My Technical Communication toolset

A Technical Communicator (also known as Technical Writer) deals with multiple different types of tasks such as documentation writing, creation of various visuals, videos, and help systems. As follows, working in this field, I need a bunch of tools for creative, technical, and organizational purposes. Having over two years of experience in this field, I want to share my view and recommendations on tools that come in handy.

Tools for organizing working space

Let’s start with the tools that I use every day to organize my tasks, meeting, and notes.

Asana

Asana is my personal revelation for planning tasks for me and the team. One of my favorite features there is that I can create separate portfolio folders for each project. For me, it is vital as I usually contribute to several tiny projects simultaneously. So, I can separate mentoring activity tasks from the social media content plan. Another useful feature is the ability to add any attachments and tag collaborators in the comments section of the task. It’s very convenient to have all the communication threads and attachments at hand. Moreover, I can turn on the notifications and be informed about ongoing deadlines by email.

Outlook

This one is pretty obvious but still vital. Outlook or whatever mailing tool you have, make sure to customize it, explore cool features like color-coding for your meetings and automatic sorting for your emails. Ensure you have it aligned with the company culture of communication. One of my “must-do” is to create different folders for emails and set up rules to automatically sort them out. It’s always helpful to have important corporate updates separated from the Happy Birthday emails, right?

Evernote

I use this buddy for tiny notes instead of the default notepad on my PC. Its main distinctive feature is that I can organize my notes with folders, so-called notebooks. Also, I can access my notes from multiple devices simultaneously.

User assistance and writing tools

Here is a list of tools that I use for writing and publishing content to variable outputs such as HTML, PDF, Knowledge base, and even EBook.

Word

This one is traditional. I use this tool when writing literally any text, for any purpose, everything originates from Word. The main reason is the Review tab that enables collaboration with multiple authors and reviewers. My reviewer can leave a comment or edit the text, and I will notice each tiny change. Then, when all the copyediting work is done, the content is ready for further migration to a wiki page, help authoring tool, or any other source.

Another handy thing about Word is that I can use it to craft templates for my docs. In the same way as in Adobe InDesign, I can create paragraph, character, and object styles, add a footer, header, page number, set margins, you name it. But compared to InDesign, Word is way cheaper, and often installed by default in many corporate workplaces as a part of the Microsoft Office package.

RoboHelp

Adobe RoboHelp as a part of Adobe TechComm Suite is one of the most popular applications for building online help. Most of the time, I use RoboHelp for generating Responsive HTML5 outputs. My usual flow when building online help is to prepare my text in Word, clean it up from styles, and import the bare text to RoboHelp. Then, in the app, I create paragraph and character styles, just like in Word or Adobe InDesign, and apply them to the text. At that point, based on my formatting, the application generates HTML5 output, which I can open in my browser as a simple landing page.

For me, this application works best, because I’m a sufficient user of Adobe products, and the interface appeared familiar at the very first glance. Also, I appreciate the feature of editing HTML/CSS manually because in case of any errors, I can fix them myself quickly.

MadCap Flare

MadCap Flare is a reasonable choice when it comes to managing your content in help systems. The tool facilitates single sourcing with snippets and variables and publishing the same files in multiple formats. Its strong sides are also navigation and source control support. You can efficiently structure your content and mirror that structure in the source control system. The GitHub integration works perfectly if you have a team of Technical Communicators and need the visibility of changes made by each teammate. The MadCap Flare source control support helps back up your materials and revert changes if required.

Another notable point is that you can conveniently apply HTML, CSS, skins, and layouts to your formatting and style.

Summing everything up, the main advantage for me is the ability to reuse the content in a manageable way, especially for a huge number of files. Also, MadCap Flare is considered to be an analog of Adobe RoboHelp.

Video tools

As a Technical Communicator, I often use video to explain complex processes when I feel that text won’t do that efficiently. My favorite type is a video simulation combined with short animated parts. The simulation piece guides my audience through the procedure, and the animated part clarifies the purpose of this information.

Captivate

Captivate is another tool from Adobe TechComm Suite, and it helps me to create different types of videos such as video simulations, interactive or animated videos. I personally use it to create video simulations or so-called show-me videos, where I navigate the audience through the application by sharing my screen. What I like the most is that my recorded video gets automatically divided into slides. Each click is a separate slide, where I can adjust the duration of each element, customize the cursor, or add a callout.

Moreover, Captivate has its own text-to-speech generator that supports nine voices speaking in English. The generated speech can be easily adjusted by VTML tags.

