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Salesforce - A Trail of Knowledge

The purpose of technical communication is to get the right information to the users to help them do the right thing and do the thing right; quickly and easily. As a technical writing intern at Salesforce, I created documents in the Help guide, wrote a Trailhead module and created a landing page. Some of these have even gone live!

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Fun Fact: I was the first voice of Salesforce India for a guided set up video!

Technical Documentation

1. User Help Guide for Public Sector Solutions
2. Trailhead Module for Order Management for Admins
3. Landing Page for Manufacturing Cloud

In a rush? Click one of these to go to that section!

 

 
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Document 1: User Help Guide for Public Sector Solutions

It was the first product of Salesforce I learned about with extensive reading and deep diving into all the available resources. This was quite a novel experience as I connected with many writers and product managers. Since help docs risk the chance of being repetitive, I had to merge a few articles.

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My finalized task was to write 2 brand new articles and update 2 existing ones.

 

A real challenge was getting information. With product managers having busy schedules, it could get difficult to sync up with them. Another challenge was learning about a complicated new product.

A painstaking but exciting process of finding correct information, reaching out to multiple stakeholders, and getting guidance from technical writers in my team.

I had to play around A LOT in the org to understand the software.

All of this resulted in a 20 page document that received its fair share of comments and revisions.

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Project Impact:

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  1. Created topics to fill gaps in the PSS guide.

  2. Addressed issues reported by partners and customers.

  3. Brought the guide up to date

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You can view one of the documents here, live in the Salesforce help guide.

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Document 2: Trailhead Module for Order Management for Admins

I was to write an entire module on order management, a feature in the Consumer Goods Cloud. However, with Trailhead modules always being a unique task to take up, they come with their own set of challenges. Here, what was provided by the original product manager, lots of those features were not available in the org that was given to me as the app was constantly evolving. Later, we had to move lots of material around to accommodate whatever was existing.

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I learnt about the product and went through the available resources. It was thrilling to understand Trailhead guidelines and familiarize myself with the writing style. 

I had to break the module into appropriate units with my own judgement.

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Project Impact:

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  1. Assisted Avishek Gupta, the Trailhead writer for RCG.

  2. Contributed to reducing the Trailhead backlog for the year.

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Link​

 
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This is the existing learning map.​

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Problems that users faced with this:

  1. No consistent learning path.

  2. No differentiation for different personas.

  3. Scattered articles.

Document 3: Landing Page for Manufacturing Cloud

 

 I went through a couple of already existing landing pages for other products to get the gist of making one myself. With the difficulties here, there was once again, a lot of material that was scattered all over the place. But of course, the project was to organize it accordingly.

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There was extensive documentation regarding Manufacturing Cloud and it was very unstructured.

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We went from a learning map to a landing page for better user experience. Learning maps may map out a user’s journey but can quickly get confusing with multiple types of users. Additionally, by creating a landing page, the users get the added benefits of the Help portal such as optimized and indexed search, localized and translated information, and increased web discoverability. It even streamlines the authoring process for the writers!

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The learning map is structured according to the 4 key user personas of Manufacturing Cloud. They are:

  1. Admin

  2. Sales and Operations Manager

  3. Key Account Manager

  4. Partner

Positive Impact

 

I’ve learnt to manage my time. If there is a roadblock somewhere, I know I can take another path rather than wait for someone to clear it for me.

 

When it comes to writing, I learnt different styles of writing. I learnt how to switch back and forth when needed, depending on the person and the document.

 

For me as an individual, focus can be hard to come by and even harder to keep. This internship has taught me concentration. Perfecting the art of just sitting and thinking of multiple solutions requires a lot of patience and concentration, and in two months, I have made significant progress from where I once was.

 

Being in a big office, collaboration is something we do every day. My manager, Mousami, once told me that our work always depended on another person. Collaboration is not only working face to face with people, but also replying to emails and slack messages on time. It’s opening doors you’re not going to walk through yourself.

 

To be concise, there has been a lot of professional and personal development. I’m nostalgic already and finally, I’ll take your questions. Thank you!

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