Technical Writing in Israel by Technical People. Ever use the wrong style and need to replace it? Annoyed by all the time you waste searching and replacing styles in a backward, cumbersome way?
Now you can update styles directly from our new Search and Replace Style Plug-in. Just decide if you want to make the change on a topic, a series of topics, a book or the whole library and then choose your styles to replace. Let our plug-in quickly do the rest.
Ever accidentally switch or delete the topics of a book between versions and not know how to recover? Ever want to compare two books and see the differences, changes or additions/deletions in a meaningful way?
Now you can! Our Book Compare Plug-in will help you pull the plug on your book creation and deletion fears. Now you can visually compare books in a side-by-side fashion and see everything different between versions.
Ever created a new book based on a template and then wanted to modify the content without affecting all other books using the same content? Ever wanted to do this in a single operation?
Now you can do it with our new Boilerplate Plug-in and save time and money wasted swapping all those topics. Simply create your boilerplate book templates and let the plug-in do the rest.
Much has been said already about how great it is to work “in the cloud.” I don’t think there’s anyone left who hasn’t experienced the greatness of Dropbox or a shared Google Doc.
So where does that leave the technical writer? We technical writers and documentation managers are long used to our love affair and possessive tendencies towards our “files” and our proprietary authoring software. A huge part of what gave us value was the relative obscurity of what we do. Transforming huge swaths of knowledge and information into books, with endless links and ToCs that update and indexes that contain links. One customer even went so far as to call what we do, “knowledge geek magic.”
What will happen if we take all of that away and author in simple tools that were built for everyone to use easily in the cloud? If anyone can log into our software, collaborate, review, comment and critique, will our processes fall apart? Will the magic be revealed as a fake? Will we be replaced by knowledge engineering robots?
I don’t think so.
Need your Author-it to do even more? In addition to our Author-it plug-ins, we also recently developed the following customizations that will give your end users the experience they've come to expect from the social web:
Tired of pushing help at your users without knowing if they find your information useful, confusing or incomplete? Here is your chance to start the dialog and interact with your users in a meaningful way. Integrate Disqus, the web’s most popular discussion/forum feature into your Author-it WebHelp.
Contact a member of Tech-Tav's Author-it team for more information and to request a price quote.
Want to distribute WebHelp to be loaded locally on your customers' machines but you can’t figure out how to get over the security bug that prevents it from loading in Chrome? Do you just see a blank screen and wonder what to do? Not to worry! Tech-Tav can get your WebHelp up and running in a locally served version of Chrome within a few hours.
Want to know what technical writers and doc managers from Israel's leading technical writing teams were doing this past Tuesday? They were gathered at NICE Systems in Ra'anana to find out how the world's foremost CMS solution for technical documentation - Author-it - is revolutionizing the way technical writers write, maintain and publish tech docs. As Israel’s official Author-it reseller and trainer, Tech-Tav is grateful to NICE Systems for hosting the event. It is a pleasure to work with Martin Deitch, Erica Dyson and the amazing team of technical writers at NICE as they make the transition to working better and smarter through Author-it.
We hope to see you at our next Author-it meet-up in September. To sign up for our Author-it mailing list or to arrange for an evaluation license or in-house demo of Author-it, contact us today.
I’ve been super busy for the past few days tweaking and preparing my plans and getting ready for three full days of training at NICE. Monday morning, the technical writing team was working in Word and Framemaker in the same old fashioned way they have been since 1998! But come Thursday afternoon, when our training session is complete, they will be creating modular content in their very own Author-it CMS.
Training and moving a big team of writers is a challenge, but when people walk in the door with good attitudes and ready to learn, lots of good things happen. I am excited for everything we achieved today and am proud to be part of helping this fantastic team move forward into the 21st century.
The dynamics of training a team from one company, where three different authoring tools are currently deployed, is interesting. And even though some people work in the same building with other writers, some had never met each other before they walked in the door today. In just a few short hours, I began to see a shift from ten largely independent content herders into a team of fearless knowledge managers. Understanding the power of your content when shared is truly inspiring.
If you have not taken the time to learn something new this year, I urge you to try it. Find a course (online or human) or teach yourself a new writing concept, tool, method or whatever else interests you. But never stop aiming for better. Having the chance to apply a new skill makes the workday a lot more enjoyable and always enables you to do things faster/smarter/better than before.
Blogging has taken a back seat to training, but just for the next few days. See you next week! Happy Single-Sourcing Wednesday!
It was great to see so many technical writers and doc managers from all over Israel at the Author-it users meeting in Tel Aviv yesterday. Thanks again to Big Band for hosting! Tech-Tav was especially thrilled to unveil some cool new Author-it new plugins we currently have under development. With more than 50 in attendance, this meeting showed new and experienced users something new and gave everyone – from experienced programmers to newbie writers – a better understanding of the power and capabilities of Author-it.
Looking forward to seeing you all at the next event. If you missed the meeting but are interested in learning more about Author-it, call us!
Let’s say you’re looking to hire a new technical writer for your team. At the very minimum, you probably want a graduate of a technical writing course and minimal level of competence with an authoring tool such as Author-it, Framemaker, Robohelp or whatever tool your company uses. You will most likely add a few more requirements to your job ad, probably something like “minimum 3 years of technical writing experience” or “experienced Word user” before sending your ad out to the job-boards and Linked-in groups.
Disappointed in your applicant pool? I’m not surprised. When it comes down to hiring great technical writers, my experience has shown time and time again that the level of expertise someone has with a tool and how long they’ve been on the job has exactly zero correlation with how well they actually do their job.
So what are the qualities that hiring managers should be looking for in a new technical writer? Here’s my Top 10:
1. Technical know-how: This does not necessarily mean a PhD in electrical engineering, but education or on-the-job experience in programming, IT, engineering, etc. would mean a candidate has an understanding of basic technology and how stuff works. The tech in technical writer has serious value.
2. High level of integrity: A must for someone with access to your company’s highly secretive product information. You don’t want your technical writer tipping off the media or the competition, so make sure you hire someone you can trust.
