Vintage Documentation

Wired magazine published a great photo essay on classic instruction manuals.  It’s funny and pretty cool to see how far we’ve come as a field. Although my team is in agreement, that poor guy from Apple - what was he thinking selling his share of Apple stock for $800?!

Check out the photo essay here:
http://www.wired.com/culture/design/multimedia/2008/10/ff_manuals

Documentation Survey 3rd Quarter Results

On October 9th, Justin announced our third quarter documentation survey winner. I thought it might be nice to discuss some of our results from the survey with our blog readers.

A link to our survey appears on the Blackbaud User Guides pages (accessed from the Support menu), this blog, EE/FE/SIS Help files (a test run), and in the support newsletters once each quarter. We received 73 responses in Q3 2008.

Overall Key Findings:

• For our five overall rating categories – Accuracy, Completeness, Easy to Understand, Accessibility, and Usefulness – the most frequent rating was a 4 or 5 (out of 5).
• Our best overall rating category was Accuracy. Out of 73 responses, 62 rated us 4 or 5.  
• 72.6% of survey respondents were able to find the answer to their question in the documentation the last time they accessed it.

Question: Please give an overall rating for the following aspects of documentation (user guides and help files only) on a scale of 1 (least favorable) to 5 (most favorable)?

Discussion:
While we are pleased our numbers are mostly 4’s and 5’s we are actively looking for opportunities to improve and we even received some great suggestions from the open ended responses on the survey.

Question: Which Blackbaud product were you using when you accessed the documentation (user guides and help files)?

Discussion: While we are always pleased with the number of responses for The Raiser’s Edge, we are looking for ways to improve the amount of feedback we receive for our other products. While we know we don’t have as many users on The Patron Edge as The Raiser's Edge, we value each user’s feedback equally.

Question: The last time you had a question, did you find the answer in the documentation (user guides and help files)?

Discussion: We are happy to have so many “yes” answers to this question. We hope it means you find your answer quickly and get back to completing your tasks. However, we also see that 27.4% of you did not find your answer. This question is one of our critical ones. We’d love for to you always find your answer. Our numbers have been improving in this category but there is always more room for improvement.

Here are some sample user comments and suggestions pulled from the survey (only initials to protect the privacy of our clients):

User guides are enormous. Small, more streamlined versions, maybe for more discrete tasks would be helpful. I frequently find myself selectively printing only the relevant sections of a guide.
TH

The user guides are easy to understand and are helpful. I like being able to find an answer without having to call customer support.
JH

Love the support offered by Blackbaud, especially easy access to the User Guides - don't have to buy a hard copy, and don't have to deal with free documentation that is purposely incomplete in effort to get me to buy the manual! Good job Blackbaud. Always happy to recommend your company.
AB

Your User Guides are very extensive and frequently help me answer my questions. However,
sometimes when searching I get results that are not dealing with the program I specified.
JF

I especially like the guides when I want an initial overview of the module. They are well organized and explain the technical aspects very clearly.
MT

Discussion: I think the open ended comments are my favorite part of the survey. It's not easy to quantify the information but hearing exactly what you think is critical. And, we take what you say to heart. If you allow us too, we try to follow up with as many people as possible especially when they offer up suggestions, areas for improvements, or mention problems. For example, to the user who mentioned the guides are enormous we would try to see if it would have been better for the user to search for the answer in the help file versus the user guides. Sometimes it can be a matter of choosing the right resource in the situation. And, we do realize that we are unable to help every user every time because there can be situations when contacting the help desk is the right decision.

Thanks again to our Q3 survey respondents! And remember, if you take our survey, every quarter we enter the respondents into a drawing for a $25 Amazon.com gift card.

By Popular Demand - The Raiser's Edge 7 for Beginners

We often get great feedback about our documentation from our users.  Sometimes, it's a friendly head's up of a typo that made its way out into the world (d'oh!).  My favorites, though, are when I get to help fulfill a user’s request or search for information by introducing them to a guide they simply weren’t aware existed. Let’s face it, there’s a lot in The Raiser’s Edge, and as such, there are plenty of guides to browse through (and glance over along the way).

So it was often frustrating to get that one request I couldn’t answer so easily:  The request for the “one guide” that introduces the user to everything The Raiser’s Edge has to offer. A simple overview, painted in broad strokes, something for a novice user. Of course this was an obvious need—like I said, there’s a lot in The Raiser’s Edge—and the lack of a good answer was always the most frustrating. 

So it’s with much pleasure to finally have an answer to that request with The Raiser’s Edge 7 for Beginners. It’s full of great, useful information, ideal for both the new users struggling with the daunting task of having to grasp everything The Raiser’s Edge offers and the experienced users looking to refresh their memories or explore other areas of the program. It’s also unlike any other user guide we provide for The Raiser’s Edge. Here’s an excerpt:

After you use the program for awhile, you will probably discover other navigation features and methods. Use the ones that work best for you. No way of navigating is necessarily right and no way is necessarily wrong; it’s a you say “potayto,” I say “potahto” kind of thing. Well, actually I usually just say “French fries,” but you get the idea.

Written in this humorous, lighthearted, and simplistic style (not to suggest anyone’s a Dummy), it covers the wide range of features available in The Raiser’s Edge, from records to queries, from reports to mail, and everything in between.  You can find it here. (And now I can’t wait for the time a user requests the “one guide” that introduces everything The Raiser’s Edge has to offer!)

3rd Quarter Documentation Survey Winner

Each quarter we enter the respondents of our online survey in a drawing for a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. The 3rd quarter winner for 2008 is Jennifer Sharp of the Foundation for Physical Therapy. Congratulations, Jennifer!

Last quarter we had 73 responses to the survey. That’s right in line with our 50-75 response average per quarter. Moving forward, this number might grow now that we’ve placed a link to the survey in our AES help files (7.77 release). 

And remember, to be entered in our 2008 fourth quarter drawing, complete our online survey. It takes only a few minutes. To send us feedback about our user guides or help file documentation at any time, email documentationcomments@blackbaud.com.