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Last updated on Apr 8, 2022

Today, Internet is considered as a knowledge-base. Anyone can access any kind of information using the Internet, such as documents, view hypertext, and multimedia (audio and video) through web server database.

Also, it has become necessary and critical for any organization to provide public access to corporate web sites, which required constant, reliable, interactive web form, authentic transaction and relevant documents. This has driven the organization to adapt to Web Content Management systems.

Gradually this led to Knowledge Management system and Knowledge Base system.
Although Knowledge management system precede the internet, it became easy for the user to access information using internet, because it was like a distributed database on the internet.

In the due course, distinction between Knowledge management system and Knowledge base system became very minimal. Although these systems are still considered as content repositories, which allows you to store, query and take appropriate decisions.

So, in Knowledge Management System, you just store them (manuals, procedures, policies, best practices, reusable designs and code, etc.) in the database.

In Knowledge based system, you meticulously classify and categorize them (manuals, procedures, policies, best practices, reusable designs and code, etc.) appropriately in meaningful sections, sub sections and groups.

Software Documentation

Software documentation is a part of any software. Good documentation practices are important for the success of the software. Documentation must comprise an interactive User Experience, Information Architecture, and good understanding of your audience.

Note: It is recommended that you suggest building the documentation deliverable into your development process, while attempting to use the Agile methodologies for software development.

It needs to serve the purpose of resolving the issues, when encountered by the developer, end user or while during customer facing the knowledge Base.

Appropriate details and description need to be in the documented to achieve the following goals:
* Resolve issue encountered by the developer during the development process
* Help end-user to understand the product
* Assist customers and the support team to find the information.

Documentation can be related to an API documentation (which can be used to either incorporate in the code, or to extend the functionality of the existing application, release notes that serves what bugs had been fixed in the current release, and what code had been refracted) and, or customer-facing help content to easily find required information immediately.

Software documentation helps you to understand the product, interface, capability, ability to fulfill a task, and quickly search and find a particular section within the document, or find resolution when encountered using the product.

Note: Even when there are knowledge workers, yet, 51% of people prefer to receive technical support through a Knowledge Base, and yet producing the relevant documentation is challenging for any companies.

Types of Software Documentation

Many types of documents are required and delivered during the product development life cycle and software development life cycle, like Software documentation, Developer documentation, Software requirement document, and design documentation and audience analysis.

User Documentation

This document is mostly delivered for end-user who actually want use the product themselves, to understand and complete a certain task.

* How-to guides - Guides the user to complete a task or a predetermined goal.
* Tutorials - Learns a concept by following a series of steps concept
* Reference docs - Describes the technical detail of the product (Software requirement specification, software design documents and so on)
* Administration Guide: Enables the administrator to refer to this after installing an application
* Configuration Guide: Allows the administrator to refer to this document for configuration parameters.

Developer Documentation

This documentation refers to system related documentation.
* API documentation -Specifies how to invoke API calls and classes, or how to include API in the code that is being developed.
* Release notes: Describes about the latest software, feature releases, and what bugs have been fixed. Usually this document is a text file with a filename extension (.txt).
* README: A form of documentation, it is usually a simple plain text file called Read Me, READ.ME, README.TXT with A high-level overview of the software, usually alongside the source code.
* System documentation - Describes the system requirements, includes design documents and UML diagrams.

Just-in-time Documentation

Situation may arise, where a just-in-time document quickly serves the support for customer-facing documentation. The user need not have to refer to any documents or FAQs for information.

It is recommended that documentation tools be common across your development team, so that it can be easily accessible within the environment, and you need to initiate that the documentation becomes a mandatory part of the Software development life cycle process. For example, GitHub is a cloud-based do my papers application, which serves the purpose for code developers and authors.
Also Read: Introductory guide to process documentation
How to choose a software documentation tool.

