What is Help Authoring Tool: Benefits, Features & Use Cases

Top features of Help Authoring Tools

As we’ve already mentioned, there are some distinct features that distinguish a HAT from other types of software.

Here’s a quick list of features you might expect:

• File import
• WYSIWYG text editor
• CSS editor
• Preview editor
• Code view
• Help output – CHM, PDF, HTML, HLP, ePUB
• Project management
• Media library
• Topics, snippets and variables

We’ll now go into a bit more detail about what these features look like in practice.

When you purchase a HAT, you will download your software solution to your desktop and authenticate your account. Upon logging in, you will have access to the dashboard where you will see what amounts to a Content Management System. You have the ability to start creating documentation source files, as well as the ability to import existing documentation in a variety of formats.

The creation and management of these source files is kept separate from the actual formatting and output of the final versions(s). This makes updating your documentation much easier as you can make use of topics, snippets and variables to apply global changes. Topic-based authoring means using individual text files for each topic that can be swapped and reordered.

You also may not require the full set of documentation in one of your outputs for example. You may want to create a printed booklet that contains just some of your topics, but then also generate a help center website containing the full range of topics. You can do both these things from your Help Authoring Tool.

In service of these goals, Help Authoring Tool containing content publishing capabilities: WYSIWYG editor, code view, CSS/HTML/JS formatting capabilities, and more.

The Benefits of Help Authoring Tools

Help Authoring Tool have a number of benefits for your business. Mainly, they help you produce a large amount of documentation and also manage your existing documentation.

Updates can be made easily and quickly in multiple places in your documentation using tools like the topics, snippets, or variables. Some tools also allow you to display conditional content to different users, so you can personalise the help experience. Multiple technical writers and Subject Matter Experts can collaborate on the same projects, and you can keep track of the different versions.

Help Authoring Tool save you time so you can do more work with fewer people. HAT manage your source files centrally in a database so the content is decoupled from the presentation. In theory that means you can write once, instruct the system in how to present your content, and publish your documentation with the click of a button.

When you provide thorough and helpful documentation for your users, this can help you reduce support costs. Self-service support is cheaper than employing many support agents to manually answer the same questions. And customers now expect a self-service portal.

Common Use Cases for Help Authoring Tools?

There are many types of documentation for which companies might be seeking Help Authoring Tools to help them build. You might need to create:

• A knowledge base or support portal
• Policy and procedure documents
• Compliance and regulation documentation
• Standard operating procedures
• eLearning content

Often, companies need to create a range of documentation types, but using roughly the same content for each type.

The common thread is that you are usually producing web and print based content intended to help the users of your product or service, or your internal employees. Your company may be legally required to produce documentation that is up-to-date and accurate regarding its products and services.

For example, you could be documenting some kind of proprietary, in-house computer program for call center and business office employees. Alternatively, you could be documenting a range of user guides, installation guides, conceptual guides and quickstart guides for fiber optic technologies. You might be producing a help center for a hotel booking system. You could be creating an employee handbook, a student elearning center, or producing compliance policy regulations for your research laboratory.

In each of these theoretical cases, you might have a variety of mediums on which you want to publish your documentation. You need the ability to for teams of technical writers to collaborate on your source files, and automatically generate the published versions. You want to not only write and format your content, but also be able to instruct the system on how to generate output.

You must be able to update your published content at any time (including potentially far in the future), and easily update multiple instances of the same content without manually re-typing (or copy-pasting) your new content each time. It may be necessary to translate your documentation into different languages, and also continually update your localised content.

There are other tools that offer some of the functionality that Help Authoring Tool offer, or that perform an analogous function. For example, Static Site Generators also help you create documentation, but their features are more limited.

