Florence and The Machine think that TechCommGeekMom’s Top of the Pops 2015 is smashing. (Source: telegraph.co.uk)
I always find it interesting to see what stories people end up gravitating to each year on TechCommGeekMom, and along with other year-end summaries, I like to figure out what were the most popular blog posts for a given year. Sometimes, it’s something that’s archived from an earlier year. That’s good, because I try to write or post things that will have long-term relevance as often as possible. However, I’m usually interested in what was written THIS year that came out to be the most popular of all original information posted that wasn’t an archived post or a curated topic posted.
What’s interesting to observe from a statistical perspective is that the top three almost tied for first place–#1 has one more view than the next two, which are tied.
I’m also pleased to see that most of my most popular posts this year were ones that came from the heart, based on personal experiences or observations. I’ve often argued that social media is a medium in which people discussed things and could more closely relate to each other because there is the ability to have more personal experiences and have the opportunity to connect and respond. The fact that many of these top blog posts relating to my job woes, trying to provide DIY training for myself, and trying to take positive steps towards the continual advancing of my career are relatable topics–that I’m not the only one going through these feelings and experiences. I almost always try to open up conversations with my blogs–for better or worse–and the reflection of the top original posts for 2015 reflect that.
The last one I listed was something personal that I wanted to include. This showed a big part of my weight loss and self-improvement journey I’m on right now. I’m still on that journey, having made a bold move in the last few weeks (something that I may write about soon, but not yet). I was glad to see that truly personal topics matters, and that even when relating it to something in technical communications, people responded positively towards it. My weight loss journey is a deeply personal one, and something that I don’t have to share, but I do, simply because I think all of us can relate to a non-tech comm struggle like that easily.
What will 2016 bring? Stay tuned…plans, resolutions, and predictions coming soon!
Even Sherlock Holmes has a hard time as a consultant in his field. (image from tomandbensbitch.tumblr.com)
I was recently reminded of how challenging it can actually be to be a consultant in this world. As a result, it was suggested to me (thanks, Marc Gravez!) that perhaps it would be a good idea to write and share what it really means to be a consultant.
We need to start with the general perception of what a consultant is. Most people think that consultants are mega-experts in their field that focus only on specific skills. Consultants advise others on how to do certain tasks, and only stay for a short amount of time at a job. Consultants are paid the big bucks, and are independent workers, so they don’t need benefits because they can buy their own–they are independent entrepreneurs of sorts. These individuals want to be consultants, and aren’t looking for permanent work. Because they are at a project for a short amount of time, they do not make any personal connections with clients, and don’t need to be integrated into the company team working on a project. Likewise, when it comes to team or company activities, they don’t care about being included, because their own company does things with them outside of the company.
While I can understand why people would think this way, over many years, I’ve discovered that very rarely are these perceptions are true. In fact, this view is a little bit skewed, and this became very clear once I became consultant myself.
To clarify, there are some independent consultants who are mini-entrepreneurs who do like working on short-term projects, moving around, and making a good salary in the process. However, in my experience, there aren’t many of those out there necessarily, or only a few of those factors are in play. I would venture to guess that many–if not most– consultants are not voluntarily consultants. For example, I’ve been looking for a full-time position for about 8 years now, and have yet to find one. I take consulting jobs to keep my income going, because even temporary work pays more than unemployment or unemployment benefits. I’ve met many people like myself who are in the same situation.
