When you spend time and money to get the right documentation management and authoring tool, you may overlook the importance of training your staff to use those tools. If you are limiting your training to the user guide that came with the tools, you are cheating yourself.
Training New Writers
One of the most common mistakes organizations make when converting to DITA is to not properly train their writers. We are not talking about DITA training. The training that is missed is the reason for DITA — that is, topic-based authoring. Writers that are well-trained in topic-based authoring will appreciate the benefits of DITA.
JANA will conduct a thorough DITA workshop explaining not only how to use DITA, but why you are using DITA and how it will improve your ability to write and your customer’s ability to understand your documentation.
Refresher Training, Best Practices and ‘Tips and Tricks’
Refresher training is important at all levels to reinforce key aspects of your writing group’s knowledge base, and to introduce new concepts, ideas or edicts from management. We can also help you to develop an internal Best Practices document that will gather company and industry ‘tips and tricks’ that will allow you to increase productivity, reliability and consistency.
Style Guide
Every product library has a different look to it. Sometimes, ever book within a library has a different look to it. If a user sees different conventions in different books within your product library, they may feel confused. A consistent look and feel will allow users to focus on your content and trust your document.
Even within DITA, there are different ways to produce the same effect. You can use several different tags to create a boldfaced item. But what is the right way? JANA’s DITA experts will work with your team to create a Style Guide that will not only generate user confidence, but will make your writers more effective and productive.