Documentation of System Capabilities

Hello Bill, thank you for posting on the forum.

We are working on more 'bite -sized' Help articles, i.e. articles that are short and specific to a task. This is challenging to do since there a multitude of tasks ClubRunner can accomplish, and also once we begin to write a 'short' article we need to explain any underlying terms and related considerations for the topic.

If we take an example of something relatively specific and concise from www.clubrunnersupport.com - e.g.,

https://www.clubrunnersupport.com/article/796-how-to-add-an-image-picture-to-a-story

As you can see while we try to be concise, there are still many considerations involved with this, and our priority is to be as thorough as possible in as few words/images as possible. Found in 'related articles' at the bottom this could dovetail into another question we are asked which is:

https://www.clubrunnersupport.com/article/1376-how-clubrunner-resizes-stores-images

Updating clubrunnersupport.com is a constantly ongoing process, we update articles almost daily. We will endeavor to continue to provide up to date, accurate information as concise as possible.

If you have any other ideas about www.clubrunnersupport.com we would value your feedback, feel free to post it here. Let me know if you have more questions.

** Here is a search tip: when using any search engine, not just ours, if you know exactly what you need, try starting out as specific as possible. E.g., if you are trying to search for how to add an attendance makeup, instead of typing 'makeup' into the search try typing '"add makeup club" first. You may find a better, more appropriate search result faster. If not, you can always type the more general "makeup" if this doesn't work. **

 

Your response still seems focused on "How to", so let me try by example to illustrate my concern and what I feel would address it.

Example: I wanted to quickly find out the maximum size of document that can be uploaded. I did a search something like "document upload size limit", and got an article that had the information I needed buried in it. I had to scroll and skim through several pages to find this: Note: The document can be no larger than 10 MB in size. The supported file types are bmp, doc, docx, eps, gif, html, htm, jpeg, jpg, pdf, png, ppt, pptx, pub, swf, tif, txt, vsd, xls, xlsx, rtf, and zip.

If you had condensed documentation of system capabilities, I could start with its table of contents, choose something like "Documents" and there, I'd like to see information such as size, file types supported, access types, what access level is needed to upload, that documents can be private or public, that every document has a Web link, that document directories can be accessed in various modules, such as in the "Link" panel accessible in various document editors, and the ClubRunner menu path to get to the document upload capability. I think that if I had such documentation, I'd rarely need any "How To" documentation, since if I know that the system can do what I want, and if I also know how to get to the "place" to do it, everything I then need is in the user interface, which I can read.

 

Hello Bill,

That's a good point, thank you for clarifying. This has been something we've been discussing - to create a 'complete manual' or 'ClubRunner white papers' etc. Each conversation usually ends up with the main requirement that whatever we create:

a. would be quite large
b. must be fluid and constantly updated, since our software changes constantly

For example - 10 MB was an old file size limit we had in Documents until very recently. Now the file size limit for Documents is 15 MB (I changed this in the particular article you were referring to). Because this was bundled with several other updates a few releases ago, this was an oversight on our part. In many other instances, when we do a more major update the first thing we consider is updates to our Knowledgebase.

We have been experimenting with more module based Help that relies less on step-by-step instructions. Our New Bulletin manual was designed with this in mind:

https://docs.clubrunnersupport.com/bulletin

Step by step instructions will always be needed for our newer/less advanced users. But I will discuss with our team about creating a more generalized 'requirements and capabilities' page, something that provides a thumbnail sketch of all the different considerations in our modules, e.g., who can create a story; Documents filesize limits; all of our paid upgrades, etc. I of course cannot guarantee any implementation results or timelines.

If you have an example of an instructional or help site that you prefer, or a model we can consider emulating, I'd be happy to take a closer look. Let me know if you have further comments or questions.

 

Great to hear that you are looking beyond the step-by-step info. Like Bill I often just want to know if something can be done, or not. I will keep a look out for a good help site (I'm sure I've used some, but none spring to mind immediately.)

The Bulletin doc looks lovely - so much space, clear lhs menu (Webinar Feedback might need a better title, but it's not quite an FAQ.)