From what I’ve discovered, a “consultant” is a fancy term for a temporary worker with more than administrative assistant level skills (which justifies the higher than admin assistant level salaries). With the economy as it is, many companies are afraid to hire skilled workers full-time because they are more expensive to hold onto long-term due to benefits, insurance, etc. I understand that. Very often, that’s what companies think that they need. However, the disruption of getting temporary workers changing every few months to every few years is not helpful to a company who is looking for consistency. As I said, some people like to be able to change jobs every few months or every other year, but most would prefer to have some employment stability–or at least as much as a regular employee would have. The longest assignment I’ve had to date, since entering the tech comm field, is two and a half years–which is fairly long. The longest assignment I’ve heard of is three years, unless some consultant works more as a vendor than a consultant. Sometimes consultants are converted into full-time employees, but those instances are very rare. There have been SO many times when I was hoping for such a conversion for myself, and it didn’t materialize to my frustration, even when I was told that I was a valuable member of the team and my manager was pleased with my output. I had one “client” even tell me that they just had to hand a project over, and then “let go of the reins”–they didn’t have to worry about me messing anything up, and they knew the project was in good hands. How do you not hire someone like that after more than 2 years? It’s not just me, but many aren’t.
It’s also thought that they are super specialized–and some are. But I’m willing to bet there are a lot of consultants out there that are like me, that have multiple talents and skills waiting to be used. I do content strategist and management tasks mostly, but I can also write and edit, do intermediate level graphics work, interact and write on social media and blog, help build e-learning modules– there’s more than one facet to me. Often, consultants are not allowed to grow and develop their skills as much because they are limited to the task they are hired for, and their client isn’t about to help with professional development. Professional development becomes the responsibility of the consultant if they want to keep up with their field, and be able to either keep the assignment they have, or be able to find something else in the future. The cost of that professional development comes out of the consultant’s pocket, and it’s not cheap by any means. This is not only detrimental for the consultant, but it can also be detrimental for a company, because if they have a long-term consultant, they aren’t investing much in helping their company grow, just in the same way that they claim that investing in professional development for employees helps their employees grow, thus the company grows. It’s a double-edged sword. Even a discounted investment, if not full investment, in a consultant’s professional development, would be helpful for all parties involved.
Consultants are thought to be well paid. And generally, they are. But, as far as being super rich as a result? HA! Consulting can be lucrative if you are representing yourself and you are not working from an agency. Agencies try to get you a fair hourly pay rate, but because they are the “middle man”, they get a huge cut of what the company/client is paying. So, if you got all the funds from the company directly, then yes, you’d be making big money! But as it is, you hope for a fair rate. The only advantage of working through an agency, as I see it, is that they will figure out how much taxes and fees to take out of your paycheck. You are actually an employee of the agency, not the client/company you are working at. If you are an independent consultant without an agency, sure, the extra money that would be the agency fee would be yours, but then you’d be needing to ensure that YOU are taking out the taxes from your incoming paychecks. Additionally, while some agencies offer some benefits, they are often overpriced benefits that aren’t worth the money. I get my medical benefits through my husband’s job, because I’ve yet to have an agency offer a package that would benefit me (or my family) at a reasonable cost. Additionally, independent consultants have to pay for the benefits 100% out of their own pockets, and at least with American medical insurance, that’s a huge sum of money. So in the end, they don’t make as much as an employee does, or probably makes less or the same as an employee does, with less benefits. Additionally, consultants aren’t paid a salary, but rather an hourly rate. No paid sick leave or paid vacations. You don’t work–you don’t get paid. That’s less money right there, alone.
Lastly, consultants are PEOPLE, not robots. We like to interact with other people, and we often enjoy being part of a team. Most of the time, we are treated the same as employees in the workplace when it comes to our daily responsibilities and output, with the same expectations. But when it comes time for rewards, recognition, and simple company inclusion, consultants are left out in the cold. We are the “red-headed stepchildren” of the workforce. We aren’t allowed to participate in the company picnic, get any praise for a job or project that’s done well, or get the bonus or “holiday gift” at the end of the year for all our hard work unless our personal manager decides to give a holiday token gift as a small thank you. I understand that companies can’t pay for everyone because some consultants would start to say they deserve all the rights and privileges of being an employee–even try to pass themselves off as employees– when they are not, but some companies are outright draconian with it. And often, this grand divide between employees and consultants is further widened because consultants are left in the cold.