Documenting your product and its features can be highly time consuming and requires a lot of attention to detail while creating software documentation which can be easily understood by customers and team members. Here are some crucial features to look for in a software documentation tool

Document360 supports the following features:
* Custom Dashboard
* File Manager
* Article Redirect
* Team Management
* Team Auditing
* Secure Hosting
* Backup and Restore
* Custom Security
* In-app Assistance

Overview of Knowledge Base application interface

Apart from the above mentioned essential features Document360 also has some outstanding capabilities that make the knowledge base attractive to the end users.

Build Multilingual Knowledge Base

The Localization feature in a knowledge base system , which enables you to build multilingual knowledge base documents for the different customer base. For example, your international customers across the globe may want to read the document in their own native language, even when the document is available in English.

Choosing a language for the facing page.

You can take the help of an in-house translator to translate the article manually for public facing page or use Google translator to translate the copied content from the source, and then paste the translated content back in to the editor.

Look for knowledge base software that includes built-in Machine Translation, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to instantly transform the material for better results. If you are dissatisfied with the 3rd party translation tools

Create custom Site of Knowledge Base

When you create a document in Document360, you can have a public facing URL, which can help user(s) to access to your Knowledge Base.
You can perform the following in the Site Domain page:
* Site Domain Hosting: You can create a custom URL for an existing URL
* Sub-Folder Hosting: Customized URL. You can use sub-folder as a hosting page to mark these documents internally within the organization. For example, https://docs.startup.com to https://startup.com/docs

The following screen displays the Site Domain page.

Site Domain Hosting and Sub-Folder Hosting page

Backup and Restore your Knowledge Base

It is necessary to keep your data secure each day. The Backup and Restore function is integrated with Dcoument360, which can help you restore earlier versions of your document from the backup list.

Note: You can also backup manually. Also, when you have incorporated large changes in a document, you can click on the Create new backup button by specifying a meaningful name, to help you identify the content that is related to the context it was created.

Best Practices in creating Software Documentation

Quickly Adapt to Agile or DevOps Methodology for documentation

Most of the companies adapt or have adapted to Agile and DevOps methodology from the traditional Waterfall method. The waterfall method was found to be inappropriate because it was difficult to incorporate any new desired changes to the existing product design. This led to Agile methodology, where modular development was considered and new changes could be implemented during the development process.

This approach was well accepted in today's software development life cycle and documentation development life cycle.

Regularly Interact with Subject-Matter Experts (SME)

The developers have in-depth knowledge about the product, so, writers often find hard to approach them quite often to get information for the related document. So, one possible way is to, synchronize the effort estimate of documentation with the Software development process, so that the resources (documentation team, engineers, document reviewers and support) can collaborate regularly, and acquire substantial knowledge to meet the documentation goal.

When you get to a certain point in your documentation, you need to seriously consider how people with different needs consider using your documentation

Constantly Improve and update document(s) Knowledge Base

Documentation is an iterative process. It may need to be improved based on customer feedback or may require refracting some content already included in the document. The Knowledge Base can include customers frequently asked questions or more references to solutions that may need to be included to increase efficiency, productivity, and reduce cost to the company.

Discover how customer reached your Knowledgebase content

Your Knowledge Base software should be indexable by search engines, with all the correct meta tags. You should also link to your documentation from your software app, since this is where users will naturally get stuck.

Few customers will consider your Knowledge Base as a whole, and hardly anyone will arrive at your carefully constructed homepage.

Periodically update information in Knowledgebase using Customer Feedback loop

Before the first release of the product, the organization invites and shares the beta product to the customers and users to perform testing. Based on their feedback, and subsequent feedback after the release, the documentation must be updated to complement the latest product release.

There are several ways to collect feedback:

* Using a Web form or an Interactive form
* Activate inline comments in the documentation before sharing to the customers
* Receive ratings about the usefulness of the content on specific page

Create your own Style Guide to create consistent document

There are couple of ways to create consistent look and feel of your document.

* Template: Create a template with predetermines styles prior to creating a document.
* Define a style sheet: Create different levels and structure the document manually by applying the relevant style to the content.

Note: You can refer standard software style guides like the Microsoft Style Guide or Chicago Style Guide.

