Primary Tools Used: SnagIt, MS SharePoint, MS Office, MS Teams,

Dates: July 2023 to October 2023

Deliverables: MS Word files with screenshots to be printed out and used for training end users

Wrote printable docs for training end users on Infor/M3 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. This new system would handle all the sales, accounting, inventory and order fulfillment for branches of a national company selling construction supplies and services.

This project was still in the early stages of testing before being rolled out. My role was to document how typical tasks in one division would be handled in the new system. To do this, I:

• watched screencasts of previous software demos by Subject Matter Experts (SME) and the Implementation Team
• Re-created these steps using beta versions of the Infor software
• Created screenshots with SnagIt to capture the various steps of completing a certain task.
• Wrote instruction sets for these tasks — accompanied by relevant screenshots.

Also: prepared an early draft of a style guide to be used by other technical writers and occasionally proofed other people’s docs for accuracy and consistency.

Technologies Used: XML Oxygen Author, Docbook 5, SnagIt, Subversion,  XEP PDF Processor, Personal Brain mindmap software, iAnnotate PDF, Visio

Samples: Here and Here. (More available upon request).

Linkedin Testimonial: CEO Alan Runyan

Dates: 2/2010 to 9/2010; 2013. 2nd Revised edition from  5/2013 to 10/2013.

I wrote a 246 page technical book User’s Guide to Plone 4. It was a total rewrite of the prior edition (which I  helped to edit). For the Plone 4 edition, I wrote 100% of the content (including the interior artwork, layout, glossary and index). Besides the cover art and technical review, I did the planning, formatting and organization of the content, plus most of  the editing. I did it as a work-for-hire with my previous employer, and provided camera-ready copy to Amazon’s Createspace for print publication. (A PDF version is also for sale at a reduced price).  The target audience was the beginning/intermediate  end user for Plone, an open source content management system.

I wrote the content entirely in an XML language for publishing  called  Docbook 5. I wrote an XSLT customization layer that used the XSL-FO Docbook stylesheets for producing a PDF. In this customization layer, I specified layout features, title page features, font defaults and simple XSLT transformations to make the content presentable.  I used the XEP PDF processor from RenderX. Using the SnagIt tool, I made print-ready screenshots and did light editing of graphics for it. Through experimentation, I devised a method and minimum requirements for producing graphics. Using diagrams I also created original diagrams to illustrate workflow states in the Plone content management system.  Also, I had to import a small amount of information from the previous edition which was produced using LaTex.

The subject of the book was already something I was relatively familiar with. I’d written Plone documentation for Enfold for 2 years, but for this project, I had to identify newbie issues and explain lots of areas that typically give problems to end users. Plone 4 was a major version change with new features, and my company’s goal was for the book’s release to coincide approximately with the release of the software. During the writing of the book, I was working with “beta software” and had to deal with numerous bugs, interface idiosyncrasies and things which had never been documented. To gather information, I did a lot of testing on my own, but I followed developer mailing lists and user forums for information. During the whole process, I filed about a dozen bugs with the software project.

Here are some details about the overall production process:

• Outlining and Information Gathering using Personal Brain mindmapping software. I chose chapter subjects after extensive discussion with Enfold staff.
• Regular checkins into a subversion repository using Tortoise SVN.
• Although I worked mainly from home, I gave project reports weekly with Enfold managers.
• We did project tracking using a customized version of JIRA. I assigned questions and tasks to Enfold developers, and Enfold people assigned tasks and bugs to me. Technical review & editing were managed 100% on JIRA.
• I used Oxygen XML Author to author the XML directly. Even though it supports a WYSIWIG view, I decided to use iPad’s iAnnotate app to do proofreading and edits directly on the PDF (which I would later transfer to the XML).

Tools used: Microsoft Office, Gimp Graphics

A recent employer (Enfold Systems) provided consulting services for web site management. My role was to produce end user manuals for individual clients to document advanced system administration tasks. These manuals were narrow in scope and needed to be completed within a defined period of time (usually less than a week).  Deliverables were usually 10+ pages and given to clients in PDF format.

Topics included:

• configuring  a proxy and load-balancing solution on  Linux using open source software (Apache, Varnish, Plone).
• setting up and maintaining a wiki, with usage & usability tips.
• backup and disaster recovery in the event of hardware failure
• other Windows system administration tasks: site migration, performance monitoring, user management.