For example, a company I know gave their employees both a bonus AND and expensive wearable device as an employee gift. Some of the employees complained that they didn’t want it because it wasn’t compatible with their Android phone (okay, valid point), but they whined about it in front of the consultants. What did the consultants get? Nothing. Just an earful of complaints about the gift from the employees. My experience is that consultants do know their place and function in the company. Consultants are usually happy to get whatever they can, because they’re just happy that they are EMPLOYED AT ALL! There was another occasion where I had worked on a very large team project, and everyone on the team except me got an extra bonus and reward because of the company’s reward and recognition program. It was the first time I had actually been recognized for my work, and I couldn’t even benefit from it because I was a consultant. (I admit, I cried about it, because it was the first time in my entire career I had been recognized for my work in any way, and here I was left out again only because I was a consultant and not an employee.) I was fortunate that the client wanted to do something about that so I wouldn’t feel left out, and they were kind enough to make sure that the agency forwarded a token “bonus” of sorts to me. It was an exception, but it meant so much to me because I worked so hard on that project–as much as any employee if not more than some of those employees, and I had never been recognized for my professional work before. It was a kind gesture, but ultimately, it still wasn’t the same as being an employee. Being a consultant often means being left out in the cold, the persona non gratis, at the workplace, and it can be a lonely, un-fulfilling feeling.
Being a consultant is not glamorous or Ab Fab.
Being a consultant is not all that glamorous. We work as hard–sometimes harder–than your average employee so that we can try to keep up or move ahead. Some consultants can turn their independence into a thriving business–they are the lucky ones. Most of us are merely those who struggle to find some stability and security in their career, working for agencies, taking what assignments we can get so that we still use the skills that we have and pay our bills. We are team players, and we can fill in gaps as needed, but even when we are the star players, we are treated like bench warmers. Sure, life isn’t fair, but in that respect, consultants need to be treated with more respect in the workplace as a result. They are doing jobs that perhaps no one else can do–or wants to do, and they are trying to do their best to help your company pull ahead, and they don’t get to reap any of the benefits of doing so, other than knowing they do a good job.
So, support your local consultants. They often contribute to your company as much as any employee does. They invest themselves into what’s best for your company as much as any employee. Like I said, most would love a full-time job, but there are few to be had. They are resourceful people who keep going on many short-term positions with no guarantee of a next assignment right away. I wouldn’t mind being a full-time independent consultant either, but again, figuring out where each next assignment is going to come from is not a guarantee, either. It’s time that consultants are given more credit and compassion than they get now.
If you are a consultant, do you agree with my assessment? Do you like being a consultant, or would you prefer more stable employment? Do you have anything to add to the discussion? Add your comments below. I would like to hear about other people’s experiences and perspectives.
I felt like a superhero and could conquer the world–what happened?
I apologize for being absent for so long, and only sharing curated content for the last few months. There have been a lot of changes, and there’s still some transitioning going on, so keeping up with a blog hasn’t been that easy to do.
Even so, it’s a time when I’ve recently been doing a lot of soul searching with regards to my career. It’s take some unexpected turns in the last few months since my long-term contract ended in July. Some of it good, some of it not as good, but all have been learning experiences not only in learning something new, but learning something about myself.
I’ve been reflecting on several jobs I’ve had over the years, and looking at patterns of where things went right, and where things went wrong. Not being so young anymore, I have a certain perspective now that I wouldn’t have had even just a few years ago. I guess with age does come wisdom. I’ve also started to figure out what I want–and don’t want–from my career.
I’ll give you an example of a common pattern that’s happened in my career. I would take a job or an assignment because I needed the money and/or had a certain set of expectations that the experience would help my career. When none of the expectations of that position would have been met, deep frustration would set in, which would yield to depression and feeling stuck. I would be asked to bring certain skills, and was hired due to those skills, but then those skills wouldn’t be used. I would end up trapped in doing something that I could do well, or at least passably, but not something I wanted to do. This has happened several times, and I question why I get stuck in that kind of situation so frequently.
