In the May release of the Chemical Compliance Manager 8 software, Safetec included a new method of providing help documentation which is both innovative and flexible. If you are familiar with Safetec’s software, you may know the user experience is extremely customizable. The underlying Dynamic Forms technology allows each form to be designed based on a particular industry, customer, facility or role. As you can imagine, this flexibility posed an interesting challenge for the online help system. Most online help systems provide static reference data. Safetec’s new help system is context sensitive on a per web-page basis. This feature alone is fairly common, but we go one step further by allowing the per-page help files to be customized at either the enterprise level (all facilities) or on a website-by-website basis which would allow facility-specific or even role-specific documentation.
The user’s experience is seamless. Just click on the “Help” link on the toolbar (available on every page) and the corresponding help file is displayed.
We have also made the switch to PowerPoint as the software package for generating help files. The PowerPoint files are converted to PDF format when released into production so you don’t need PowerPoint installed on your system.
You might be wondering, “Why use PowerPoint?”. The answer is based on our findings as to what people really need and want out of help documentation. The reality is long-winded, text-based documentation doesn’t get used. In our PowerPoint approach, almost every page features a screenshot with high-level descriptions of what’s happening on the page along with some quick definitions and background information. Each page is easy-to-read and easily grasped. We call this QDC (Quickly Digestible Content) format.
The slideshow approach also works great for training. You can save the help files to your local system and use them as a base for your own training presentations. As I mentioned previously, the online help files are in PDF format, but you can request a copy of the original PowerPoint files from any of your Safetec contacts. This would allow you to pick and choose which slides you wanted to use as well as adding in your own slides or combining with an existing presentation.
Don’t like the slideshow approach? One great advantage of this flexible new help system is we can create any style of help documentation you want and then override the base documentation with the new documentation. In fact, you could create your own documentation and send it to us and we can easily drop it in to your existing website(s).
Please feel free to contact Safetec if you’re interested in learning more about this capability and how your online help documentation could be customized for your organization.
Labels: chemical compliance manager, enhancement, new feature, release
The next release of
CCM v8 includes a new navigation panel called “Related Links.” This panel contains a static list of page links commonly used in conjunction with the currently visible page.
The link panel is prominently placed on select search and detail pages. This navigation improvement benefits the user by allowing them to quickly navigate a particular module without returning to the main menu.
As well as being a pleasant visual enhancement to the web application, both new and advanced users will be sure to find this feature a tremendous time saver.
Labels: chemical compliance manager
