End User Documentation Tools

End user documentation generally refers to the documentation created to help people use software products. The process of creating end user documentation is sometimes left until the last process of a software development project. This often means that the documentation is rushed and does a poor job of explaining what the software application does.

When creating software it's important to take production of end user into consideration right at the start of the project plan. This will result in much higher quality documentation and happy end users.

People for Creating End User Documentation

Software developers and computer programmers are sometimes left to the task of creating end user documentation, while at other times it may fall to the project team leader or project manager to write the documentation.

It's normally much better to involve dedicated staff for creating end user documentation.

Documentation can be either created in-house or outsourced to a specialist documentation writer or technical author. When outsourcing the process of writing end user documentation it's important to check examples of previous work. Also it's a good idea to choose a company who has a good working knowledge of your line of business - if you are creating legal software for example then it's vital to choose a documentation writer who has experience of legal terminology.

Tools for Creating End User Documentation

Creating documentation can be laborious what with the process of collecting application screenshots and remembering to write about every single button and other widget in a user interface. Thankfully there are a number of software packages that can dramatically improve the speed at which end user documentation is created.

A good end user documentation package will also be able to publish the same documentation to multiple formats including printed manuals, Adobe Acrobat PDF files, Windows HTML Help files and online documentation for a support website.

Popular end user documentation packages include Doc-To-Help, RoboHelp and WinChm.