User Support with Context-Sensitive Help
DI S T R I B U T I O N L I S T:
Company: Contact persons: Reason:
GMT Europe b.v. M. Abbas B. Tas
MT GMT Europe Nick Wijnands Jeffry Pelk Pieter van Ginkel
Approval Approval Info Info Info Info
Approval GMT Europe Approval GMT Europe
Name : Mark Abbas Position : Managing Director Date :
Signature :
Name : Birol Tas
Position : Manager Product Development Date :
Signature :
Approval Project Support Office:
CO N F I G U R A T I O N M A N A G E M E N T
Version Date Paragraph Modification
1.0 22-02-2012 Initial document; draft version FL
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 08-03-2012 15-03-2012 22-03-2012 24-04-2012
Review; changes and additions BT Review; changes and additions FL & BT
Review by JP, PvG, NW. Changes and additions BT Changes and additions FL & BT
T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s
Table of Contents ______________________________________________________ 2
1.
Content ___________________________________________________________ 3
1.1
Purpose_______________________________________________________________ 3
1.2
Background ___________________________________________________________ 3
1.3
Project Definition and Scope _____________________________________________ 3
1.4
Business Case (Initial) __________________________________________________ 3
1.5
Organisation Structure __________________________________________________ 4
1.6
Communication Plan ____________________________________________________ 5
1.7
Project Plan (Initial) _____________________________________________________ 5
1.8
Project Time Lines and Control ___________________________________________ 7
1.8.1 Time Lines and Releases _____________________________________________________________ 7
1.9
Risk Log (Initial) ________________________________________________________ 8
1 .
C o n t e n t
1 . 1
P u r p o s e
The project Context-Sensitive Help aims to cut the support phone times, reduce the number of support calls and provide proper basic help functionality.
The purpose of this document is to authorize the start of the project. The document is the
foundation of all management decisions, which are necessary during the project. And to evaluate the success of the project afterwards.
1 . 2
B a c k g r o u n d
Since January 2012 the Documentation for CLEAR.net has been deemed important. The Project: User Support with Context-Sensitive Help(CSH) is the first step towards online documentation for the CLEAR.net application.
(Refer: SRS User Support with Context-Sensitive Help; document nr. 12025731)
1 . 3
P r o j e c t D e f i n i t i o n a n d S c o p e
The scope of this project entails the design, development, implementation, maintenance and versioning, change and configuration management including version control, of context-sensitive help for the CLEAR.net application.
The scope includes the design and setup of a proper process flow to maintain the content of the context-sensitive help.
The context-sensitive help will be written in Dutch, and translated into English. The goal of this project is to finish the context-sensitive help in Dutch. Translation to English will be done afterwards. This is not in the scope of this project.
Last but not least, the project entails to make it possible to print the content of the context-sensitive help.
The project User Support with Context-Sensitive Help is a cooperation product from the Analysis & QA Team and the Development Team of GMT Europe.
logistics, our team of 55 professionals has, over the years, developed into a renowned ICT service
provider in the waste and environmental industry.
Our company goal is to provide the customer with innovative ICT solutions, software solutions and services so that our customers can build their reputation as a leader in their market. Our
international and loyal customer base can benefit from the Best Practices embedded in our CLEAR application.
In such an application, user help is a must have. Therefore we established the Project: User Support with Context-Sensitive Help.
Short term goal is to implement context-sensitive help for CLEAR.net; with respond and refer
function. Users can give their opinion and ask for help through the [email protected] link. The
Search function is dependent on the progress Pieter makes with Lucene, probably not the first three deliveries.
Long term vision is to provide process context help for CLEAR.net whereby the end user carries out from the workflow system his tasks: actions within the application based on a business process, and gets help while doing these tasks.
The option to print the help can be carried out from the html file, later on the .pdf option will be built
The approach within this project is to create a context-sensitive help wich will be in line with the long term vision.
Important feature in this context-sensitive help application is the option to allow the end-user to add context-sensitive help themselves.
