Ideas for peer reviewing Top Nav output

[Q2TechWriter]

We do peer reviews on all of our content after it's ouputted in Top Nav. We don't do it through Contributer, because a lot of people don't have MadCap or don't know the software (POs, developers, etc.). Right now, we basically request people to make lists of issues they find on the output (essentially a website) and post those lists in JIRA or send in emails.

Does anyone have any better way to peer review the HTML5 Top Nav output?

Thanks!

[JRtechw]

Hi Q2,

If you use the Pulse plugin with Flare, you could install Pulse on the staging server you use for peer review and get reviewers to insert review comments using Pulse's in-page feedback forms.

If your devs review the live server, you could create a user category for devs and hide those comments from the general viewing public. (At least, I'm pretty sure you can do this in Pulse. Happy to be corrected.)

We don't use Pulse yet, but soon, and I suspect I will use it for tech reviews for the same reasons you mention (devs aren't interested in yet another piece of software to install just for review comments).

[ChoccieMuffin]

I don't know if this would be suitable for you, or even whether it would work on a TopNav build, but we have a "FEEDBACK" link at the bottom of every help page, included in the masterpage, (we produce CHM) and when users click that link they open an email to a user docs feedback email address and we pick up comments from there.

This is the script that we use (COMPANY name substituted) - don't ask me how it works, it's something I inherited so I have absolutely no idea!

Code: Select all

<script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/document.write("<a href='mailto:feedback@COMPANY.com?subject=Customer%20Feedback%20("+document.title+")%20Build:%20$WCREV$&body=Topic%20Reference%20(COMPANY%20use%20only):%20"+location.href+"%0A%0APlease%20enter%20your%20comments%20below:%0A%0A'>FEEDBACK</a>");/*]]>*/</script>

[Psider]

Some techniques I've used (not for Top Nav specifically):
* generate a word doc of changed topics and get reviewers to use track changes.
- Clunky as you get a separate doc from every reviewer and then have to merge the comments somehow, and I always found the Word merge option super confusing.
- or you put it on something like Sharepoint and people update one at a time.
- reviewers can get hung up on formatting that doesn't exactly match how it will display on the webiste
- better for small updates rather than major releases

* Reviewers copy the topic they want to comment on into a Word doc and use track changes. (I also recommend they copy the URL and include it at the top of the page, in case there are several topics with similar names)
- Clunky as you get a separate doc from every reviewer and then have to merge the comments somehow.
- Can be hard to get just the topic content - some reviewers copy the whole page
- Dropdown content can be missed if the reviewers don't expand all dropdowns.
- Potentially loooots of review documents to manage.
- Benefit is they are looking at the proper output initially, so they don't get so hung up on odd formatting in the Word doc.
- Reviewers only copy and comment on topics they need to.