Understanding what our customers expect from our product documentation led us into exploring what it would take to produce a community version of our documentation.
One of our team members, Moya Watson, is a big proponent of social media and inspired us to take a look at using social media tools. Our Knowledge Production Services team had experimented with converting some of the Help Library pages to wiki format
An idea turns reality. DocupediA began taking shape in March of this year, when we assembled a small realization team to figure out how to convert the SAP Library HTML files to wiki format.
The conversion actually turns out to be technical challenging for several reasons. Various HTML formats exist and need to be cleaned up before they can be loaded into a wiki. The navigation hierarchy we are all used to from the Help Library is something that wiki technology is not designed for. And of course we want to provide the appropriate social media platform so you – our community - can begin engaging with others around our product documentation.
We are making steady process on both fronts – the conversion and social media platform, and are planning to open a Beta version of docupediA to the SAP ecosystem in Q4. In the meantime, we want to get as much user input as possible so we can be sure to offer something that is useful to our community.
We thought the TechEd Pre-Conference event is a great place to start to get your ideas and input and let you explore what we have come up with. Join us:
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/wiki?path=/display/community/community+events
Check my next installment to see a preview of the envisioned design for docupediA.