1 . 5
O r g a n i s a t i o n S t r u c t u r e
Within GMT Europe, Analysis & QA and Development team work together for this project. The project team exists of Francien van Leeuwen, Nick Wijnands, Jeffry Pelk and Pieter van Ginkel. The general lead belongs to the Manager Product Development, Birol Tas. The overall project responsibility rests with the management team of GMT Europe. The project organisation structure is displayed:
MT GMT Europe
Birol Tas Project Manager
Project Team User Support with Context Sensitive Help CLEAR.net Analyse & QA Team
Francien van Leuwen
Development Team Jeffry Pelk Nick Wijnands
Advies & Afstemming Titan/AfvalRIS Pieter van Ginkel
1 . 6
C o m m u n i c a t i o n P l a n
The project team has a two week project meeting led by the Manager Product Development for the duration of the project.
The project leader informs the MT during the MT meetings.
Furthermore, a few sessions will be planned to show the design and the solution in progress for a couple of key players from the organisation (klankgroep). During this sessions the (desired) solution will be presented, and the attendees will be asked for feedback.
1 . 7
P r o j e c t P l a n ( I n i t i a l )
Context-sensitive help topics provide information about what users see in an application – details about fields and controls on dialogs, explanations of messages and descriptions of window objects. Context-sensitive help is frequently used to help users to complete a task. Users get information in the context of where they are instead of searching for information in an online index or table of contents. With context-sensitive help, users can complete a task while the help window is still displayed on the window the user had been working on. The user is less likely to give up. It can also reduce support costs when users can easily find the information themselves.
Basically three disciplines have to work together to accomplish and continue the context-sensitive help:
Determines in cooperation with the Business Information Analyst a list of all windows and the hooks to implement the context-sensitive help
Lead Business Information Analist - Lead Software Developer:
Notifies the author in case of changes to the CLEAR.net application; so the
context-sensitive help project can be updated and re-generated
Business Information Analist:
Creates and writes context-sensitive help topics
Creates map files and assigns map IDs to each context-sensitive help topic
Generates the project to include the context-sensitive help topics with the output
Tests the context-sensitive help topics in the application to make sure they work properly
Repairs any errors that should be fixed in the context-sensitive help system
Includes the information from the RFC into the end user documentation
The context-sensitive help solution for CLEAR.net will as much as possible follow the solution in Titan framework as designed by Pieter van Ginkel. For alignment of the solution in CLEAR.net and Titan/AfvalRIS, Pieter van Ginkel will be part of the project team.
The following illustration gives an indication of how the functionality will look like. Basically, the help can be opened per input screen, by clicking the <?> button, as displayed in the following figure or pressing <F1> key.
This action by the end user will open the context-sensitive help content for the particular input window, in a separate window within the application.
In the implementation of the solution for CLEAR.net, the context help will not contain screenprints to keep the content as small as possible in terms of KBs/MBs. The context help content will only consist of text, to describe the use of the particular input screen.
1 . 8
P r o j e c t T i m e L i n e s a n d C o n t r o l
The projects starts with the approval of GMT Europe Management Team and ends December 15th, 2012. The context-sensitive help will be available in CLEAR.net release 9.2R5.
The project comprises a budget of 1656 internal hours from Product Development department.
1 . 8 . 1 T i m e L i n e s a n d R e l e a s e s
The approach to implement the context-sentive help will be modular and functionality-driven. In the first phase the tooling and technical solution will be selected, in the next phase the solution will be integrated within CLEAR.net, in the final phase the context-sensitive help will be written and available in the application.
1 . 8 . 1 . 1 C o n t e x t - S e n s i t i v e H e l p D e l i v e r i e s T i m e t a b l e
2012 Release End Date CSH Version Content of the CSH Q3 9.2R4 Q3 2012 CSHelp 0.1 Operations Module
Planning Module Stosag
Word Link Internet Order CO2 Notifications
Hours Export Functionality Q4 9.2R5 Q4 2012 CSHelp 0.2 Operations Module
Relation Module Usability Improvements:
1. Omnisearch 2. Search Act Principle CLEAR Classic Missing Functionality Q1 9.2R6 Q1 2013 CSHelp 1.0 Operations Module
Purchase and Sales Module Customer Contact Centre SEPA Legislation New WorkFlow Q2 9.2R7 Q2 2013 CSHelp 1.1 Agendering Module
1 . 9
R i s k L o g ( I n i t i a l )
From the Risks must be mentioned:
Professional constraint: lacking knowledge on tooling and design for context-sensitive
online help
Professional constraint: discontinuity in writing and publishing context-sensitive help
Professional constraint: the help must be efficient and speedy
