Commenting on the changes in the help & documentation industry over the past two and a half decades, CIO Rigo Vangheel said, “There has and always will be a need to provide documentation to end-users. The main difference however is that these days content is more and more provided in real time over the internet to end-users, which makes it easier to keep content up-to-date since file distribution is not longer an issue. Managing and delivering help & documentation in true real time offers your team a lot more flexibility. Your software applications will be able to launch help calls, for which dynamic content is provided from a database on a web server. A collaborative web-based approach is probably the best long-term solution for managing and distributing your product documentation.”

This is exactly the reason why 4.ST launched HelpServer. HelpServer is one of the most comprehensive web-based content management systems (CMS) in today’s market. HelpServer provides a secured web-based team-authoring environment that uses a shared, object-based content database.

Authors can collaborate in real time to create, manage, translate, reuse and deliver personalized dynamic content over the Internet to end-users. HelpServer allows your team of authors to easily create online knowledge portals, from which up-to-date manuals can be printed to PDF files on the spot by end-users. Next to web-based delivery, authors can still single source (=export) content from the database to different file formats if needed.

“Since HelpServer is entirely web-based we started offering it as SaaS (=Software as a Service) approximately one year ago. Customers who do not want to deploy HelpServer on their proprietary web server can opt for HelpServer SaaS and have their HelpServer environment hosted on our servers as a cloud computing service”, said HelpServer CIO, Mr. Rigo Vangheel.

Want to try HelpServer without having to download and install?

Because we will be celebrating our 25th anniversary with a variety of special activities in 2012, we start by offering you a free SaaS trial environment. You simply request a trial version and a few minutes later your HelpServer SaaS trial environment is up and running in the cloud. None of the technical writers in your team will need to download/install any software in order to start co-authoring content in real time.

HelpServer SaaS comes with free training and support, even during the 30 day trial period. Our consultants will be happy to demo HelpServer to your team and help you achieve a jump start.

4.ST has always been focusing on enhancing the functionality of its products based on customer input and feedback and is committed to keep on working like this. 4.ST has more than 250 corporate clients in finance, insurance, air travel and shipment in over 20 countries.

For more information visit www.helpserver.eu or contact marketing@helpserver.eu.

All product and company names mentioned are trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact: Dimitri Tetsch (email)
T: +32 16 40 40 54
F: +32 16 40 50 50
4.ST – HelpServer
Technologielaan 21-b1
B-3001 LEUVEN
BELGIUM

Adobe celebrates the 20th anniversary of RoboHelp with a limited period 40%-off “switcher” promotion. Switch from MadCap Flare, Author-it, or Doc-To-Help Enterprise, or Doc-To-Help for Word, and save 40% off Adobe RoboHelp 9!

Time frame: October 17th, 2011 through February 16th, 2012

Scope: US only

To learn more, please sign up for the upcoming Adobe RoboHelp “Switcher” webinar at 10 am PST on 30 November (Wednesday).

The 4-day course will cover a range of technical writing topics, including:

• Basic/Intermediate Flare training
• Half-day CSS advanced training
• Half-day advanced single-sourcing
• Lunch with the MadCap development team
• Exclusive MadCamp attendee giveaways

Preview of never-before-seen features and functionality currently in development:

• See the latest new features and functionality of MadCap Software’s products

Training will be held at the MadCap Software office, located in beautiful downtown La Jolla, California:

• A five-minute walk to the La Jolla Cove, restaurants and shopping
• Located just 15 minutes north of downtown San Diego

Get more information on pricing and scheduling or register.

The new release includes a number of exciting and improved features.

• The Author-it Live UI now available in French and German
• Support for Microsoft Office 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Support for Google Analytics in Web Help
• Ability to configure a default release state for your library
• Re-import functionality now includes support for Word documents
• New system heading variable can be used to display a book title or topic heading in HTML and Web Help
• Ability to filter the publishing console’s Book List by ‘Show All Books’ or ‘Show Recent Books’ options
• Ability to use a placeholder to control the word order for chapter numbering in Print outputs (especially for languages other than English)
• Updated word order for Japanese cross-references in Print outputs
• Information for working with SDL Trados Studio 2009 and Author-it XML is available in the Knowledge Center

Full release notes are available in the Author-it Knowledge Center.

(Disclaimer: While Char James-Tanny of JTF Associates is an Author-it Certified Consultant, she did not receive anything in return for posting this information.)

Help & Manual 5.4 can run Microsoft Sandcastle to read your Visual Studio source code and comments, builds the documentation structure for your functions and classes, integrating the comments found in the source. Then, instead of compiling the “finished” CHM or HTML files, it transforms the Sandcastle XML data into a Help & Manual XML project, which you can then edit in Help & Manual, alone or in a team, and publish in any of the many supported output formats.

Visit the Help & Manual website for more information. Read the official press release.

The Right Information, to the Right People, at the Right Time.

SAN JOSE and NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA – USA, SYDNEY – AUSTRALIA and AUCKLAND – NEW ZEALAND – MARCH 21, 2010.

Author-it Software Corporation (ASC), a world leader in software for enterprise authoring, content management, publishing, and localization, today announces the launch of Author-it Aspect – a web based application that dynamically delivers content to users based on their profiles. Author-it Aspect, which forms part of the Author-it Dynamic Assistance Platform will be officially launched to the public at the WritersUA Conference in Seattle, United States on March 21-24, 2010.

The volume of written content within the world’s enterprises continues to explode. As the volume of content increases, so to do issues associated with searching for and finding relevant information. Today it is not just a matter of getting information to people. It is about getting the right information, to the right people, at the right time.

To solve this problem, ASC developed Author-it Aspect, a web-based application that works in conjunction with Author-it. Content is written in the Author-it Enterprise Authoring Platform including any variations. Examples of variations could be that a process may differ based on the operating system used or a policy may differ by state or country.

Read full story >>

About Author-it Software Corporation

Author-it Software Corporation (ASC) is a world leader in enterprise software for authoring, content management, publishing, and localization. Its flagship product, Author-it, is an end-to-end content management solution capable of publishing content to multiple deliverables. Since its release in 1997, ASC has produced five major versions of Author-it, resulting in a robust product built on proven technologies. Author-it is used in over 50 countries, by over 3500 clients and chosen by Fortune 100 organizations for worldwide deployments, making it one of the world’s most popular content management tools. ASC has offices in San Jose and Newport Beach, California, Sydney, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand. More information is available at www.author-it.com.

For further comments, industry opinions or interview opportunities, please contact:

Steve Davis
President
Author-it Software Corporation
sdavis@author-it.com
+1 (408) 701 1408

In addition, Author-it has released a Best Practice Guide for embedded topics.

Read the press release.

Read the press release.

They have created a survey to gain more insight in user-friendliness of functionality and overall user experiences. With the results, they plan to:

• Write an article.
• Create a matrix showing a clear overview of functionalities and associated user-friendliness score.
• Write a more practical report with recommendations.

It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete the one-page, 60-question survey. If you would like a copy of the results, you can enter your email address. You can also volunteer to participate in a short phone interview regarding the results.

The students are aware that the results are not scientific, but your help is appreciated in giving them solid data that they can analyze.

Take the survey.

If you have any comments or questions, post them here. We will do our best to get the answers.