Case Studies

Cognology online help

CLIENT:
Cognology Pty Ltd

PROJECT BRIEF:
Develop a comprehensive suite of online help pages to assist administrator and employee users of the Cognology Enterprise application.

DESCRIPTION:
Cognology Enterprise is a highly configurable employee performance review application. As such, the help documentation had to take into account the numerous possible permutations for designing the review process, and the needs of the users who do not generally have an IT background.

Red Pony’s consultant designed an approach that would impose a consistent format on each help page, based on a 'standard' system configuration. Each page provides an explanation of the function of the corresponding page in the application, the possible variations, and the set of tasks to establish or modify the settings on the page.

The right side menu is used to link to related pages and online video tutorials (also scripted by Red Pony). Variations of this format were created for pages incorporating detailed explanations of multiple components such as the group report pages.

The application contains a number of terms specific to the domain and concepts. We created a glossary page with anchored links throughout the help pages, using a different attribute class to distinguish glossary links from page links. We applied US English spelling conventions to all user help materials, as this is the client’s largest growth market.

To facilitate the documentation process, and reduce rework in the review stage, we used the TechSmith application Jing to record the developer's onscreen and verbal explanation of each application function. These recordings provided a reference point for creating the content for each page. The Sitefinity workflow was used to set up a peer review process, with the lead developer and management providing feedback that was incorporated into the pages before they were published to the live site.

"Red Pony is a professional organisation and brings a wealth of experience to projects. Their model for our Online Help Site and Video Learning Tutorials has served Cognology well."

Jon Windust
CEO, Cognology

For more information, visit www.cognology.com.au.

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