I thought of a job analogy that might explain this differently. Imagine that you had gone to culinary school to become a trained chef . So, as a chef, you are hired at a restaurant to work in the kitchen in a chef role for your cooking skills, and you’re fine with doing salad duty to work your way up, as long as cooking is involved, because that’s your passion and training. But for some reason, the owner has you left out of the kitchen to wait on tables for a while because it will help you understand your patrons. You go along with it for a little while, with the hope that you’ll get to that salad chopping soon. Soon, it becomes apparent that the owner has you, a chef, waiting on tables permanently. It’s not that you don’t have the ability to wait tables, but it’s not what you were hired to do, and it’s not strength. Subsequently, you get upset because the training and expertise is being wasted, and you feel like you were misled, because the job completely changed from the job description given at the time of the application and interview.
Like I said, I’ve had this happen to me several times over the years, and right now, I often feel like I’ve fallen into that “chef” role described above. The difference is that I’m a technical communicator, and what I “cook” is different. I know there are certain things that I do very well. I know I’m a capable person, but I also recognize my weaknesses. I also know what I don’t want to do. Becoming a technical communicator in my late forties has been the making of a second career. I know I’m still working my way up and gaining experience, but I have prior experience, too. At my age, I’m getting to a point that I’m financially secure enough that I don’t have to keep a job for financial security as much as when I was young, but I do need to like what I’m doing and have a steady, fair-paying income.
This thought process lead me to thinking about what makes an ideal job–whether you are a technical communicator, or have any kind of job, for that matter. I’ve concluded that what makes or breaks your contentment with a job is having the feeling of being valued. The positions where I learned and grew the most, and where I was generally happiest were at jobs where I felt like I was valued for my skills, my insights, and my opinions. Most often, all I wanted was for my voice to be heard and considered, not heard and pushed aside. I can accept if there’s a valid reason why my idea is not a good one, but “that doesn’t work,” or “that’s not how we do it,” or “everyone’s used to that, so why change it?” doesn’t sit with me too well most of the time. They seem like childish responses. I like to show that I can do the work, and do it well or beyond expectations. I try to push limits where I can, because it helps everyone grow and progress. There was a point in my career when I got accustomed to being dismissed for proposing any ideas or solutions, and so I accepted that my ideas or opinions weren’t valued at all. I lost my “voice” for a very long time. But in recent years, I was invited to use my voice, and as a result, I roared! I grew as a person, because I felt valued because I could contribute some good ideas, even if there were ideas that weren’t used.
But lately, I’ve been unbalanced in what I’ve been working on, and I’ve let that get to me profoundly. I question whether I’m on the right track to be doing something that uses my skills the right way and makes me feel valued. My confidence has been compromised, and it’s a truly awful feeling that I don’t want taking over my life.
At some point, I’ll feel like I’m flying high again.
As I continue this soul searching process, it brings me to the question of what makes me a valuable technical communicator? What is it that I do so well that some people appreciate it, and others not as much? What do I need to do to bring out the best worker in me? What do I need to do to grow and help myself create new opportunities while providing the valuable know-how I already possess?
I am curious as to what other technical communicators think, based on their experiences. I know of several technical communicators who are also in flux with their careers as well–between jobs or having taken new jobs recently. The technical communications field is not an easy one, as it is rife with both short and long-term contracts, people who don’t understand what the value of tech comm as a whole is, and situations where people don’t understand how to best utilize us. What are your experiences? Have you gone through the same roller coaster rides that I’ve been career-wise? What has made your career as a technical communicator worth the past hardships? What do you think is the value of a technical communicator?
Include your comments below! I would really like to hear and share experiences with others.
“What kind of training is this?” “COMPLIANCE TRAINING, SIR!” (Boom-chaka-laka, boom-chaka-laka, boom-chaka-laka, boom!)
I’ve recently taken on a new “adventure” working for a large pharmaceutical company. Now, I’ve worked for pharmaceutical companies before, but it’s been more than 20 years since my last job in the industry. One of the things I’ve been getting bombarded with in the past few weeks is that I have to do a lot of compliance training. This is not the first time I’ve had to do compliance training.
