Break Up The Help Web

Why?

Searching is the bread-and-butter application in TWiki. This is true of most wiki engines out there, but because of the power in searching and formatting that we get in TWiki, it's especially true here.

The wiki has grown a lot since I first set it up; searches in the Help web aren't as useful for Joe User as they could be, due to the wealth of information returned. I recommend the Help web should be broken up into two webs: Help and Admin.

Help

The Help web remains the main contact point for our users. We can add a CNAME, help.cis.rit.edu, that is caught by titan and redirected to this web on the wiki server.

Admin

This new web contains all the instructions, how-to, and other sysadmin-y things going on.

Consider the following search for netscape in the Help web. Clearly, it's overwhelmed with information that's useless to the end user. It's all very useful information for our admins, but not very good for average users.

How?

1. Create a new Admin web.
2. Identify and move topics from Help web to Admin web using "More actions" at bottom of topics. Ensure that the checkboxes for updating links throughout the wiki is set. In this way, as we relocate any web pages, all other pages referencing them will get their links updated. No broken links!
3. There is no step three.

Asking Questions

How do users ask questions? help@cis.rit.edu is nice, but there's no public archive of the answers. We'd like to capture the knowledge that's shared with our users. Remember, wiki pages are all searchable, so if we answer a question and record the answer on a page, other users can find the answers via blind searches, they don't even have to read the whole page!

Simple Approach

• Use a single topic and the TWiki COMMENT plugin
• Admins sign up to receive emails when changes are made
• When, reviewing their email, they note that there's a new question, they can answer it.
• Questions aren't lost forever; until they're answered, they're always on the topic's page.
• SimpleQADemo
• Can be scaled to a "help queue" for work requests, as well.

Complex Approach

• Use TWiki forms functionality instead of single page COMMENT mechanism.
• Pro: More database like, richer categorization of information.
• Con: More overhead, lots of topics for potentially small units of text.
• Example: AorEditor^?

Work Queue

We want to capture work requests, know when they got done, who they're assigned to, make prioritization, and so on. See WorkReqDemo for a possible approach.