NMS manuals - ideas for improvement

["Erika Yanovich" <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com>]

Hi all,

I recently got the results of the annual customer satisfaction survey and turns out that we're doing OK, except for one product line: NMS (Network Management System) manuals.

I plan to:
- conduct a survey on our major NMS customers to look for more detailed info (clues)
- interview a group of customers who will be visiting us soon
- look at competitors' manuals.
I also have my own agenda, mainly pushing for context sensitive help (field explanations as tooltips) and embedding some non-printable info in the helpfiles, such as video.

Is there anything else I should do?

We made a few improvements last year (outline, examples), which need some PR, but still our manuals are perceived as bulky and not very useful. They contain a 'system' section and one section per each managed product. We have about 15 massive NMS manuals, some with more than 10 sections, so whatever the direction, it should be doable as automatically as possible. We provide printed manuals (on demand), PDF on CD and web, and helpfiles (same contents).

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Erika

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