Camtasia

I use TechSmith Camtasia to record my computer screen and edit any video materials for my project. I mostly use it for narrated software demonstrations that help familiarize users with the typical behavior or functionality of an application. Camtasia’s functions (however rudimentary they may seem to a professional video editor) provide a great variety of options to edit both video and audio, create templates and quizzes, and allow you to go above and beyond in your video presentations. What I like most is its easy-to-navigate and intuitive interface and ability to integrate with other systems and software products (including those of the TechSmith family, like Snagit). Some other neat things I enjoy (and that are unavailable in other similar tools, like Captivate) are the detachable timeline that you can pull to another screen or the timeline marks for your video, audio, or visuals to cling on.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint is mostly known as a presentation tool, but I occasionally use it to create simple animated videos or gifs. A little more often, I use it to combine several video chunks into one video. For example, when I develop a video simulation in Captivate, I import the final mp4 files to PowerPoint to add the intro slide, final slide, and animated part where I describe a complicated procedure. Then, as a final cut, I add the background song, and voilà, my video is ready to rock-n-roll.

Photoshop

That might sound strange, but I use Adobe Photoshop for animation purposes. Using the Timeline tab, I create gifs or short animated videos. The Timeline feature slightly resembles a basic functionality of After Effects — the well-known king of animation tools. Sometimes, I use the application to blur sensitive information in videos that were created in Adobe Captivate, as the latter doesn’t support the blur feature.

Play.ht

This one is a text-to-voice generator that I frequently use for my videos instead of the default generator in Adobe Captivate. The tool supports multiple languages and dialects, and so, it came in handy when my team had to develop a pack of video simulations in English, German, and Spanish at a time. The tool was a lifesaver because we could create separate folders for each language and store the audio scripts right there, in the app. Also, it’s much more flexible regarding audio corrections. I can adjust the pronunciation, pitch, or speed of separate words as needed, without dealing with complex VTML syntax as in Adobe Captivate.

Visuals tools

Technical Communicator is a specialist who is supposed to explain all the complicated techy things by using accessible wordings in appealing wrapping. That’s why we, same as designers, pay much attention to developing our visual pieces according to modern trends. And for that, we need the corresponding tools. Here are the ones that I use.

Draw.io

Draw.io is helpful not only for Technical Communicators but also for collaborating teams. For example, its easy-to-use functionality with predefined templates and shapes enables Software Engineers to create system architecture and share it with a Technical Writer for them to update elements.

When creating complex diagrams or depicting app infrastructure, I prefer Draw.io to other tools. Once I had a chance to schematize information architecture. I quickly shared the file with my team by exporting it in JPEG, PDF, and HTML formats. Furthermore, we attached the file to the page, and everyone could edit it if required, which was super convenient.

Figma

Figma is a free web application for interface design. But most of all, I use it for crafting complex visuals as one-pagers and two-pagers, where I have various types of data, such as text, icons, infographics, maps, and photos.

One of the main advantages of the app over its competitors is that Figma is collaborative, and several people can work on the same project simultaneously, with real-time visibility. My colleagues regularly use Figma to review the UI text on the design mockups.

Another perk is that Figma is quite simple and intuitive, as, by default, it contains a limited number of tools. Yet, if you want to deep dive into some specific direction, such as modeling 3D objects, or creating UI elements, you can build its basic toolset up with hundreds of plugins for any purpose.

Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is one of the most popular vector graphics editors. I use it basically for the same purposes as Figma, but there are several noticeable differences, such as a number of tools integrated into the interface by default. The application is rather difficult because it includes hundreds of tools, effects, and features crammed into the interface. That’s why I wouldn’t recommend this tool for beginners who only want to create nice visuals. On the other hand, Illustrator enables me to create sophisticated graphic pieces without downloading any additional plugins, as it’s needed in Figma.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint is just another “old but gold” tool, that helps me to prepare presentations. What I do like about the application is that I can develop presentation templates and customize the color palettes to optimize my working process.

Snagit

This is my favorite tool for capturing screenshots. Snagit takes first place in the list of the best software for screenshots, and it has valid reasons for that. My colleague published an article “Screenshots: trends, dos, and don’ts”, where she explains her love for Snagit and lists its main features. For me, one of the most favorite features is the customizable menu bar where I can pin the tools I use the most frequently. Also, I can add some default settings, for example, grey borders, to save a couple more seconds on routine activities.

Sum-up

To finalize, I want to point out that my toolset was selected with consideration of many pitfalls such as tool cost, the company’s security policy, and my teammates’ toolset. Altogether, I highly recommend these tools and would be grateful for any other suggestions in the comments. Also, big thanks go to my teammates who contributed to the article, Oleksiy Shendryk who shared his experience with Camtasia and Nataliya Melnyk who contributed to the MadCap Flare and Draw.io chapters. And, of course, thank you for reading. 💙