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- Khurshid Alam, Documentation Lead at Quick Heal Technologies, has twelve years of documentation experience and leads a four-person full-time documentation team.
- Quick Heal Technologies uses an agile documentation process involving engineering and product teams. Technical writing should help readers find solutions rather than entertain them.
- Users prefer self-help to contacting support, so Quick Heal Technologies added software popups that appear during errors and direct users to relevant documentation.
- Quick Heal Technologies serves documentation in eight languages. Khurshid replaced PDF delivery with an online content management system and an automated translation plugin, saving over $150,000 annually and generating organic search traffic.
- Khurshid’s lessons are that documentation should be multipurpose, neither short nor too long, and both complete and edited. His resources include The Editor's Companion, The Chicago Manual of Style, Microsoft Manual of Style, and Read Me First!
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Khurshid Alam, Documentation Lead at Quick Heal Technologies joins us in this episode of Knowledgebase Ninjas.
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Key Takeaways:
Twelve years experience
Khurshid has twelve years experience in documentation and currently leads Quick Heal Technologies documentation team that currently consists of four full time resources.
An agile documentation process
Quick Heal Technologies has implemented an agile documentation process that involves both the engineering and product teams.
The difference between fiction and technical writing
To understand the difference between how you should write fiction vs technical writing, you must understand that people do not want to read technical writing right through to the end.
People reading technical writing and looking for a solution to their problem NOT to entertain themselves, Khurshid highlights the need ensure that your editing reflects this understanding.
Customers want self help, not to call support
Khurshid is of the belief that users and customers don’t actually want to reach out to support, they want to solve their problem.
This led the Quick Heal Technologies team to implement popups within their software that would appear when an error occurred and would direct people to the relevant piece of documentation.
How Khurshid saved Quick Heal Technologies $150,000
Quick Heal Technologies serve documentation in eight different languages. These documents used to be served in .pdf format which meant that there were significant translation costs incurred. Khurshid introduced an online content management system and installed a plugin that would automate this translation. This saves Quick Heal Technologies over $150,000 per year in translation costs.
This online content, which is now indexed by search engines also has started to generate organic search traffic.
Khurshid’s cryptic documentation related lessons to his twenty year old self
- Documentation should be multipurpose
- Documentation should be not be short, but also not too long
- Documentation should be both complete and edited
Khurshid’s top four documentation resources
- The Editor’s Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the Principles of Editing
- The Chicago Manual of Style
- Microsoft Manual of Style
- Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry
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