In the last two full-time positions I held, I had to do compliance training in the finance and chemical safety fields, even though my position had nothing to do with the everyday responsibilities of creating and handling chemicals, or handling financial transactions of any kind. But, because of strict regulatory rules on the international, federal, and state levels, I have to do this training. It’s the same with the pharmaceutical field, since that’s yet another highly regulated field.
Now, I will say this much–because of the work that I’ve been hired to do, there actually were several pieces of the compliance courses that applied to me, so that was fine. No matter where you go, especially if you work for a very large corporation, whether you are an employee or contingent worker/consultant (which I always am the latter), you still have to take all these compliance courses regardless of your position in the company to comply with all these regulatory groups. It’s just par for the course.
The information is usually incredibly dry, boring, and lifeless information–at least for me. It’s usually just a course that covers various policies, and you have to pass some sort of quiz to “certify” and help the company be in compliance with these regulatory rules. The courses are usually (but not always, as I’ll explain in a moment) a flat narrative that’s done in Captivate or Articulate, with small little quizzes in between to help you review and retain the information for the final test at the end. Considering that the information is usually so boring, and you may have several hours of it ahead, I usually don’t mind this training because usually there’s a narrator reading the information while showing some images relating to the topic, and it makes it easier for me to remember so I can pass the test.
After having already done four hours of compliance training and passing the test with a 97% (I missed one question) during my first week, I was given additional training that had to be done in the next few days. Of the nine courses I was given to do, only one was an Articulate course (I know it was because the server name in the URL said “articulate.com” in it), and that one made sense, and definitely applied to me.
However, the other eight courses I was given weren’t really courses at all. Since these “courses” were all handled on an LMS (learning management system), I thought I’d be jumping into legitimate courses. I was sadly mistaken. Each of these “courses” was simply the SOP (standard of procedure) policy document that I was expected to read in depth. All these documents were not written in plain English in a user-friendly format. They all were in legal-ese or pharma-talk–or both. This made the process of reading them a little harder for me to digest. Additionally, while there were only two or three documents that were less than ten pages, most were well over twenty pages–even over thirty pages for one or two of the documents. Some documents had a summary at the end, to which I thought, “Why didn’t they just show this at the beginning of the document? Then the rest of it would’ve made sense!” But most did not. With all of these eight documents, there wasn’t any kind of assessment to see if I understood the material. I just had to provide an electronic signature at the end that I read the material.
While I did my best to diligently read the material, it was much worse than dealing with the boring interactive courses. And other than me signing something electronically to say that I had, indeed, read the material, there was no way for the company to know if I understood it. Much of this could’ve easily been short Captivate/Articulate courses that would have not only made the information a tiny bit more interesting, but also there could be a way to assess that there was some semblance of comprehension.
Somewhere along the line, I had read later that in some instances, companies are in compliance as long as they have a policy and that each worker has read the policy and signed off that they read the policy. That sounds easy enough–read the material, and sign that you read it, and you’re done. But is that right?
I thought about this a lot after I finished this second round of compliance training, because reading almost 130 pages of technical jibberish on mostly common sense policies wore me out. I also felt that something was terribly wrong about this procedure. I might not have ended up doing instructional design as I originally set out to do when I started in tech comm (see early posts of TechCommGeekMom), but there were circumstances that bothered me about training employees this way, especially if they had to adhere to regulatory compliance training.
The first thing that came to my head was that as bothersome and boring as they were (sorry, instructional designers), the interactive courses were better. Students could see examples more clearly from images, for example. Or, in my case, seeing images, reading words, and hearing a voice read the technical gobbledygook connected with me better than reading pages and pages and pages of long-winded text. I partially blame my own abilities to learn this way because of my own learning disabilities, but at the same time–am I alone? I’m sure there are some out there who would rather read lots of text to understand information, but I have found that adding multimedia has always made a difference in learning.
