A few weeks ago I mentioned that we were looking for a new way track our tasks. After checking out a few different applications and web applications, I think we have a solution.

The problem we have is that, whilst the bulk of the work is scheduled against a project plan, there are a myriad of smaller tasks and documentation changes that we need to track. These come in through various channels, our Support team, our ‘Core’ team (who maintain the latest stream of the product), and through our team inbox.

Previously we mirrored the development teams approach and used index cards and a BIG whiteboard but it wasn’t really working for us for a variety of reasons. So I spent a couple of days downloading task tracking applications, and hunting for a web-based application that might meet our needs.

There are many out there and the first thing I realised is that most of the are aimed at the project management set and are very date driven. Most of the tasks we wanted to track aren’t heavily date driven, and so are picked up as and when the team has a some spare time in the project plan.

One of the first applications I found was TeamWorkPM which seemed to fit our needs and then some. However it was still quite over-spec’d for what we had in mind so when I stumbled over No Kahuna it was soon apparent that I’d found a good match.

Importantly, No Kahuna is a task tracking application. Dates do not feature. You simply create a project, add project members, then start creating tasks. You can assign a task to a specific project member (or take it for yourself) and when it’s done, it’s marked as completed.

You can add comments to tasks, which is useful when some tasks may sit in the list for a while so you can build out a level of information for when they are finally actioned.

All very simple, it worked well enough in our short trial that I’m happy to shell out $7 a month to get a private project (not visible to the public). If you are looking for an online, lightweight task tracker, check out No Kahuna.

When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and turn
and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again!!!!

Ever get that feeling that you’ve been here before?

I write this blog post with haste as I’m halfway through the penultimate week of a particularly arduous project. Not only are we releasing a new version of the product, but we are completing the first major stage of our move to Author-it.

Overall the migration has been pretty painless. There are still some Word templates issues to work around and getting to grips with Variants has still to be tackled, but overall we are pretty happy with our choice. The only major gripe we have is partly our (ok, MY) own fault, and it’s here that I’ll offer the most valuable tip I can.

If you are migrating legacy content to Author-it (we were moving from Structured FrameMaker), make sure you thoroughly test and check the import settings. Time constraints had me rush this stage and we ended up paying for it, spending far too long cleaning up rogue topics than we had planned. Every cloud has a silver lining though, and it does mean that the documentation is now far more consistently written and styled than it had been. However, going through some 5000 odd topics by hand wasn’t the greatest use of our time!

Soon we will be looking to how we can leverage the output to provide better access to information, feeding into the developer community website we have already built, and improving how we deliver information alongwith our product set.

For the former we have taken some inspiration from the presentation by Rachel Potts and Brian Harris (Red Gate Software) at last years UA Conference, titled Delivering Help in a Support Portal. For our implementation the Publications team will take the lead, and it’ll be interesting to see where it takes us. Web 2.0, anyone?

We will also be looking to provide better online help by introducing Keystone Topics, as suggested by Matthew Ellison. Author-it should make these topics, which are the first topics the user lands on when they start the online help and which provide sensible links to common information (rather than just providing repurposed user manuals), very easy to build.

Two of the team will be in Cardiff for the conference this year so it’ll be interesting to see what we learn there and how we can really start to leverage Author-it in more and more powerful ways. I’m definitely keen to start innovating what we do and, in a few weeks time, we won’t have any further barriers to stop us.

In my copious spare time I have been known to design and build websites. The first website I ever built was for the first company I worked for, back in 1996, so I’ve been at it a while.

However it’s only been the past couple of years that I’ve started to get some larger clients with grander ideas, and that has meant getting a bit more organised. As such I now have a standard questionnaire that I ask all prospective clients to fill in, a standard design proposal document which I use to present back my ideas based on the answers to the questionnaire, and I have a nice little area of my PC which is dedicated to building websites.

The key part of which is XAMPP.

I discovered this marvellous application about 3 years ago, and if you are building websites, or installing and customising anything that requires MySQL and PHP then you must give it a look.

Many people know from their own experience that it’s not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl.

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.

It really is that simple. Once you’ve downloaded it, start up the Control Panel, start Apache and MySQL, then head to http://localhost. Done!

A lot of my web design work is creating custom themes based around WordPress, sometimes it is just a look and feel but more often than not custom code is required. Now, rather than having to upload a file to a test web server somewhere, I can work locally on the php files, and just refresh the browser to see my changes. Much faster.

XAMPP is one of those applications that, after you’ve used it once you think “how the hell did I manage without this!”.

Given that a lot of technical communicators are looking towards other distribution models (blogs, Wikis and so on), then XAMPP is an easy (and free) way to get a test system setup, allowing you to run short proof of concept projects. I hope you find it as useful as I do.

Technical documentation, typically, requires screenshots and I, like many, have been through the gamut of software applications that can be used. Currently I’m quite happy with Gadwin Printscreen, but recently stumbled across something a bit different.

