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For a long time now, power users have been asking for the ability to comment on (and even edit) the Infocenter documentation that IBM produces.
Up until this point, the Infocenters only received significant updates when new releases were shipped, and hence it took a long time to correct any errors or omissions. IBM's release process seemed to prohibit small changes after publication, and either way, access to the Infocenter update process was tightly regulated. In many ways, this was the reason for the launch of the Lotus Product Wikis - so that IBMers, partners and customers could create and update their own documentation, free of the controls of the Infocenter process. However, this left us with two different sources for product documentation - this static and reliable Infocenter, and the dynamic and flexible (though effectively unmanaged) Product Wiki.
With Lotus Quickr 8.5 (and with Lotus Connections 3.0 coming soon), this situation has changed.
The Infocenter has been deprecated, and all product documentation is now embedded within the Quickr Product Wiki:
This gives documentation users the ability to comment on, rate and even edit the documentation directly. The documentation areas with the 'edit' icon are now in the Wiki format:
The Lotus Quickr wiki therefore now contains the official product documentation for Quickr 8.5 for Domino, Quickr 8.5 for Portal and the Quickr 8.5 Connectors. Here's the Quickr 8.5 for Domino documentation:
As you can see, the menus on the left hand side look very familiar to Infocenter users, and so it's easy to navigate through the documentation. For each article, it is possible to see whether it has been updated, by whom, and when. In addition, a reader can see any comments that others have made, and rate the documentation too:
Whilst not many edits have been made so far, I do expect this to become better used with time as users realise the power they now have!
One of the concerns that I raised during the development process for this new product documentation process was that it would be difficult to trust the documentation 100% once it was being edited on a regular basis. However, this has been covered by having an 'official' version of the documentation that does not get changed and is available in multiple languages:
This option is available for every page in the product documentation
So, have you tried the new documentation style? Do you like it? Have you commented on or edited one of the articles?
By: Stuart McIntyre | 6 Comments | On: 29 October 2010 05:42:32 | Tags: quickr wiki infocenter documentation 8.5
Comments
G'Day Stuart,
In one work I find the doco being in the Wiki's "HORRIBLE".
Ok to be fair I think the idea of being able to comment/provide feedback etc excellent and I will certainly use this to contribute back. I have come across a number of errors in the info center doco in the past and have had to raise PMR's to get it corrected.
However the left hand navigation panel is HORRIBLE. If they would change it so we could drag the width of the navigation column to be wider it would be fine but the horizontal scroll bar is very frustrating. Also the way that when you load a page the entire page refreshes rather than just the content and you then need to scroll again is doing my head in.
The same has occured for Portal 7 doco.
Hi Stuart,
I see the potential of using Wiki style.
Only I agree with Adam Brown, the navigation pane is horrible.
I found myself searching the Quickr 8.2 infocenter for information about for example qptool or the qpconfig.xml.
I also found the search functionality best one I ever used.
Now I double checked the search function, and I believe some improvements have been made, but when you search for example "folder acl" (you know the new functionality), I can find anything.
So, I think that after those point have been taken care of, the Wiki style is really an improvement.
I want my infocenter's back.
The problem I had with the wiki, last time I used it a few weeks back, was the difficulty in following a logic for a post install if I recall. Odd references to some other article or post and no direct links make it frustrating to follow.
Our in house doc gets edited as time goes on, but the infocenter was truly a bible almost.
The wiki has a long way to get there because think about everyone that English is not a native language, they want simple to follow guidelines.
Of course I could be wrong and all of this changed sometime in the last month or so.
Hi,
Need to be able to set the search scope. I'm implementing Quickr Services for WebSphere Portal so only want to find documentation for this. In the info centres it wasn't a problem since you can set the search scope at any level you like. We need that functionality in the wiki or they should revert to the info centres. Ditto for the navigation frustrations the others have already mentioned.
Echoing a lot said before, left pane is terrible as it can't be resized. When I'm in product documentation I want to be able to search just in there.
I understand the collaborative benefits of Wikis in general, but for a definitive source of information for a product, the onus must always be on IBM to provide comprehensive documentation.
Unfortunately, the current docs are patchy, very little information on some of the new features - multilingual support for instance. One part tells you to read installation instructions, but it is not mentioned there. Hardly anything about lists, calendar overlays etc. plus, why can't there be a comprehensive guide to qpconfig.xml as part of the documentation etc etc..
I just worry that the "Wiki" tag will let IBM think it can slippy shoulder proper documentation onto the users.
well, i deifnitely want to know every detail you can provide me as well