Answer Questions

What is the purpose of your manual? In most cases the purpose of the manual is to make it so that your user does not have to email or call you to find out how to do something. That really is the point, but few manuals are written with this in mind. I see a lot of manuals that talk about the philosophy of a product or the architecture behind it. I personally have never had a tech support email or call come in that asked me about the philosophy, the design or architecture of a product. Tech support calls usually start with "How do I …?"

Well, if we are trying to decrease support requests with our documentation then we should probably answer the questions that our customers have. The good news is that actually makes your documentation a lot easier to create.

To show you how to do this I am going to create a manual on how to use WordPress. Now, I am not going to actually complete the entire manual but I will show you how I would scope things out. Once you have things scoped out in ScreenSteps it is actually very easy to go back and fill in the lessons you have outlined.

Create a New Manual

First I will create a new manual in ScreenSteps.

And give it a name.

Now I have a manual with nothing in it. To get things started I am just going to write down the questions that people might ask. Each question will be a new lesson. I don’t really need to do any planning at this point. I am just going to write down the questions as I think of them. (Note: You may prefer to do this in your favorite outline application first but I will show it in ScreenSteps).

To do this in ScreenSteps just select the New Lesson icon.

Here you can see that I have a list of questions that a user might ask. Now, as I look at these, some, like "How do I Upload a File?" are pretty easy to answer in just a few steps. But some, like "How do I Install WordPress?" might take a little more explanation.

For my next step I am going to organize these a bit. Some of the questions I will split into new multiple lessons to make them a little easier to create. I personally hate creating long lessons. They are a pain to make and boring to read.

Lessons Reorganized

Here you can see how I have reorganized things a bit. I have created a couple of sections (1) and have organized the lessons underneath each section (2).

Fill in the Lessons

Now, all I need to do is go back and fill in the lessons. Since the lesson title is a question it is really easy for me to decide what I need to do. I just need to create a lesson that answers the question. Once I am done, I might rename the lessons a bit. For example, I might change "How do I Upload a File?" to "Uploading a File to WordPress" but that is largely a matter of personal preference.

Conclusion

That is pretty much all their is to it. Try it out for yourself. I think that you will find that in afternoon you can have some pretty complete documentation that will be easy to create, easy to read and will be easy to update in the future.

If you want to get really fancy, then try this with ScreenSteps Live. Then, whenever a customer asks a question that you didn’t cover in your manual you can just add the answer to your online manual. We have been doing that for about 6 months now and it has worked really well.

Post to Blog

One of the most exciting things about 2.1 is the new Post to Blog feature. You can now post to your WordPress, TypePad or Movable Type blog. Just go into your ScreenSteps preferences, create a new web account, choose the account type and you will be all ready to post lessons instantly to your blog. You can even choose which category you would like your post to appear in, or publish the lesson as a draft. If you like to create tutorials for people we think that you will find this to be a great way to get your lessons out.

IMPORTANT: If you were using the 2.1 beta you will want to update your blog templates to the new defaults. You can see how to do that here: Updating Templates

Improved PDF

We have also dramatically improved the PDF quality. In previous versions of ScreenSteps some images could appear a little blurry. In 2.1 this has really been improved. Look at these two PDF files. See the examples below.

Old PDF Output

Notice the blurriness in the header image and the screen capture.

2.1 PDF Output

Here you can see how much clearer the PDF export is.

Improved PDF Manuals

For users of ScreenSteps 2 Pro we have also really improved PDF manuals. In ScreenSteps 2.0 you could export a PDF manual but the cover page and table of contents looked a little shabby.

In 2.1 you can now add an image and footer to your title page and the table of contents now has better formatting and page numbers.

Title Page

Here you can see the new options for the title page. You can now add a footer and image.

Improved Table of Contents

This is the new PDF table of contents. The formatting has been cleaned up and page numbers are now included.

Conclusion

There are also a lot of bug fixes and small improvements. We hope you like all of the additions.

You can download the latest version by selecting “Check For Updates” from the Help menu in ScreenSteps or by going to our Downloads page.

New Tabs

We have changed the main navigation to tabs. We thought that this would make the navigation a little easier to understand.

Admin Tab

You will also notice that the "Account" tab has been renamed to "Admin". This tab only appears to admin users on your account. We have also re-organized the settings under the new "Admin" tab. This is where you can do your bulk editing of Lessons, Manuals, Comments, Readers, Groups and Users. You will notice that the account settings are no longer in this section.

Settings

You can now get to the settings here.

Settings Tab

When you click on "Settings" (1) you will now see a new "Settings" tab (2). Here you can edit your profile, account settings, and, if you are the owner of the account, your plan and payment details.

Plan and Payment Settings

Here you can upgrade/downgrade, update your billing information as well as cancel your account.

Other Stuff

We have also improved the screens for creating new users, groups, readers, etc. We hope that you like the new look!