Cocoon Technologies Software AG Implements a JavaHelp Help System and Printed Documentation In No Time With Doc-To-Help

Cocoon Technologies Software AG Implements a JavaHelp Help System and Printed Documentation In No Time With Doc-To-Help

Cocoon Technologies Software AG needed to develop Help files and user documentation for new software in JavaHelp and printed manual formats. They selected ComponentOne Doc-To-Help because they needed to concentrate most of their efforts on the information development and content writing process, along with the need to quickly and productively implement their Help systems without spending too much time learning and setting up a Help authoring tool.

The objective of Cocoon Technologies Software AG was to develop and distribute CoachWare, a software suite for advanced e-learning and Learning Content Management System (LCMS) solutions. The scope of their writing required a huge amount of user documentation. Since no Help authoring tools were used in the past, the user documentation had to be developed from scratch. Their Java-based software required the JavaHelp Help format, plus they needed to provide printed manuals.

They didn’t want to spend a long time learning a Help authoring tool, so they looked for a tool that could easily customize the appearance of Help targets. With these requirements, they decided to use a specific documentation process and aimed to use a specialized Help authoring tool to create the Help files and documentation. The implementation of their documentation project consisted of the evaluation of Help authoring tools, setting up Doc-To-Help, and customization of Word templates and CSS, as well as development, writing, review cycles, and compilation. 

“The most important thing we learned was to take the time to determine the requirements of our documentation project, then carefully evaluate different Help authoring tools in the market. We figured we would be living with this tool for awhile,” said Karina Lehrner-Mayer, Information Developer at Cocoon Technologies Software AG. "As experts of learning management, we wanted to use only the most professional tool to develop our user documentation."

To reach their goal, they used Doc-To-Help to produce two different Help outputs, JavaHelp and printed manuals (see table below for screen shots of the resulting output), which were created from a single set of Word files. The Technical Writers were experienced Word users and were able to quickly and easily customize the built-in templates of Doc-To-Help, create documentation projects, and concentrate on their writing abilities. With Doc-To-Help, the Documentation Department was able to take care of the whole content production and Help creation, and develop and deliver high quality documentation in JavaHelp and PDF files without having the engineers devote their time to the development of the JavaHelp files.

Cocoon Technologies Software AG was able to customize the appearance of these files by changing the built-in Doc-To-Help templates. In addition, they also customized CSS that were used in JavaHelp. And of course, to customize the CSS used by JavaHelp, they needed to know their way around HTML and stylesheets. The CoachWare Author User Guide project is made up of five Word files and approximately 350 pages of printed documentation (including more than 300 pictures). In addition, they provided the same content in JavaHelp format by simply selecting the target and clicking a button, resulting in more than 300 Help topics. The online Help is an integrated part of their CoachWare software, and features an automatic link to subtopics and hyperlinks to related topics, which lead to intuitive navigation through Help topics.

The advantages Cocoon Technologies Software AG experienced with Doc-To-Help consisted of:

• The Single Sourcing Capability: This provided them with ease-of-use, and increased productivity.
• JavaHelp Target: They found that Doc-To-Help was one of the few Help authoring tools that support this Help file format.
• Printed Manual Target – This enabled them to modify the templates and change the appearance of their printed manuals.
• Target Specific Needs: The conditional text feature allowed them to designate portions of their source document for individual platforms, Help targets, and attributes.
• Modular Projects: Since they were creating a multi-document project (five Word files), they were able to support modular creation of contents and implement changes effortlessly.
• Fast Compilation of Targets – They experienced dramatically faster build times compared to older versions of Doc-To-Help (Doc-To-Help 2000).

This single sourcing solution provided Cocoon Technologies Software AG with the ability to create JavaHelp and printed manuals from a single Word document, greatly minimizing their work load and allowing them to concentrate on other more important projects. It also allowed them to create JavaHelp, which is not a main Help format commonly produced, as well as the ability to customize their Help targets.

As this project was only the first step in creating a huge amount of user documentation, Cocoon Technologies Software AG is confident to handle even larger volumes with Doc-To-Help in the future. They also plan to use the single sourcing feature to provide their user documentation as HTML 4.0 Help.

About Cocoon Technologies Software AG
Cocoon Technologies Software AG provides solutions with focus on creating, managing and delivering highly personalized e-learning content. Cocoon Technologies Software AG is determined to provide on demand solutions with ease of integration and compliance with international standards to significantly improve cost effectiveness through activation and reusability of knowledge assets – within as well as across organizations.