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I always try to give my users what they ask for, whether or not they use it.
End-user documentation has multiple purposes, including sales and marketing.
Wade's suggestion to send the question through Customer Service, Field
Service, and Sales is right on the money.
Of course, I also give them what I think they will use, whether or not they
ask for it (unless I think it'll annoy them).
Donna's complaint that she "already has enough work to do" is certainly
germane. Maybe the one-sentence descriptions can be set up as fields from
the first sentence in each chapter. That way, both changes in content and
changes in chapter order would be automatically reflected in the "About This
Book" section.
Dan Goldstein
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuck Martin
> Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 7:18 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: Chapter Overviews
>
> Goldstein, Dan wrote:
> > The first answer is *always*: Ask your users! The list
> might add value for
> > some of them, and it probably won't reduce value for the
> others. It should
> > be easy to generate, and it doesn't duplicate the Table of
> Contents. Go for
> > it.
> Well, I don't think that's the answer at all, in large part
> because I'd
> guess that if you *asked* users if they want such a section, many, if
> not most, will say "yes."
> If you ask them if they use such a section in the books they
> have, many
> or most might even say "yes."
> The only way to truly *know* is to watch your users, in their
> environment, on the occasions (rare as they may be) they actually use
> the manual...
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