What is Software Documentation? Its types and Best practices

Today, the Internet is considered as a knowledge base. Anyone can access any kind of information using the Internet, such as documents, view hypertext, and multimedia (audio and video) through a web server database.

Also, it has become necessary and critical for any organization to provide public access to corporate websites, which require constant, reliable, interactive web forms, authentic transactions and relevant documents. This has driven the organization to adapt to Web Content Management systems.

Gradually this led to a Knowledge Management system and a Knowledge Base system.
Although Knowledge management systems preceded the internet, it became easy for the user to access information using the internet, because it was like a distributed database on the internet.

In due course, the distinction between the Knowledge management system and the Knowledge base system became very minimal. Although these systems are still considered content repositories, which allows you to store, query, and make appropriate decisions.

So, in the Knowledge Management System, you just store them (manuals, procedures, policies, best practices, reusable designs and code, etc.) in the database.

In a knowledge-based system, you meticulously classify and categorize them (manuals, procedures, policies, best practices, reusable designs, code, etc.) appropriately in meaningful sections, sub-sections, and groups.

What is Software Documentation?

Software documentation is a key component of software programs, simplifying the workflow for all project participants. It encompasses a variety of elements, including API documentation, build notes, and user assistance content, all of which play a critical role in the software development process.

It needs to serve the purpose of resolving the issues, when encountered by the developer, end user, or while during customer facing the knowledge Base.

Appropriate details and descriptions need to be documented to achieve the following goals:

Documentation can be related to API documentation (which can be used to either incorporate in the code or to extend the functionality of the existing application, release notes that serve what bugs had been fixed in the current release, and what code had been refracted) and, or customer-facing help content to easily find required information immediately. Software documentation helps you to understand the product, interface, capability, and ability to fulfill a task, and quickly search and find a particular section within the document, or find a resolution when encountered using the product.

Types of Software Documentation

Many types of documents are required and delivered during the product development life cycle and software development life cycle, like Software documentation, Developer documentation, Software requirement document, design documentation, and audience analysis.

User Documentation

This document is mostly delivered for end-users who want to use the product themselves, to understand and complete a certain task.

• How-to guides – Guides the user to complete a task or a predetermined goal.
• Tutorials – Learns a concept by following a series of steps concept
• Reference docs – Describes the technical detail of the product (Software requirement specification, software design documents and so on)
• Administration Guide: Enables the administrator to refer to this after installing an application
• Configuration Guide: Allows the administrator to refer to this document for configuration parameters.

Developer Documentation

This documentation refers to system-related documentation.
• API documentation –Specifies how to invoke API calls and classes, or how to include API in the code that is being developed.
• Release notes: Describes the latest software, feature releases, and what bugs have been fixed. Usually, this document is a text file with a filename extension (.txt).
• README: A form of documentation, it is usually a simple plain text file called Read Me, READ.ME, README.TXT with A high-level overview of the software, usually alongside the source code.
• System documentation – Describes the system requirements, including design documents and UML diagrams.

Just-in-time Documentation

A situation may arise, where a just-in-time document quickly serves the support for customer-facing documentation. The user need not refer to any documents or FAQs for information.

It is recommended that documentation tools be common across your development team, so that it can be easily accessible within the environment, and you need to initiate that the documentation becomes a mandatory part of the Software development life cycle process. For example, GitHub is a cloud-based do-my-papers application, that serves the purpose of code developers and authors.

Also Read: Introductory guide to process documentation

How to choose a software documentation tool

Documenting your product and its features can be highly time-consuming and requires a lot of attention to detail while creating software documentation that can be easily understood by customers and team members. Here are some crucial features to look for in a software documentation tool

Document360 supports the following features:
• Custom Dashboard
• File Manager
• Article Redirect
• Team Management
• Team Auditing
• Secure Hosting
• Backup and Restore
• Custom Security
• In-app Assistance

Documenting, storing, and sharing technical manuals made easy.

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Overview of Knowledge Base application interface

Apart from the above-mentioned essential features Document360 also has some outstanding capabilities that make the knowledge base attractive to the end users.

Build Multilingual Knowledge Base

The Localization feature in a knowledge base system, enables you to build multilingual knowledge base documents for the different customer base. For example, your international customers across the globe may want to read the document in their native language, even when the document is available in English.

                               Choosing a language for the facing page.

You can take the help of an in-house translator to translate the article manually for a public-facing page or use Google Translator to translate the copied content from the source, and then paste the translated content back into the editor.

Look for knowledge-based software that includes built-in machine translation, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to transform material instantly for better results. If you are dissatisfied with the 3rd party translation tools 

Create a custom Site for Knowledge Base

When you create a document in Document360, you can have a public-facing URL, which can help user(s) access your Knowledge Base.
You can perform the following on the Site Domain page:
• Site Domain Hosting: You can create a custom URL for an existing URL
• Sub-Folder Hosting: Customized URL. You can use a sub-folder as a hosting page to mark these documents internally within the organization. For example, https://docs.startup.com to https://startup.com/docs

The following screen displays the Site Domain page.

             Site Domain Hosting and Sub-Folder Hosting page

Backup and Restore your Knowledge Base

It is necessary to keep your data secure each day. The Backup and Restore function is integrated with Dcoument360, which can help you restore earlier versions of your document from the backup list.