Documentation for a Campus Management System
Because there was no user documentation for the campus management system, which was developed by Bucerius Law School, the goal of the project was to create a guide to cover selected topics for users who work in campus management.
Approach and methods
The campus management system features multiple modules that cover various areas of campus management. For some modules, there are several users; others are used by only a few people only. That is why only the topics relevant for larger user groups were to be documented. However, all users should be familiarized with the basic operation principles of the software. To cover this requirement, we developed a Quick Start guide with tutorials.
We collaborated with law school management and software users to identify the most common tasks and those topics that were in most need of an explanation. We used FrameMaker/XML to document the topics according to DITA principles, developing task-oriented descriptions, concept topics, and reference information. We provided these services:
- Creating a layout that corresponded to the law school's corporate identity
- Describing the basic operation principles through tutorials
- Identifying and documenting the most common tasks of selected software modules
- Organizing review cycles with software users
- Continuously updating and extending the documentation based on the user stories from the agile development environment
Insights
About Bucerius Law School
Bucerius Law School is the first private law school in Germany. The school was founded in 2000 by the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius.