Help Me! says users…How to provide Help
Help…A simple word we consultants hear so often.Someone is stuck inside an application and needs help.
What does he do?
- Call a Colleague over phone
- Ask support staff to help online.
- Refer User Manuals.
User Manuals…! although they form the most critical part of any system, i see that they are most abused.
they are created in a short time and uploaded.The problem is not creating the manuals but the timing.
If you start early, some screens may change, and you will have to redo the part.if you start late then there is deployment pressure 🙂
Some important lessons learned in creating Help Manuals.
- Take care to include just the screenshots of the actual application
- Leave the Path,URL etc to a single slide which can be edited easily.
Path to application may change! URL’s can change.. Themes can change !
Upgrade can change many things…so taking care is essential to avoid rework.
Classic example is change from Standard Framework to AJAX Framework 🙂
Is providing help is as simple as embedding a hyperlink at the top right corner of any application?
This works, but if the destination URL changes, you will have to modify the code…
Another popular way is to Provide a Help Section in the Portal where we can keep all the manuals at central location.
This provides all application help at one place and we can provide facility to download a zip file of all the Application Help.
Another way is to Use SAP’ Help Center Framework.
where we can configure the Help section of each application and provide FAQ,Learning Content,Worth Leanring Sections etc.
Detailed info is available here.
There is also field level help available in each application where a small tip is displayed for each field. Users can turn On/Off this.
So we see that there are number of ways to make the users comfortable using applications and improving Satisfaction.
On a side Note: What happens in Real Life? Some Power user is stuck and you tell him to refer user manual..you know what happens next 🙂 🙂 🙂
Do share your Views !
Best Regards
Rajendrakumar Gaikwad.
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