Documentation structure

Subject: Documentation structure
From: "Caroline Tabach" <Caroline -at- radcom -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 15:26:08 +0200


Hi,
For a new data-base product different from the general range of products we had up till now, the Product Managers in our company would like to add a wider range of documents than those we have written for our products in the past.
In addition to an Installation and Configuration guide and a User Guide, people would like to see some additional documentation.

I have the following questions:
Up to now I have written a "Getting Started" as a very brief overview chapter near the beginning of a user guide (with links to other chapters if needed). Management are talking about a stand alone Getting Started book. Do people write a "Getting Started" as a stand alone book and if so to what level of details do you go.

They would like a Troubleshooting book.
I thought about structuring this according to various parts of our product, with a table of possible problems and their solutions in each chapter, are there other ways of structuring a troubleshooting guide?

They want a "Use Cases" book what is the accepted structure of such a book? Can it be part of the general user guide (an example of using applications at the end of each chapter?)

They need an ini file guide. The users can change certain ini file commands to a certain extent, however, there are commands that they are not allowed to touch. Would you give explanations for all of the commands, or only for those that they can change?

We need to send them a site survey before installing the equipment, people are unsure of the level of details required. Does anyone have experience of such documents?

The company would really like to give the users "impressive" documentation! Are there additional types of documents that you generally distribute with software products that have not been mentioned here?

Thanks for your input
Caroline Tabach
e-mail: CarolineT -at- radcom -dot- com
http://www.radcom.com
http://www.protocols.com

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