I started to wonder if I was an anomaly in finding that I learn better this way. I know there are entire books, courses, and university degrees dedicated to this topic–what’s the best way to teach an adult? Is it any different than teaching a child or youth? Is reading text better than e-learning instances? Is reading text better than having an interactive, multimedia experience? In the case of the documents, I found that I was easily bored by the material to the point that I was more easily distracted, making me only skim the pages rather than read them in great detail after a while–especially with the thirty-page documents. It’s good that the company has policies on specific topics that are available for employees to read, but can employees easily relate to the policy information? How can we ensure that? Is just having them read the policy enough?
To say the least, I was rather disappointed with this method of training of reading text and electronically signing that I completed the reading. My own studies in e-learning made me realize how we are lucky to live in an age where we can make use of voice, images, video, and other multimedia tools that can help enhance the learning process, and in effect, allow learners to better retain the information by making it more relatable–even the boring, compliance information. I’ll bet that I still retain some of the information about financial transaction handling and chemical safety in the inner recesses of my brain because of interactive training. I remember much of what I just learned about drug safety and marketing compliance from my initial training. But what was in those documents. Don’t remember. Not a clue. I think much of it was the same as the stuff in the original compliance training, which also made me question why I had to do it again when I passed that original training. But was reading text and signing effective training? No. Did it fulfill compliance rules? Yes.
Whether it’s this company I’m at, or other companies, having workers understand regulatory compliance policies is important. They are procedures that keep us safe physically and ethically to ensure the best standards for all. So why not take the time to ensure that ALL policies that you feel are important are delivered in a way that helps to insure that employees understand ALL the information? That just seems like common sense to me.
What do you think? What are your experiences with these types of corporate or compliance training? What kind of learning worked best for you? Should companies put a good effort to make all the learning more learning-accessible? Add your comments below!
The last few weeks–in fact, the last couple of months–have been so busy for me that I can’t always finish what I need to get done. One of the things on my long to-do list has been writing up a review of the new RoboHelp 2015 release. I shouldn’t have waited, because let me tell you–there are some great things happening with this updated product! Additionally, Adobe has already released an update, which I will include details from that as well in this review.
Back in May, Adobe held a preview press conference to let us know what’s new in Robohelp (2015 release). It was hosted by Maxwell Hoffmann, one of the Technical Communications Suite (TCS) product evangelists for Adobe. I know Maxwell fairly well, as I first had a chance to work with him on the webinar I did for Adobe three years ago, and I know he knows and understands the TCS products very well, especially since he worked for some of these products before they were originally acquired by Adobe! He’s also a master storyteller and pays a lot of attention to what technical communicators have to say, so he’s excellent at explaining the benefits of features to users.
The first thing that Maxwell noted was that like the newest release of Framemaker, the naming convention for current and forthcoming releases from now on will be reflected in year instead of version 12, 13, etc. This allows for some consistency, and it’ll be easier to know if you have the latest version based on the year it was released.
Going forward from that, Maxwell explained that RoboHelp (RH) now offers a new degree of usability to both help authors and their users. There are several new features going on in the 2015 release that I have to tell you, truly impressed me, and I think you will find to be great upgrades as well. The highlights of these new features include:
A brand new user interface
Best in class multi device publishing capabilities
Dynamic Content Filters that enable end users to quickly find relevant content
Single-click mobile app creation workflow
Miscellaneous productivity enhancements
Let me go into more detail about each of these highlights.
Brand New User Interface
Even though RH was already able to have its configuration customized by the user, many of the icons were rather small and hard to see–the interface had a lot going on in one screen. Even so, one of the advantages of RH has always been that you didn’t have to work with code in RH. The new interface, when demonstrated, was significantly cleaner and more concise. Not nearly as busy looking as its predecessor! The interface has a much simpler look that resembles modern MS Office interfaces with the task ribbon, project manager window/frame, and the main designing frame. The icons are larger and much clearer to figure out what they are. You also have a choice over the user interface being light or dark, and with or without color. It’s totally customizable to your preferences. Nice! Maxwell noted that it’s also helpful if you have two instances of RH running to keep different projects straight.
