2002 Information Design Group Component Review

1. 2002 Information Design Group Component Review January 2002

2. Mission Control production of accurate, comprehensive, and useful documentation for internal and external customers. Act as THE resource for information design.

3. Team Objectives • Control production of engineering documentation by: • Authoring and maintaining application documentation for all products • Reviewing Engineering documentation compliance with internal standards in the negotiated time frame • Approving compliant documentation • Maintaining IDG style guide

4. Team Objectives (cont.) Garrett R. Winn: Since there is so much on these slides, it would probably be better to list the main points and then go over exactly what they mean on other slides. Or, just list the main points and then distribute the slides with comments in hardcopy so they can follow along. Garrett R. Winn: We also serve as resource for engineering by being open for questions. Maybe even some training? • Serve as a resource for creating engineering documents by: • Providing authoring templates • Providing meaningful feedback in reviews • Serve as a resource for other departments by offering recommendations and editorial support • Establish review processes • Increase quality of end-user documentation by: • Tracking all documentation bugs through the bugs database • Conducting user satisfaction surveys • Performing regression testing on Matrix and Content Network Manager documentation Garrett R. Winn: We call this “application documentation” earlier.

5. Team Objectives (cont.) • Improve team’s skills by: • Conducting training in team meetings on a monthly basis • Keeping current on industry trends and theories (for example, by reviewing trade articles or attending STC meetings) • Attending an off-site training session • Integrate with Deployment team’s build process

6. Team Members • Stacy Croninger • Worked at WordPerfect/Novell in the Training and Education departments. Joined Folio in December of 1995 in the Training department as a technical trainer. Moved to Documentation under Jim Mosher in July 1998. Started as Manager the end of 1999.

7. Team Members (cont.) Garrett R. Winn: This uses first person, but not all of the other bios do. • Craig Laurence • Worked at Altera Corporation in San Jose, CA for three years as a technical writer documenting Field Programmable Gate Array architecture and usage. Am approaching three years of employment at NextPage where I played a significant role in writing the Matrix online documentation. Have five years of experience teaching technical writing at Brigham Young University where I also earned a BA and MA in English.

8. Team Members (cont.) • Larry Scroggins • 20 years experience • 1981-1994 Digital Research • programming languages (Fortran, Pascal, PL/I, C, Basic), linkers, debuggers, operating systems • 1994-1998 Novell • embedded systems, print services, SDK docs • November 1998 - present at NextPage • LivePublish 2.0 Toolkit, Access Control SDK, Services and Scripting, Client and Server Query Syntax, Build Utilities

9. Team Members (cont.) Garrett R. Winn: I should probably cut this down. Let me know if you want me to. • Garrett Winn • About to receive Master's degree in English from BYU. • Contractor for Uinta Business Systems for two months as a technical writer. Created online help and met with clients to determine user needs and the usability of the help system. • Software Engineer at IBM for two years. Worked on documentation for the AS/400. Assigned to create documents for a new and valuable AS/400 function: Logical Partitions. Asked to reorganize legacy documents for online distribution. Created two web-based help advisors (including design and HTML and JavaScript coding) and the interface for the new logical partition function. Worked closely with usability team and designer to create an easy-to-use interface. Created wizard to accompany the interface and to help users in the complex process of defining logical partitions. • Usability Engineer at NextPage for the past year and a half. Created Site Design documentation, and took over management of Content Network Manager documentation. Performed several usability tests for Alerts software and for documentation. Met with three customers for general audience analysis and created and administered two separate surveys about the user experiences with NextPage software. Responsible for the docs.nextpage.com site and for the build process for creating HTML Help files.

10. Team Members (cont.) • David Barrett is a fledgling technical writer with a strong engineering background. Prior to NextPage, David wrote video game engines for Motorsims and optimized 3d graphics pipelines for Intel. David is most comfortable programming in C++ and Java, with most of his experience in client-side networked applications. David currently lives in San Jose, California, and full-time telecommutes to the Utah office. On rainy days when curled up with his notebook and a piping hot cup of Earl Grey, David dreams of gaining the skills to start up and be the CTO of a small technology company. David has a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.

11. Reference and Topical Manuals • Product documentation for the following products: • Matrix • BakerMAKS • NXT 3 • LivePublish

12. Automatic Test Strategy • Link Checking • Manifest • Not always accurate • Still need to check manually

13. Recent Deliverables • Matrix Documentation • LivePublish Documentation • NXT 3 (Volant) Documentation

14. Planned Deliverables • Update BakerMAKS documentation • Engineering templates • Review Engineering documentation

15. Unplanned Deliverables • Review Engineering documentation • We usually get 3 to 5 days notice that we will need to review documents. • Update Matrix documentation • Expecting the 1.1 release

16. Quality Metric Plans • Increase quality of end-user documentation by: • Tracking all documentation bugs through the bugs database • We’ll notify Support and other departments of bugs tracking plan • Close bugs before product ship or adjust priority • Conducting user satisfaction surveys • Performing regression testing on Matrix and Content Network Manager documentation

17. Patent Status • No current plans or expectations for patents.

18. Technical Issues • Automation of common tasks • Generating Makefiles • Integrating with Engineering build process • Nightly builds month prior to product ship • Improving documentation quality • Fewer bugs/inaccuracies in documentation • Increase PDF functionality – links working • XML authoring for Engineers • Inexpensive, easy to use tool • Conversion from Word to XML • Conversion from JavaDocs to Word (for internal reviews)