
#Help authoring tool software software
“KnowledgeOwl is a great piece of software that does exactly what it needs to do, and nothing more. If there is something you want to do with our software, we can probably find a way to do it. There are some key differences in functionality between them, and KnowledgeOwl offers the utmost flexibility for your business. There are quite a few knowledge base software solutions now on the market, including our own KnowledgeOwl. Publishing to a knowledge base may be one aspect of what a HAT can do, but a HAT’s primary purpose is to produce large volumes of content that can be reused on many platforms. That means you write your documentation once and export it to multiple formats, saving untold amounts of time and effort. Single source publishing means that you can produce multiple output formats and versions from one shared text base. Using a HAT means you’re usually working in a markup language such as XML or HTML, and you are required to “single source” your content. For example, many companies in the medical and pharmaceutical industries are legally required to produce a particular number of pages of documentation for their products. Often HATs are used in the enterprise because they help companies comply with certain regulations and produce large volumes of documentation. It’s a platform that’s specialized for teams who need to collaborate over documentation in-house, rather than a web publishing tool. A HAT is more like a content database, since its purpose is to store your content as files that can be reused, and marked up in a way that defines their correct usage.Ĭontent in your HAT may be published on a variety of formats and reused many times by multiple people.

What is a HATĪ Help Authoring Tool is also software used for producing help content, which is intended for publication on a knowledge base and beyond. We wrote a whole knowledge base software guide that goes into much more depth about this topic. It also usually has the ability to integrate with your customer support ticketing system. The editor is typically WYSIWYG with a focus on easily publishing front-facing content. It’s an all-in-one publishing and editing tool with version control, review process and categorization capabilities. Knowledge base software is typically a type of website Content Management System (CMS) with many custom features bundled in. Knowledge base software is used by a wide variety of companies and types of users, and the software sometimes come as an add-on application for help desk tools such as Zendesk. The software behind these kinds of sites are known as knowledge base software. Knowledge bases are often used for customer product documentation, API documentation, software documentation, to help customers self-serve, or support internal staff. Here are the main points to be aware of when choosing between a knowledge base solution or a Help Authoring Tool.

Each software is geared towards providing documentation for internal stakeholders or external users or customers.

The functions include: automatic or assisted Index generation, automatic table of contents, spelling checker, image editing, image hotspot editing, import and export of text in XML files, for exchange with computer-assisted translation programs.There is a close relationship between knowledge bases and Help Authoring Tools (HATs), but there are also key differences between these two types of software.īecause there are similarities, many customers get confused between them. The formats that are normally used for outputting are: WinHelp(*.HLP), Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (*.CHM), Adobe PDF, XML,HTML, JavaHelp and so on.Īs it has been stated HAT tools have also some auxiliary functions for technical authoring. HAT also can put the files out as a compiled Help file and non-compiled file formats. For example, ASCII, HTML, OpenOffice Writer , Microsoft Word, Microsoft WinHelp, Microsoft Compressed HTML Help etc. Depending on what HAT tool you use the format of the imported file can be different. File input either allows importing a text produced by any kind of program or gives the technical writer an opportunity to create a text using an editor within the tool. To the first group belong file input and help output. It has several basic and auxiliary functions. To Hat belong Adobe RoboHelp, Author-it, Doc-To-Help, FAR HTML, HelpIQ, Help & Manual, Help Generator, HelpNDoc, HelpServer, HelpStudio, MadCap Flare, Sandcastle and many other. These can be a Help Authoring Tools or HAT, content management systems and version control systems.

Technical writers in their work use a lot of different software.
