.

User Forums

Have user forums that allow users to help one another. This can help you because users can quickly provide answers if they have already encountered the issue. Providing a way for users to search these forums also works as a second how-to area. The best example of this is WordPress’ forums. I have used them extensively to find answers to questions I have encountered, and it has eliminated the need for me to contact them.

Points of Contact

If all else fails, your users are going to have to contact you. The worst thing is trying to search around to find contact information for a company. Therefore, ensure that the way to find the points of contact are always available on every page. This can be by a single link that will take users to your contact information. GoDaddy has their support number with the times when they are available. Additionally, they have a tab that quickly takes you to their help area.

What are other sections a sucessful online help system needs?

Photo Credit: [ Help Me From Myself .. ~, originally uploaded by