Session Details

You think you might need a new Help Authoring Tool (HAT), but there are a lot to choose from. You’ve read blogs and press releases and articles and forums and email lists, and you’ve noticed that a lot of people have a favorite HAT.

However, you need to focus on your needs when choosing the HAT that will work best for you. It wo’n’t matter how many other people use a HAT if it doesn’t produce the output you need or if it won’t run on the platforms your customers use.

During this session, you’ll learn about four features that matter when choosing a HAT:

• Outputs—We’’ll start with a really quick discussion of the outputs that are available from all HATs, and then move on to the important questions. What outputs can the HAT produce? Can you customize them to match your company branding? What platforms and browsers can be used?
• Development environments—The lines are blurring between traditional HATs, where all authoring takes place in the HAT, and publishing HATs, which reference the source documents. Which HATs have combined authoring and publishing? Which have their own authoring environments? Which let you mix-and-match? Will you want to leverage your existing knowledge or learn a new editor?
• Importing legacy content—While you will have some new projects, you will also likely have existing content that needs to be imported. What types of content can be imported? What issues should you watch for?
• Reusing content—In today’s world, reuse is big. (And content is king.) Some HATs let you reuse content within projects, while others let you reuse content across projects. Some let you combine deliverables within one project through the use of build tags or other types of markers, letting you publish both a User’s Guide and a Training Guide. Some HATs let you take advantage of variables, snippets, widgets, topics, and more, or a combination of all. What types of reuse should you evaluate? Can you reuse layouts, templates, and browse sequences?

  By the end of the session, you’ll have put together a checklist of features that matter to you.