Real Estate Software Leader Improves Efficiency and User Experience with Doc-To-Help

a la mode, inc. provides real estate software applications for real estate professionals. Their products provide solutions for writing appraisals, accepting loan applications, managing inspection orders, and selling homes. Time management and business marketing needs are also fulfilled. The similarity across several of a la mode, inc. products required tedious management of duplicate content in their manuals. This forced a la mode, inc. to copy updates by hand, consuming time and creating unnecessary work. The quality of the documentation began to decline, and they decided to seek out a solution.

Main Goals of a la mode, inc.

• Reduce the amount of time it took to update each manual.
• Spend more time writing topics that addressed real world usage of their products.
• Provide more attention to other manuals that had become outdated.
• Gain full control over meta tags and the structure of their HTML-based Help systems.
• Deliver visually appealing Help materials that their users love to use.

a la mode, inc. selected Doc-To-Help for this project for several reasons. The single-source functionality in Doc-To-Help enables them to create and publish multiple Help formats from one source. NetHelp, Doc-To-Help's platformindependent browser-based Help format, does not contain content that is blocked by security filters. Doc-To-Help allows a la mode, inc. to customize output to fit their needs and gives them the freedom to insert custom meta data into their HTML source files. The feature to compile files into the NetHelp platform and build a completely custom search engine provides flexibility. When a la mode, inc. customers and employees have questions they can access an online Help site that's fun to use.

a la mode, inc. evaluated the conditional features available in Doc-To-Help and found that the following features made Doc-To-Help a more suitable solution than other tools such as Adobe RoboHelp®.

• The ability to create a few "master" Help projects and easily manage a large amount of conditional content.
• The Doc-To-Help custom tagging feature, along with its single-sourcing technology lends to its flexibility.
• The freedom to share source topic files among a handful of projects. Doc-To-Help's individual file storage makes it easy to share content among projects.
• Doc-To-Help's theme designs, editable templates, and style sheets allow users to customize their output in both online and print outputs. The opportunities range from simple color changes to more advanced items such as custom buttons and Javascript.

Ultimately, Doc-To-Help's single-sourcing makes it possible for a la mode, inc. to eliminate duplicate copies of source files, and deliver multiple versions of content in NetHelp, HTML Help, and PDFs.

"The fact that Doc-To-Help's single-source authoring allows us to combine nine manuals into five conditional projects without losing the individuality in each manual has been simply amazing to us. More importantly though, we now only have to update one set of source files to distribute an update to all manuals," said Lance Dockins, Documentation Specialist & Trainer at a la mode, inc.

With Doc-To-Help's NetHelp functionality, a la mode, inc. simplified their publishing process, touched-up the look of their Help files, and built a cross-manual search engine. This enables a la mode, inc. to distribute their Help files via a custom built search engine to both clients and employees. To view the a la mode, inc. search page and Help files, visit http://help.alamode.com/search/search.aspx.

"Thanks to the way that Doc-To-Help compiles Help files into NetHelp, we've been able to add all of our manuals into a large Google®-powered search engine that simultaneously searches our support documents, manuals, videos, and other internal documentation to provide our customers and employees with quick access to the content they need. In large part, we were able to do this because NetHelp doesn't use Flash content. Doc-To-Help leaves source HTML and meta tags intact and NetHelp loads the entire frame of our manuals any time a topic file is accessed directly. Without the magic of Doc-To-Help's Doc-To-Help Markup Language, our custom search engine wouldn't have been possible at all," said Lance Dockins, Documentation Specialist & Trainer at a la mode, inc.

Key Benefits Doc-To-Help Provides a la mode, inc.

• Single-sourcing: Conditions are set on the text, topic, and document levels resulting in the flexibility to create multiple Help projects from a single-source project.
• Time-savings & Work Efficiency: With single-source Help authoring, they save an average of 30-40 minutes per manual (three hours per update). They also have the time to update manuals that have become outdated.
• Quality Documentation and Customer Satisfaction: a la mode, inc. is now able to focus on creating better quality content for their customers with more relevant information that is easier to understand and to better address real life product scenarios and product features.
• Easy Access through Search: While their Help files were always directly accessible online, their new custom search engine allows their customers and employees to quickly and easily search through thousands of Help topics to find the content they need.
• Employee Gains: With the increased quality of their documentation, a la mode, inc. fields fewer clarification request calls.
• a la mode, inc realized outstanding results with Doc-To-Help; producing multiple and completely customized deliverables from one project.

About a la mode, inc.
Founded in 1985, a la mode, inc. has become the leader in real estate technology by developing software, workflow management systems, and e-commerce technology for a wide range of participants in the mortgage lending and home selling processes. The a la mode, inc. WinTOTAL appraisal management software is used by more than half the real estate appraisers in North America, a market share greater than its next four competitors combined. For more information, visit www.alamode.com.

About ComponentOne
ComponentOne is a premier provider of award-winning tools and components for software developers building advanced, enterprise-style Microsoft Windows Forms, Web-based and Mobile applications; Help authors who write and design Help systems; and support centers who utilize self-service and knowledge management solutions. For more information on ComponentOne or its products, visit, http://www.componentone.com.

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