Final Thoughts:

If you adapt to agile methodology, it makes you produce documentation just-in-time. It becomes obligatory to produce good Software Documentation to sync programmers, testers, and end-user's thought and goals in exercising a piece of software. Need to remember that any good Software documentation is specific, concise, and relevant.

Get Started

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What is Software Documentation? Its types and Best practices

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Last updated on Apr 8, 2022 Today, Internet is considered as a knowledge-base. Anyone can access any kind of information using the Internet, such as documents, view hypertext, and multimedia (audio and video) through web server database.

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The amount of non-academic writing in the various subdisciplines of computer science far outnumbers the articles written for academic journals. Most computing professionals will never write a peer-reviewed paper. Instead, their writing tends to be much more professionally practical. Among other short documents, they will write project proposals, formal requirements specifications, software and code documentation, reports on error detection and resolution, and, of course, code. The formats these documents will take are dictated by their organization's specific standards. Most computer scientists begin their career with a lengthy orientation to their organization's practices. As with most fields today, far more is written in digital format than print.

Writing in the computer science classroom

Throughout the courses in their major, computer science students will develop their skills in writing the types of documents previously listed. Most of their courses require the completion of at least one substantial project. Thus, they must write the proposal, specifications, code, and documentation. Many students of computer science take some time to realize the necessity of clear, thorough specifications and documentation. Since courses only last a semester, projects in these courses must be limited to a scope of only a very few weeks. This means it is not possible to match the complexity of most commercial projects with a course project. Students often are the sole coders for their entire project or a standalone piece of a multi-person project. However, in a commercial setting, developers work on larger teams with multiple coders working on each piece. Clear specifications and documentation are what allows someone to understand what the code is supposed to be doing. Imprecise specifications or unclear documentation can critically slow a project's progress.
Computer Science Overview Reading in Computer Science Research in Computer Science Documentation in Computer Science

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The amount of non-academic writing in the various subdisciplines of computer science far outnumbers the articles written for academic journals. Most computing professionals will never write a peer-reviewed paper. Instead, their writing tends to be much more professionally practical.

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The Whatfix Blog | Drive Digital Adoption

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13 Best Software Documentation Tools in 2022

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Here's a list of the 13 best software documentation tools that help end-users and developers create and publish documents.

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I referenced the articles below. All images are from Pinterest.

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Alex Lee creates videos on YouTube teaching the coding language Java. Although he didn't create this language, his videos document how to use Java and are thus considered documentation.

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Notion.io is an online platform with a section of their website featuring frequently asked questions, documentation of their product, and ways to seek additional support.

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Help, Support, and Documentation for Notion

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Learn how to scale workflows, connect your tools and become a Notion expert — all in one place.

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Slack has a special website dedicated to explaining how software developers and computer scientists can use their product. This information describes the product AND gives additional information targeted specifically to developers.

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The creator of the coding language C++, Bjarne Stroustrup, wrote a book with all features of the language included.

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This book features an enhanced, layflat binding, which allows the book to stay open more easily when placed on a flat surface. This special binding method-noticeable by a small space inside the spine-also increases durability. C++11 has arrived: thoroughly master it, with the definitive new guide from C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup, C++ Programming Language, Fourth Edition! The brand-new edition of the worlds most trusted and widely read guide to C++, it has been comprehensively updated for the long-awaited C++11 standard. Extensively rewritten to present the C++11 language, standard library, and key design techniques as an integrated whole, Stroustrup thoroughly addresses changes that make C++11 feel like a whole new language, offering definitive guidance for leveraging its improvements in performance, reliability, and clarity. C++ programmers around the world recognize Bjarne Stoustrup as the go-to expert for the absolutely authoritative and exceptionally useful information they need to write outstanding C++ programs. Now, as C++11 compilers arrive and development organizations migrate to the new standard, they know exactly where to turn once more: Stoustrup C++ Programming Language, Fourth Edition.

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The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition

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This book features an enhanced, layflat binding, which allows the book to stay open more easily when placed on a flat surface. This special binding method-noticeable by a small space inside the spine-also increases durability. C++11 has arrived: thoroughly master it, with the definitive new guide...

