New Help Site

by Kate Mueller

We just completed a migration of all of our help documentation to a new platform. Here's what you need to know about the change.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

You'll keep accessing it using the same trusted url (http://help.devresults.com), and all the same content is there, just in a smoother interface.

New landing page

The significant difference you'll see is the site's initial landing page. Rather than the topical layout of the old landing page, the default sections here showcase Popular Articles (those most often used) and New Articles (anything recently added or recently updated). We hope this layout helps highlight when we add new pages or update existing pages--it lets us add colored call-outs to the articles themselves on this homepage, as well as the table of contents categories at the left that contain those articles.

Old landing page

The old landing page still exists, called "Old Home." So if you don't like change, you can still use this page. To access it, scroll to the bottom of the Table of Contents or just search "Old Home."

Why did we change?

While we liked our old help site documentation platform (HelpIQ), there were a few reasons we chose the new platform (KnowledgeOwl):

  1. Mobile device responsiveness: KnowledgeOwl adapts its layout and structure more elegantly to a range of screen sizes and devices.
  2. Related articles: KnowledgeOwl automatically generates a list of related articles at the bottom of every help page, making it easier to find all the info you need without too much work.
  3. Easy integration for in-DevResults help: We are working to embed more of our help content into DevResults itself. KnowledgeOwl has some great functionality to help us do this, which we've already done some proof-of-concept work with. We're excited to explore this further to improve DevResults' usability and helpfulness.
  4. Smoother layout: KnowledgeOwl is built using Bootstrap, which we use in most of our public-facing materials, so it helps us maintain a more consistent look and feel.
  5. Better analytics: We've relied on our own sense of documentation and reports from customers to figure out where we have documentation gaps. KnowledgeOwl provides some nice analytics to help us track which pages are most often referenced and which search terms don't return any results. This should help us be more proactive in identifying documentation gaps and addressing them faster.
  6. A great team: I've spearheaded the evaluation, selection, and implementation of KnowledgeOwl, and I have loved working with them every step of the way. Like the DevResults team, they are a small group of energetic, dedicated folks, and they have gone above and beyond in answering my questions, letting me try out settings, importing our documentation, and responding to feature requests and bug reports. If your organization is looking for a documentation platform for employee manuals, help documentation, etc., they're worth checking out!

We'd love to get your feedback on the new help site. Please email us with any comments or questions.