Putting documentation into a knowledge base

Rhythmyx Ideas and Feature Requests
1

It would make loads of sense to add the documentation into an online knowledge base so it is easy to search and link to these forums.

2

A knowledge base can reflect incremental changes more easily than PDF documents. As it is, we use these forums as a sort of knowledge base, hoping to find information that hasn’t yet made it into official documentation, or that may be difficult to document formally (perhaps questions that are more advanced or less advanced than the target audience of the documentation).

3

The trouble with forums is that people don’t usually post the final code that they eventually find to get the thing they were trying to work. So everyone who comes along later has to solve the same last problem that the first person to try it was stuck on.

Andrew.

4

I think we see the need for all of the above

  • PDF Doc for “formal documentation sets” (though a better ability to link/reference the docs might still be needed)

  • online KB for the “best practices” type doc that changes a lot and needs an active community maintaining it (this might be done with a Wiki, etc.)

  • forums for “discussion and debate” as in here.

  • blogs for “running accounts” of either a project or daily operations that are often easier to check and give insight to problems you didn’t know you had or will have. A few customers are blogging already, and Percussion has an “internal facing” set of blogs for all the services we provide (we have to secure it since it contains customer confidential info some times, or because customers do not want details of their projects being seen). I highly recommend blogging about your WCM projects though, and we plan to host those blogs here if there is demand for it.

  • email for “zero commitment” type situations, such as random idea suggestions from the field, or emergency issues, etc.

And of course, slap RSS on all of it so you can see what changed where and when.

We’re looking actively at all of these. Some are in place but only internal to Percussion, some have crossed over to the Extranet already, some are in process.