Help: what you are looking for?

Last week was the idea of the scenario based help and asked to input on what best for you to work. Further reflection, the post was a bit jargony and stilted so I try again.

The most help is written for a specific function or procedure, such as this article on crop pictures in Publisher 2007. But it shows only a part of a larger task that may included crop a picture, insert add captions and effects, alignment of it on the page and so on.

Here is an example of a road map style article on manipulation of images in Publisher 2010, that insert with the image, crop, add to a shape and finally the reset image remove any formatting that you have added.

In the next version of Office, we are planning, more of the contents of the help topics in workflow formats deliver scenarios, done little, to get an end-to-end process that display more than one procedure that successfully to basic tasks.

These workflow scenarios can take various forms. You may be small stories with characters, art, as my author parodies only with more emphasis on the procedures. Help scenarios may roadmaps help article, as this Access 2007 timetable for the creation of a form, a collection of links to to separate help articles for each of the procedures in the workflow. Or they could be given in the form of video such as the Office intervention series.

A whole task from start to finish to explain can be difficult especially when how the task is declared what will the reader does not match.

So, my survey is the question to you:

If you know me to others please log ideas to the comments.

--Bob deLaubenfels

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