The commands are clustered in the tab ribbons. As the different tab ribbons were demonstrated, I could see this was so much easier to decipher! There is also an icon in the first two tabs called “Pods” which can help you manage the pods you are working on. The ribbons allow you to see all the commands readily available to you in a consistent manner. All the tab ribbons seem consistent with MS Office-style ribbons, so new users should be able to adapt easily to these command choices.
The new Output tab ribbon, which contains one of the most frequently used clusters of tools, replaces the single-source layout pod that was in previous versions of RH. The Primary Output tool icon within the Output tab is customizable so that you can choose what outputs you want to use if you have a certain set of outputs that you standardly use. You can still do output of individual things as well, and the generation of output is faster now. There is also a great “Primary Output View” which allow you to prototype and see what your output will look like before you actually publish.
The area circled in red shows the customizable Primary Output tool, which provides a one-touch customizable option to publish to your primary outputs.
There are several other interface features that are great enhancements. The Quick Access Toolbar used to display your favorite, most commonly used commands can be easily and quickly customized. The tabs will reformat with window resize, and the ribbon can also autohide.
Within the workspace, table creation is similar to MS Word. Tables can be created in color, and have greater flexibility. When creating a table, just like Word, RH creates a specific tab for formatting and layout tables when needed. When creating content, commands that don’t make sense will gray out. Keyboard tips and shortcuts can be customized. The opening window is much more graphical and easier interface to use to start projects. When opening up a file, it will remember what documents you had open. Of course, if you are used to the old interface, this is an option as well.
With the update released in late August, the layouts have been optimized
Boy, Adobe has really gone all the way with making RH an easier, more user-friendly tool to use! If nothing else, this was the one improvement that in my eyes that impressed me the most, because I think this new, user-friendly layout is much less intimidating than the old one, which will help those who are new to the product or not as proficient on the product more willing to use it.
Best in Class Multi-Device Capabilities
RH now has new dynamic content filters that empower users by allowing them to find revelvant content faster. Adobe created brand new HTML5 layout enhancements which include:
The ability to easily show or hide widgets such as the Table of Contents (TOC), Glossary, Index, or Filter panes
Configure media query boundaries for different screens
Support native social media widgets
Flip to Right-to-Left (RTL) layout by changing language in single-source language
Show or hide branding band for mobile output
The HTML5 responsive layout has easy off/on icon control in layout, which is different from previous RH versions due to the clearer icons in the toolbar. Search enhancements include:
The ability to have topic descriptions and control what that text is to make the description more meaningful.
Breadcrumbs are now also part of the descriptions.
Output search results are available in a collapsible left panel for easier navigation.
Native social media widget control allows Facebook and Twitter icons to appear on the output so that you can share the information. This is displayed as an arrow on the side that can pop out the content as needed, so it’s not in the way, yet still available.
Flip layout to right to left with language attribute for Arabic and Hebrew. This will also work with linked or imported RTL Framemaker documents.
Generate faster, better responsive HTML5 output. Faster loading times reduced by half, smaller sized output–2MB less for every 100 topics, and no flickering screen are the result.
You can maintain the Table of Contents state in the left column, and in fact, you can expand more than one section at a time within that section.
Cleaner HTML5 coding.
Some other bonuses are that custom fonts can be embedded when generating high fidelity ePub, and more skins have been added for output formatting to provide more flexibility and to accomodate for RTL projects.
Dynamic Filters and Faceted Navigation Improve The End-User Content Consumption Experience
The new HTML5 layout and contextual search results can let your end users quickly navigate to the relevant content through dynamic filters. Based on existing conditional tags/expressions functionality, users can use the tags/expressions OR/AND at the build time and display these tags/expressions for dynamic filtering by the end users.
Tags can be grouped and filters shown in a two-level hierarchy. All the content is dynamically filtered (TOC, Index, Topics, Search Results etc.). You can choose a display name for both tags and expressions, which works for merged projects as well. Tags can be shown in the output for better testing (Maxwell said that Adobe is most likely the only one doing that with its product), which is currently supported ONLY in responsive HTML5 output and mobile apps.
