Overview

You’ve created a training manual and you thought the hard work was over. You need a printed version to hand out to delegates. You need a downloadable PDF version for your website and you’d also like to include some of the content on your blog. Following on from Creating a Training Manual Part 1, tonight’s demonstration looks at how to re-purpose the content you’ve added to ScreenSteps.

Missed Part 1? Not a problem … read on

In Part 1, Elaine took us through all the key features including how the Library works, how to make best use of Tags and how to capture and annotate images. She then explained and demonstrated how ScreenSteps can help teams to collaborate a lot more efficiently, especially when they are working in multi-platform environments. The individual lessons that she created were pulled together into a single manual – hence the title of the presentation.

It’s not only images that can be embedded in ScreenSteps lessons, you can embed video clips too. A great example of this is the Excel 2010 New Features article in the Tips for Trainers section on the NWIITT website.

There were plenty of questions and plenty of positive comments from all those who attended. The ScreenSteps website also took a massive hit as everyone went off to download the 30 day trial.

So, roll on Part 2 when Elaine will be demonstrating how to repurpose ScreenSteps lessons and manuals to create PDFs, HTML pages, Word documents and more

If you missed out on attending the event, you can catch up by watching the recording.

Available From: http://screensteps.com
Platform: Mac and Windows
Price: Standard – $39.95 for a single licence
Price: Pro – $79.95 for a single licence
Comparison: Standard v Pro

Date and Time

30 September 2010, 20:00 – 21:30 BST

Presenter

Elaine Giles

Review

In my role as a trainer I often need to convert a single source document into multiple formats (for example I might need to distribute a QRG to my delegates and then use the same material for a blog post) so Part 2 of “Creating a Training Manual” hit the mark for me.

Elaine started the evening with a recap of what she covered in Part 1, especially useful for those who had been unable to attend the first part and, for those who came back for Part 2, it served as a useful reminder as to just how good ScreenSteps is for producing documentation quickly and easily, allowing us to get on with the more interesting aspects of the job.

She also demonstrated image blurring, a technique which is often used on faces to protect someone’s identity and to obscure confidential details on an image. Blurring is a brand new feature of ScreenSteps. It was added to the latest beta version which was released the day after Part 1 was delivered.

Part 2 took us to the next level, covering how to take a single ScreenSteps Lesson and repurpose it in a number of different ways so that the same content can be displayed as a blog post, a PDF document and a Word/Pages document.

To export to Word/Pages format you can either use the default template or, if you want all future output to have a certain look, you can create your own template. This is a very straightforward process, you add a single “code” into a new document and create a few styles. However, ScreenSteps templates have to be in DOCX format so you need an application that can save to DOCX format.

As everyone knows, Elaine is an evangelist for the Mac platform and I can probably count on one hand the number of times she’s run Windows in the past few years. I was really looking forward to seeing how she coped with using Windows, however, in the end she managed to dodge that particular fight by using LibreOffice – a free, open-source word processor that is able to save files in DOCX format.

ScreenSteps allows you to upload a lesson as a blog post and supports a number of popular blogging platforms including WordPress, TypePad and Blogger. You can see the result of the export on Elaine’s blog.

Thanks again to all those who attended. There was as usual, plenty of chat before and after and plenty of questions throughout.

Review by Mike Thomas