Scribe Insight User Guide

Over the last few months, I've been working on a project with our technical writer, Miriam Lezak, on one of our "must do" projects – a user guide for Scribe Insight. I'm pleased to announce that the user guide is ready and you can download it by clicking on the thumbnail of the cover page below. 

Before I go into detail about what is in the user guide, I'll give you a little background on what we are trying to accomplish with it. While we do not plan for the user guide to ever be a replacement for the online help for Insight, we believe it is important to have a user guide as part of the product documentation set. Specifically, our goal for the user guide is to provide a documentation resource that gives a good overview of the features in the Workbench and the Console, and on how to put them into action. We are trying to present the information in a more linear fashion for what sometimes is a non-linear process you follow when using Insight to design an integration solution.

We also wanted to provide a documentation resource that is printable. Because of the way online help is organized and because of the tools used to create it, it does not lend itself to printing. So creating the user guide in PDF format gives us something that can be read online, searched, and can also be printed if needed.

We expect that the user guide will be helpful for users that are new to the product and are looking for more in depth information than you can find on a data sheet. We also think it will be something that can be sent to prospective customers if they are looking for more information about how Insight works and what it looks like.

Here's a quick overview of what you will find in the user guide.

• An overview of Workbench features and concepts.
• How to use the Workbench to create a DTS file.
• An overview of Console features.
• A chapter highlighting several use case scenarios and how to design solutions for them using Insight.

While I have your attention for this announcement, let me give you a little more information about additional documentation resources that are available. There is the Scribe Insight Installation Guide, which includes the step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring Insight including how to set it up in a failover environment. There is the Scribe help library, which contains a Web help version of all of our product help, including Insight, adapters, templates, and template components.

The last resource I'd like to mention is the Technical Resources vBook. I know it does not fit the usual definition of documentation, but it does contain valuable product information in primarily a video format; so you can think of it as a talking book. Register for the Technical Resources vBook and use the registration code "technical" if you want to check it out. I've set the goal of adding at least six new chapters to the book in 2010. So stay in touch if you want to see what new content we will be publishing.

I'm always open to feedback about what we can do to improve our documentation and training resources. The goal is to make it easier for you to use our software to provide solutions for customers. I keep in touch with our tech support group and I monitor the activity on our forums. I'm also open to your direct feedback.

Comments

[Michael Cross]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! It's about time! Our clients will be very happy to have this resource available.