During the last years and various product development cycles, no really suitable documentation software has been found. The journey started with Word and PDF, using WordPress and a multilingual template, evaluating ZenDesk, FreshDesk and elevio, using ClickLearn for another project – but none of them felt right.
Trying and fighting with the various documentation tools, the idea of a creating a better solution was born years ago.
It should be multilingual and support multiple languages and locales everywhere in the solution. Working in Switzerland, a small country with 3 different official languages, multilingual was always one of the main requirements. But none of the tried tools implemented this right. Adding a “multilingual” feature to a mono-language documentation tool is mostly not working and leads to many problems and hacks.
Most of the software products today have a short and agile development cycle. Creating the documentation is to be done while the development and testing teams are working. But this must not go live before the new release is going online. Multiple versions of the same product’s documentation – similar to the different software versions – is another core feature. It allows to create better documentation faster and without the hassle of todays only-1-version documentation products. Bringing them together before shipping the release must be simple and not lead to broken, merged documents.
A good software documentation does not only contain a knowledge base, but also other types of documentation – as onboarding guide, operations manual, tutorials, release notes and more. Most existing solutions have a one-fits-all approach – there is only one type (knowledge base) that needs to be adapter for all different documentation types.
The usability should be great. Using it should not require a lot of documentation reading, there should be simple concepts at the core of the product and all interfaces build around it.
The software must be web-based and provide self-service for the creator and visitor. Integration in the to documenting product must be simple and fast – if requested by the customer.
indoc.pro has been created by Tobias Kluge . He has been working as a product manager, develop team leader, software engineer and entrepreneur since years.
Switzerland is his home country – a small country in the heart of Europe, speaking 3.5 languages. Creating end-user documentation is quite challenging without a suitable tool.
During his professional journey, he never found a documentation tool for the products that suited his needs:
This is why indoc.pro has been created. To solve the pain that comes with delivering great end-user documentation of todays software products, produced in short and often parallel development and release cycles.