Elsinore made the decision to switch from Compiled HTML Help edited with RoboHelp to a wiki-based help system using Screwturn Wiki.  The following is a look into the decision making process that ultimately lead to replacing RoboHelp with a Wiki.

Issues with RoboHelp

In general, we were very frustrated with RoboHelp.  After using it for many years and through several versions of our product, we had assembled a critical mass of grievances.

• Lack of flexibility around updates which were not tied to releases
• Rigidness of source code control and upgrade pains
• Web Help required rebuild of the entire project to generate .htm files, which took 10-15 minutes and required additional files to be checked into source control and then picked up by the Product build system.  This often resulted in internal builds not having updated Help files installed. 
• Updates simply took too much time, effort, and planning.  When a new help resource is available, we want to make it available quickly and effortlessly. 

Advantages of Wiki for Product Help

• Updates made in real-time
• Ability to easily link to other sources of rich content (tech tips, how-to videos, blog entries, developer labs articles, etc.)
• No need for product to "phone home" for help updates
• Source code available so customers can deploy on own network
• Extremely easy for staff to update
• Freedom from RoboHelp compatibility issues
• Free to near-free

Disadvantages of Wiki for Product Help

• Difficult to compile for a printed manual
• Difficult to implement context-sensitive help
• Conversion of existing data from RoboHelp into new format takes time
• Traditional version control approaches must be rethought

The idea of converting a large existing documentation base from RoboHelp to wiki format can be daunting.  In the end we found that it would be easier to manually convert from RoboHelp to wiki than to convert from our older RoboHelp version to newer versions.  The manual conversion also dovetailed nicely with a comprehensive review and update of the documentation.  There are also some conversion tools out there such as the RoboHelp2Wiki tool, which may be useful in the right situations.

We went with Screwturn Wiki over the other available variants for the following reasons:

• ASP.NET
• File-based
• Easy Xcopy deployment, with no need to configure outside dependencies

Summary

In the end, the ease of use and extensive flexibility of the wiki format made this an easy decision.  Our priority was to update our help on a real-time basis with a minimum of frustration for our internal staff, and those goals were best achieved by converting our help from RoboHelp to a wiki. 

We are pleased to announce that our IssueNet product help is now available online at help.elsitech.com. The system is hosted with wiki technology provided by ScrewTurn Wiki, and will completely replace the compiled HTML help (.chm) within IssueNet products with the next release of the product. Changing from compiled HTML help to online help edited via wiki technology offers several key advantages:

• Changes to help are available to all users instantaneously without the need for software updates or software "phoning home"
• Ease of editing is much greater for Elsinore staff, which leads to fresher, more relevant documentation for our users. We like when things are easy too!
• Help that is rich with content. Using online, wiki-based help allows us to quickly add instructional video tutorials, tech tips, and developer labs content directly into the relevant sections of the help.

Changing a process that has been in place for many years is always tough. Since many of our customers are software companies facing these decisions as well, we've written up a short summary of our decision making process to switch from compiled HTML help, edited with RoboHelp, to wiki-based help edited with Screwturn. Check the blog next week for that entry!

Version 4.8 of IssueNet is now available for download through support.elsitech.com by all customers with active support and maintenance. This is a relatively light release that focuses on bug fixes and improvements to drag and drop capabilities on forms. Full details can be found in the Release Notes on elsitech.com. As you may have noticed, we have picked up the pace on releases, with two in the last two months, and three over the past five months. This is a result of two factors:

1. A commitment to quickly addressing any pain points encountered by users
2. The shift to a more agile approach in our own development process

The Elsinore product team is committed to this more frequent release cycle, as we feel it ultimately raises the quality of the product and incorporates customer feedback at a more rapid rate.