Factotum: Documentation Handyman

Doc Exchange reports on the proof. Men, you need to listen to the Chairman more:

This is cool:

New on docs.sun.com: Recommended Offers

I wanted to address an issue that comes up from time to time with documentation for anything: how do you find what you are looking for? And do it quickly? The wikis.sun.com model provides a number of ways to get to information:

• You can browse by page, label, and recent updates.
• You can use the global search, for all wiki spaces, or the site-specific search, which we provide on every page of our Communications Suite wiki sites.
• Yes, you can still google for information, but my recommendation is to use the wikis.sun.com specific ways of getting to the information. Indeed, I find the wikis.sun.com search to be quite fast and effective in finding what I'm looking for.

I put together a summary of the various ways to find the information you are seeking. Give it a read: Finding What You Are Looking For

 I do realize that as a writer of this information, I'm at an advantage, knowing where everything is. It is my job to make it easy for the community to also know where everything is. So leave a comment if you have suggestions for how to improve our wiki docs model, especially if you are having difficulty locating particular information.

This very cool lip dub:

Led me to What does this have to do with Technical Communication?:

Everything. We need to incorporate more audiovisual media into instructional documentation. Users love this type of content. Voice on video doesn’t need to be recorded in a studio. Our screen demos don’t need to be storyboarded to death, requiring 75 hours to produce a two minute video. As long as the content is there, on target, in sync with user needs, it will fulfill the user’s desire. As tech writers, we should be creating more video — amateur is acceptable. Personal voice is desirable. Bloopers give human appeal. If we can have fun doing it [truly], it will engage our audience even more.

So, any suggestions for the first tune for Communications Suite?

This one slipped through my radar, since we moved our docs to wikis.sun.com for Communications Suite 6.

Still, if you want to try it for Communications Suite 5 docs, here's your link:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1631.1

Just to bring the Communications Suite 5 documentation story up-to-date, we've recently updated the Deployment Planning Guide, and Messaging Server Administration Guide and Reference. Accordingly, I've updated the docs PDF zip file on the Comms BigAdmin hub, where you can download all the Comms 5 docs at once. Here's the link:

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/comms/files/COMMS5_DOCS.zip