Whilst I don’t use it at work, I have a MacBook at home and I use an application called Skitch on there to do random screengrabs and so on. It is a simple, friendly little application that is aimed at the casual user. It’s very easy to grab a screenshot, markup an area and save both image and markup to JPEG.

PrtScr is a similar kind of application for Windows, allowing a free drag and grab style screenshot capability, and the option to add simple, hand drawn markup. It’s very simplistic and whilst I seriously doubt it would find a place on the desktop of most technical communicators, it’s a nice little option if you are looking at doing something a little less formal.

Using Author-it to produce Word documents is easy. The tricky bit is distributing them.

Without running any post publishing macros, the Word document that is generated will be using linked images. So everytime you need to distribute the document you’ll also need to remember to include the images as well.

I frequently forget this, hence why I’m posting this, so, if all else fails, I can at least search my own blog to find the solution. If you look at a document with linked images, you’ll see that the filesize for the document is quite small, and there will be a number of images in the same folder (although this works fine if your images are linked from another folder).

UPDATE: You can also do this automatically after publishing using an afterPublish Word macro, the Author-it Knowledge Centre has the details, thanks to Derek Tomes for pointing it out. Read on for the manual method.

You can quickly and easily convert linked images to embedded images in Word 2007. Here’s how:

1. With your Word document open, click the Office button*, top-left of the window.
2. Select Prepare > Edit Links to Files.
3. Select and highlight the images you want to convert from the list.
4. Select the option to Save picture in document.
5. Click the Break Link button.
6. Click Yes to confirm.

The links are removed, and the images are now embedded in your Word document. A quick check of the filesize of the Word document should show a marked increase and you can now distribute the Word document, and the Word document only, safe in the knowledge that the images are embedded.

I’m currently part of a cross company initiative (started at the grassroot level) that is aiming at improving our product based information, making the messaging more consistent and ensuring that our customers hear get the information they need, at the time they need it. This is from Marketing down through Sales and into the product documentation itself.

Everyone involved understands the benefits and can see the potential we have if we take this approach. Ultimately it should decrease the information silos across the company and make sure that duplicate content is kept to a minimum. It’s fair to say that, at present, our company is at Level One (with Level Two pretensions) on the Information Process Maturity Model:

“Information developers work independently, designing and developing their content in isolation from other developers in their organization.”

The common aim (and at this point I’ll point out that I’ve not mentioned the IPMM to anyone else yet, but have had it in my head as I helped start the initiative) is to get to Level Three which seems like a good place on which we can build further in the future. Level Three states:

“Information developers are encouraged to form teams to plan, design, and develop content regarding the same product or process. Opportunities for sharing content among deliverables increases because developers are more aware of the content being created by their colleagues. Developers frequently form self-organized teams to jointly produce a result.”

The good news is that, purely because some of us are already talking about the product information, there are other people starting to consider doing the same for other areas of information.

However there is something that will block us and that is the age old problem of document management, and yes the title of this post hints at what we are considering using to help us solve that problem.

The nature of the information we will be producing is very document-centric as a lot of it is written with mind to handing it to a (potential) customer. Currently there is likely to be a small group of people who will be authoring the content, and we had considered using our SVN repository to provide versioning and access control. We’d then publish the documents to a central location on the network.

Still not ideal but, given the current economic climate, it was a free solution for a grassroots level project and we all agreed it would be better to prove our approach was correct first before going cap in hand to ask for funds for a document management system (there are other reasons we shied away from that solution of course, administration and maintenance being one of them).

Then, by chance the other day, one of my colleagues mentioned that he’d just gotten in new MSDN discs and license and he spotted something called SharePoint and “hey, isn’t that something to do with documents? Can you guys use it at all?”.

After rolling my eyes a little (I thought I’d broken that ‘you are the document guys’ mode of thought already!), I realised that yes I could use it, and that it might well be ideal for our cross company initiative.

And so it is I come to find myself reading up on SharePoint installations, configurations and usage. My first port of call will be Tom Johnson but if anyone else has any good pointers please leave a comment.

I’m not entirely sure if it will meet our needs but, if nothing else, it’ll be good blog fodder. Consider yourself warned.

Finally (this is an idea I had many moons ago) a one stop website which aims to list all technical communications (specific) tools.

In their own words:

One of the most common questions heard on many forums is “What tool do you use for [purpose]?” Answers vary, of course, because everyone has their own favorites and some folks will even answer that the right tool is “the one that best meets your needs”.

Sometimes, many people will answer that you need to look at the different tools, download trial versions, and test. But where is the list of tools to choose from?

It’s here at TechComm Toolbox, your online resource for all applications, services, and consultants related to technical communication.

I’d imagine there are still some applications to be added but why not go and have a look at the Toolbox. I’m sure it’ll come in handy in the future.

Note: I am not being paid to promote this website. The Tech Comm Toolbox was created by JTF Associates.