Losing My Job

[harooki2]

I am working for a Fortune 500 company that is trying to usher a bunch of field facilities into the 21st Century. Part of that plan was to produce training materials in RoboHelp as online Help. It's not working, because most of these folks in the field know what a computer is by now, but they don't know how it works.

The client is also getting freaked by the notion that someone has to know RoboHelp to make changes once I'm gone. So now they have two reasons to stop using RoboHelp, and me.

What can I offer them to save this job? How can I best use RoboHelp to accomodate their computer-challenged audience, and how can I set all this up so that their maintenance issue is resolved.

[Guest]

Hi,
The main buzzword to think about in this situation is maintainability. A help or training system created using an industry standard tool provides a robust, maintainable system that can be added to later.

The ability to single source multiple outputs from the same master is a big plus and also you might want to think about the capabilities of Technical Communication Suite.

Using standard tools makes it easier to find staff with experience than using obscure tools. Word for example is simply not up to the job.

In short proffesional documentation requires proffesional tools and staff to produce and maintain it.

Just a few thoughts hope that helps

[harooki2]

I appreciate very much your response. However, I don't think it is specific enough.

My description of their audience was not exaggerated. The field facilities are comprised of sawmills, small processing plants, etc. that are operating just as they did in the 1950s. They can't deal with anything beyond paper.

The corporate office where I'm working is a special project team that will disband within a couple of years. They're not thinking beyond that time frame, and nobody wants to learn RoboHelp; and they don't want to have to bring in more technical writing contractors to maintain what I produce.

I'm just trying to get as creative as I can to salvage what has been done in RoboHelp so far and extend my stay here. They're thinking of it now as a mistake. I have to turn that thinking around.

[Guest]

If you want the ability to produce paper and online help then TCS would of course do it. The real problem here is deciding whether or not to use professional tools and also online vs paper.

My usual main argument for online over paper is cost. Printing costs more and printed stuff is slower, harder and more costly to maintain.

Even if you converted stuff to Word, it would still take knowledge to maintain it properly. Having said that the Word option might still be good. You could output a Word version of the training docs from RH which will need some work post output, but still retain the online versions as well.

Sorry I can't be more help...