Enhancements include the ability to enable a single selection or multiple selections of the tags in final output, and enhanced CSH support through a dynamic content URL, so the filter choices are actually seen in the URL of the output, which is great. In the demonstration given, Maxwell showed how you can navitgate through filtered content so only certain things show for certain audiences, which I thought was a great use of this feature.
Content Centric Apps (developing mobile apps)
Robohelp can publish content as mobile apps for iOS and Android which can be read remotely or downloaded directly on your device. Adobe has made it super easy to create mobile app for your documentation by using a PhoneGap:Build/CS subscription to generate multiple apps for both Android and iOS. (PhoneGap is considered an inexpensive subscription.) Mobile apps can easily be downloaded by scanning a generated QR code that can be shared, although a URL that can be shared, too.
Miscellaneous KEY enhancements
There are several extra enhancements that don’t fall under the other main categories, but are still equally important.
Users will be able to work more productively with a ribbon UI and enhanced search functionality, including bi-directional and multiline searches. The support for languages like Arabic and Hebrew, which was a major feature upgrade in FM 2015, is also included in this RH release. As of the new update released in late August, Farsi is also supported.
The “Find & Replace” functionality and searching abilities are significantly improved. Key enhancements include the ability to find results in Design Mode and open the files directly from search results.
Search scope has been extended, so you can also set the search scope to a current project, specific folders, the current window (including TOC/Index, etc. which is new), and all open files (also new), as well as do a multi-line search.
The standard keyboard shortcut of “Ctrl-F” now works to help do searches.
There are now separate tabs for find and replace. In the demonstration given, we were shown that you can find and replace within design mode instead of the HTML mod. There’s also the ability within the find/replace that if you have a long list of items, and you want to find where a specific item in located within that list, then you can go into the Project tab and click on “locate item”, and it will take you directly to the page in design mode. Really nice!
Search direction support–both forward and backwards– is available. You can also search within the source code as well through the line numbers listed in the search lists, which makes this feature very flexible.
Conditional text control has been improved with tagged output so that you can see what is conditional or not for QA purposes. Before, RH had slashed color tags that made it difficult to read and not always an exact match to what the conditional tag was. Now, it has a more intuitive conditional build tag display that is much easier to read text while editing–the overline color exactly matches the tag. The overline is used as a conditional indicator with better readability than cross hatches, the color of the overline is exactly that of the tag, and easy to figure out the tag boundaries.
Support is now provided for named expressions.
Other enhancements enhancements at the time of the release included miscellaneous search enhancements, better scripting support, remember project state, and “find now” works in project manager frame.
Within the update release in late August, some additional enhancements were made in addition to those already mentioned above. Windows 10 support, online video derived from HTTP URLs can now be embedded in RH output, playback settings for multimedia are available, and more than a dozen bugs have been fixed. They’ve evidently been working hard at Adobe to add such features in a short time since the May release!
Pricing
Pricing & Availability on June 2 (in USD and AUS):
Product
Full Price
Upgrade from last release
Upgrade from 2 releases
Subscription Price
Languages Supported
RoboHelp 2015
$999
RH 11: $399
RH 10: $599
$29.99/mo
English, French, German, Japanese
Technical Communications Suite 2015
$1699
TCS5: $699
TCS 4, 3, 2 or 1: $1199
$49.99/mo
English, French, German, Japanese
TCS 2015 Release includes RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Captivate, Acrobat, and Presenter–all at a price that is 57% less expensive that buying all products individually. It’s something to consider!
I think the thing that impresses me the most out of all the great new features truly is the new interface. Having a simpler, more user-friendly interface is going to bring more users–especially new users–towards this already powerful product. The continuing development on content design flexibility and inclusion of mobile output helps Adobe keep this product as one that will assist technical writers with creating more user-friendly help guides for customers.
TechCommGeekMom 
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