Top Help Authoring Tool Solutions

Once you’ve decided you need a Help Authoring Tool, there are a huge variety of options to choose from. We’ve listed some of the four popular HAT tools below,

• Document360 is technical documentation software that fulfils many of the essential functions of the major Help Authoring Tools. Document360 may be a better fit for you if you’re looking for a simple solution to create a user manual, instruction manual or help files. It integrates well with development workflows, allowing your team to publish the content in Markdown and WYSIWYG authoring environments.
• MadCap Flare – One of the most comprehensive Help Authoring Tools out there, you can use MadCap Flare to single source your documentation across web, desktop, mobile and print. Flare offers some powerful workflows and automations to make creating documentation a more seamless experience.
• Adobe RoboHelp (part of Adobe Technical Communication Suite) – A focus on creating online help systems and mobile experiences. Adobe RoboHelp has been completely redesigned in the last release, with a more modern user interface and stripped of some features.
• HelpNDoc – HelpNDoc is exclusively for the Windows operating system, and is designed to emulate the experience of using the Microsoft Word program. HelpNDoc uses templates to create stylish apps and help sites.

If you want to explore more tools in detail, you can check out our article on Best Help Authoring Software & Tools.

An intuitive technical documentation software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

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Knowledge Base Software as an alternative to Help Authoring Tool

Some companies want to know the difference between knowledge base software and Help Authoring Tool. A knowledge base solution is like a more specialised version of a HAT.

Knowledge base software helps you create an online knowledge base for your customers or employees, and provides a user-friendly content publishing process. Knowledge base software may be used by people other than specialist technical writers – such as your developers, information designers, or customer support agents.

In contrast, HATs are geared towards multiple platforms and formats, and provide a system for single source publishing. Your documentation is managed within your database, and has been decoupled from the final output formats. The focus is usually on writing documentation in an XML or similar format, and manipulating it for use across desktop, web, mobile, and print.

Knowledge base software means that the same person or team can manage the content production, and end user support. Account holders can write, edit, and publish content, view how that content is performing in the back end, and manage user feedback. The knowledge base is often hosted alongside your main brand website, or linked contextually within your software product.

Free Vs Open Source Help Authoring Tool

Why go with a paid proprietary solution, you might ask, when there are so many free software solutions out there.

It’s tempting to go with a free Help Authoring Tool, especially in the first instance when you’re not sure if a tool will suit you. Lowering costs is also not a bad idea for any business – but it’s equally true that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

First off the bat, free isn’t the answer for Help Authoring Tools. Ask yourself why this product is free in the first place. It’s usually because you have some kind of limited functionality, it’s open source and needs to be self-hosted, or it’s a free pricing tier and you’ll ultimately need to upgrade.

Sometimes free solutions can be a good choice if you want to integrate your software into a development workflow, and this is where Static Site Generators come into their own. Many of these tools are also open source, and you can benefit from an active user base and community support. Free Help Authoring Tools like OpenKM or PHPMyFAQ are popular for building knowledge bases.

If your organisation operates on open source principles, you should choose the tooling that matches your values. In contrast, if you want to test out a product first without committing to payment, opt for a solution like Document360. It’s available on a free trial so you can find out if it suits your needs.

An intuitive technical documentation software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

Get Started

Open Source Help Authoring Tool

As we’ve just mentioned, open source Help Authoring Tools are a popular solution considered by companies producing documentation. These tools include Sandcastle or Mediawiki, and they come with a lot of benefits and drawbacks.

Open source Help Authoring Tools mean you can access the software source code, and usually customise your solution to meet your needs. You can do what you like – within the terms of your software license. You can also host your documentation in the same place as your product source code, which may be important for your organisation’s security compliance procedures. You are supporting the open source software industry, which promotes making software accessible for everyone.

At the same time, there will be a slower time to market with open source Help Authoring Tools. You’ll require in-house development resources to run and maintain these solutions. You don’t benefit from dedicated software support, and if the open source community behind your solution dissolves, then your product will no longer be maintained.

Proprietary SaaS solutions like Document360 can take a lot of the headache out of the documentation process.