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W3Schools contains documentation on using a variety of coding languages. This "HTML Tutorial" section describes everything you can do with the code language HTML, which is used to build websites.

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Easy Learning with HTML "Try it Yourself"

With our "Try it Yourself" editor, you can edit the HTML code and view the result:
Click on the "Try it Yourself" button to see how it works.
HTML Examples

In this HTML tutorial, you will find more than 200 examples. With our online "Try it Yourself" editor, you can edit and test each example yourself!
Go to HTML Examples!
HTML Exercises

This HTML tutorial also contains nearly 100 HTML exercises.

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Test your HTML skills with our HTML Quiz!
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My Learning

Track your progress with the free "My Learning" program here at W3Schools.

Log in to your account, and start earning points!

This is an optional feature. You can study W3Schools without using My Learning.

HTML References

At W3Schools you will find complete references about HTML elements, attributes, events, color names, entities, character-sets, URL encoding, language codes, HTTP messages, browser support, and more:

Kickstart your career

Get certified by completing the course

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W3Schools offers free online tutorials, references and exercises in all the major languages of the web. Covering popular subjects like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Java, and many, many more.

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Padlet.com has a "Features" section of their website. This section is software documentation, as it details how to use the software product Padlet.

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Because software documentation can take on many forms, it is a loose writing genre. The only constraint on the writing is its purpose: software documentation must in some way describe a piece of software. Additionally, documentation must be easily accessible so that everyone who uses the product can have access to the documentation if they so choose.

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The typical writer of software documentation varies greatly from company to company. Some of the best developers are entirely self taught, while many others have computer science or computer engineering degrees from a university. Education aside, software documentation is written by software developers. Documentation is usually created by a group rather than an individual, each developer creating documentation for the respective parts of the product they created. These developers have worked to build a piece of software from scratch over a few months or even years, and are thus intimately familiar with the product they document.

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Software documentation is written for two groups: users of the product and other computer scientists/developers. Users of the product benefit from documentation because it helps them understand how to use a product. Developers benefit from documentation because it allows them to understand how a product was made in case they want to adopt some features of the product in their own work.

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Software documentation is written and created after a new piece of software is released. The exigence for documentation, or the inspiration for its creation, comes from the need for people to understand how to use the new software. Documentation helps the layperson know how to use software, and it helps developers understand how a certain product was made.

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1. User tutorials that demonstrate how to perform tasks
2. Printed manuals or books with step-by-step instructions
3. Knowledge bases and FAQ pages on a company’s website

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Software Documentation Details and Examples

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Software Documentation Details and Examples

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Because the primary writing in computer science is specific to a certain product/piece of software, most of this rhetoric is posted by the creators of the products, typically to company websites.

GitHub is an online platform used to spread information about software. More specifically, GitHub is a service that helps developers store and manage their code, as well as track and control changes to their code.

When it comes to general information about computer science, the following are all industry sources to stay up-to-date on goings-on (in no particular order):
1. MIT Technology Review
2. W3Schools
3. WIRED
4. Science Daily
5. Tech XPlore

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Project proposals
When proposing an idea for an app, website, or other pieces of software, computer scientists must write project proposals. Proposals tend to include an introduction to the project, the problem intended to be solved, and the methods by which this project will solve that problem.

Software documentation

The documentation describes newly released software. It's intended to detail how computer scientists resolved issues encountered during the development process, help users understand the product, and assist customers and the support team in finding information about the software.

Reports on error detection and resolution
In the development process, computer scientists often have to write reports on errors they encounter during this process. These reports include details on what the error is and how it was resolved.

Code itself
Perhaps the most important writing a computer scientist will do is write code, which is a series of commands designed to solve a problem or perform a task.

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In the simplest sense, computer science is the study of the principles and usage of computers. In the computer science community, the majority of writing is professionally practical rather than academically focused. Computer scientists write summaries of errors encountered in code and details on the software development process, not peer-reviewed papers.

I plan on becoming a software developer, and as such, I'll need to be able to write effectively in the computer science community.